Meal No. 314: Pork Medallions with Ginger-Soy-Shiitake Sauce

With a large contingent of visitors here in town from New Orleans College Prep, and hosting the three principals here at the house, I was trying to play it flexible. Would I have several people at the table at dinner last night, or would they all want to go out to a local restaurant so they could take in the town a bit and also do some talking and planning following our first day of training? I was ready either way.

Turns out the elementary and high school principals went into meeting mode with their respective coaches, and so I got Anne Felter all to myself (since both of her middle school coaches were unable to come for this week's sessions). After teaching all day, I needed something worthy of the delight of her visit and good enough to get her to come back to Winston and visit again, but also something that could be prepared expeditiously.

Thank goodness the Lowe's Foods near the training site had a reasonable price on pork tenderloin, and that led me to make seared pork medallions with a ginger-soy-shiitake cream sauce (it is every bit as good on seared tuna, as well).

I think the meal met with approval. Alongside: mashed potatoes and seasoned green beans.

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"Pan-Seared Tuna with Ginger-Shiitake Cream Sauce," The Bon Appétit Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild, 2006, p. 398-399.

Meal No. 313: Deviled Chicken Thighs

This is the second week in a row for the Roediger House to play host to people from New Orleans College Prep Academies, a charter school that I have worked with for the last several years. Last week it was strictly a pleasure visit. This week, it's business.

A team of 11 educators from NOCP came to town to join in on instructional coaching training I was doing for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. The three principals from NOCP (elementary, middle, high) stayed here at the house, and the rest of the crew was in a downtown hotel, which gave them the chance to take advantage of local happening places in the short time they were here.

Last night, only Anne Felter (middle school principal) had arrived when dinnertime rolled around, so she pulled up to a table full (including Ben Phillis and Emily Ellis) of folks. I was ready to have the oven-baked deviled chicken recipe that showed up over the weekend on drumsticks. This time I went with bone-in thighs. Fresh steamed broccoli and three-cheese pasta bake were on the menu as well. And in true Louisiana tradition, I washed it down with an Abita Turbodog.

Meal No. 312: Independence Day Burgers

Yesterday was Independence Day, a day when we get to celebrate the beginning of America and all that we have become from those remarkable days of our founding. When I was a classroom teacher, every year one of my first bulletin boards said: "Freedom gives you the right to be wrong, not to do wrong." (This quote, by the way, I am now finally getting around to attributing...it comes from John George Diefenbaker, former Prime Minister of Canada, and was uttered in 1958.)

The burgers did me right on July 4th, 2011. Although I did not find this new way to do a burger sauce to be all that enticing. I'd much rather go back to the classic burger sauce that comes from Cook's Illustrated and that normally shows up on the peanut butter bacon burgers.

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Recipe from Laurent Tourondel, "Cheddar BLT Burgers with Tarragon Russian Dressing," in Food & Wine, June 2009, p. 60.

Meal No. 311: Broccolini Stir-Fry with Salmon

Not sure how I stumbled across it, but I found this video from Marcus Samuelsson that takes you through the prep for a broccolini stir-fry that sounded too good to resist. The published recipe (on Kitchen Daily) did not quite match, so I played-and-paused his video so I could write down the instructions. I did have to guess about some of the amounts because he was not precise about it.

Nonetheless, I made it for dinner last night, and the result was mighty good, and I managed to make it rather spicy, and that helped the Abita Amber taste that much better. Topping it off with some pan-seared salmon filets gave it a full entree feel.

Meal No. 310: Yin-Yang Chicken Drumsticks

What an eventful Independence Weekend Saturday. Lunch with new Roediger House compatriot Ben Phillis up at 6th & Vine, checking out the kustom rides at the Heavy Rebel Weekender in the Arts District, an afternoon of hanging out, dinner here at the house, some Doctor Who from the BBC, a great Latin American party gathering off Motor Road, and finishing with a spontaneous porch party upstairs that pushed on till close to 4 am.

Now: as for that dinner. It was a retry of Yin-Yang chicken, which is so named because of the interesting variation in coloring of the finished products. It's two different recipes but I like making them at the same time for the variety.

