On a whim, we bought a 15-lb ham Tuesday night. (This is all that’s left of it.)

For the past 3 days we have been facing the consequences.

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I’ve made pork tenderloin before many times, but it was always hard to tell when it got done, and whether it would be juicy or a log of shoe leather by the end. I also could never seem to get a nice crust on the outside. So finally I decided to get down to learning how to do it right. The recipe I used tonight came from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, which is a sizable compendium of classic French recipes generously annotated by both Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. The recipe is simply called Sautéed Pork Filet or Tenderloin. It was pretty standard, following your classic “sear, bake, and make sauce” procedure. However this time around I made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. And when I deviated, I noted what went differently, why, and how I fixed it. As a result I think tonight’s pork tenderloin was the best I’ve ever made.

I learned a bunch of things in the process, so I shall write them down here in case you too might find them useful. What follows is my version of the recipe, adopted from and even more thoroughly annotated than J&J’s version (if such a thing were possible).

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Admittedly, I don’t actually know all that much about Hungarian food, but what has filtered overseas to the US and into my mouth, mostly in the form of paprikash, goulash, stuffed pancakes, and mushroom soup, has been superlatively satisfying. There seems to be some sort of pattern here—that whatever foreign food that make it to unpretentious restaurants and little food stands here in the US invariably is awesome.

We had a surfeit of chicken thighs lately because they’ve been on sale, and I was running out of ideas on how to cook them, when I stumbled onto this recipe. (Thank you again, Elise.) It turned out so good that even Jess, who normally dislikes dark meat, approved.

Here is the recipe that I ended up using after slight tweaks:

Chicken Paprikash

Ingredients
8 pieces chicken thighs
2 tbsp butter, softened
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 small onions, thinly sliced into half rings
1 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 450˚ F. Mash softened butter and garlic together. Stuff mixture under the skin of thighs and spread as evenly as possible.
2. Mix together onions, paprika, salt, and water. Spread on bottom layer of a baking pan. Place chicken thighs on top.
3. Bake for 10 minutes. Then lower heat to 350˚ F and bake for a half hour until done.
4. Serve with sauce.

This meatloaf is amazing. It is none other than the famed meatloaf that my hausmate Jess made at 82, and it has made many welcome appearances over the years, including one in the guise of a meatcake (a meatloaf baked in a springform pan, “frosted” with mashed potatoes). Jess has always been the one to make it, but she has been uber-busy of late (sucked away into a vortex of end-of-last-semester art-making), so I decided to give it a shot.

I went on the internets and searched for “onion soup mix meatloaf” and it gave me a few base recipes that I worked from. A few tweaks here and there and the result actually came pretty close to Jess-grade meatloaf.

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I got this fabulous recipe from a co-worker who is in love with Mexican food. It has the perfect amount of fat to create a savory homey folksy delicious flavor — i.e. a lot. Also, the burnt bits! Ahhh, the burnt bits. Definitely not doctor recommended, but so good if you just had a mediocre day and need to even things out a bit with some superlative food.

It is because of this dish that I could never be a vegetarian.

Carnitas

2 lbs fatty cut of pork, like shoulder
1 orange’s worth of zest
3/4 cup orange juice
1 cup water
6 cloves of garlic
salt to taste

1. Cut the pork into 1″ nuggets.
2. Put the pork in a (large frying) pan, in a single layer.
3. Zest the orange and cut the 6 cloves of garlic each in half.
4. Put everything in the pan, with the pork. Make sure the pork is almost-covered with liquid. If not, add more water.
5. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on medium-low for 45 minutes.
6. Take cover off at 45 min. and turn up the heat. Really boil that sucker until all the liquid has evaporated and the pork begins to sizzle in the melted fat. Let it brown, stirring to make sure no one side gets too burnt.
7. When the pork gets to a good color (you decide how black you want it to be), turn off the heat. Add some salt to taste. Goes great with beans and rice.

• We invented an ingenious easy beans-and-rice recipe last night. Cooked rice + a can of kidney beans + cajun seasoning and a dash of salt. Mix and let it sit in the rice cooker on “warm” while the carnitas finish. So good, so cheating, but so good.