The fridge has been so full of leftover side dishes that that's what went alongside. Of course, Sylvia (whose late-night party it was) also had some terrific Mexican barbecue and I left too little room for it in my belly.

Cyprus Calls In Sick

Someone is having a tough day today. Cyprus has finally (I hope!) reached the end of a long stretch of hours of not feeling very good. It started with tossing her cookies this morning on the carpet in front of the fireplace (looked like raw egg yolks and, strangely, had a similar smell). Then the poor thing let slip a small trail of mess from the other end, in the master bathroom. (She immediately hauled tail and squirmed up under the bed, which was no small feat, so I can only imagine what happened to her in her original home if she had an accident.) I coaxed her out and got her outside where she was initially distracted by squirrels, and then she was caught off-guard again by what started tumbling out. But she seems to be getting past it all, after the last of her diarrhea passed, and she is now in a deep slumber in her crate.

Can't help but feel bad for her!

Would you like me to get back to blogging about food now?

Meal No. 309: Blackened Grilled Ahi Tuna

Before walking over to the downtown arts district for the monthly Gallery Hop, I tried my hand at another new recipe. I'd grabbed a couple of large slabs of wild-caught Ahi tuna when I went to CostCo yesterday, and I followed the directions in the latest issue of Cuisine at Home. What resulted was a delicious blackened grilled tuna, and I served up some of the leftover side dishes from this week's big meals, including corn pudding and sweet potato casserole.

The tuna had a nice spice to it, and it wasn't until getting back from Gallery Hop that I remembered the cajun remoulade I'd whipped up to go with it to help ease the heat. Oh well.

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Blackened Dixie Tuna from Cuisine at Home, Issue 88, August 2011, p. 20-21.

Meal No. 308: Roasted Pork Tenderloin

There is no end to the fun at the Roediger House, and as you know, it always pleases me to have folks come over for dinner. So, no sooner have the New Orleans friends departed than I get another special set of visitors: Peggy Clark and Jeff Means, from Florida.

I've known these two fellow educators for years, thanks to our mutual involvement in Project CRISS. The last few days, they were just north of here, doing a train-the-trainer training for CRISS up in Surry County, NC. On their way back to Greensboro for tomorrow's flight home, they made time to come by for a meal and to see the Roediger House.

We started off with spiced pecan and bleu cheese mixed greens with a sweet and sour vinaigrette, which comes from Southern Living.

The main dish was Oven-Roasted Pork Tenderloin and Vegetables.

Alongside, I had the usual suspects: company mashed potatoes and seasoned green beans.

And Jeff and Peggy said the carrot cake was pretty good, although I've already made note of my disappointment in it.

After dinner, we adjourned to the upstairs porch and enjoyed a perfect summer evening with light breezes, along with some decaf coffee. It was a terrific evening.

Possum Possibilities

Here at the end of June, it was necessary to say goodbye to guests who, I thought, were leaving all too early. The crew from New Orleans departed this afternoon, with the couples each heading off to spend the rest of this week with family in New York and New Jersey.

Today was also a chance to say goodbye to an unwanted guest: a young possum. Once the New Orleans folks had left, I set up my Havahart® trap and baited it with pork gristle and peanut butter. Within a few hours, I had my yard possum trapped.

The same one who had gotten into the house a while back? I have no idea, although I do know that this trapped one is one ugly rascal, whereas the wall-siddling baby possum that I almost trapped in the north parlour was a veritable cutie in comparison.

Once I'd given Cyprus a chance to check out this rascal, we climbed up in the truck with the trap in the back, and I drove 10 miles out into the country before finding a nice low field next to a creek for releasing him. He scurried away quickly!

Meal No. 307: The Junesgiving Meal

Any excuse I can find to make the traditional Thanksgiving meal? Yes. Having a crew in from New Orleans is just the excuse I needed.

So it was herb-roasted turkey breast:

And stuffing:

And corn pudding:

And layered green bean casserole:

And slow-cooker sweet potato casserole:

And I think it was a table of happy eaters (glad to have Roediger House regulars Beau and Bradley on hand, as well):

We were so stuffed that the dense carrot cake I'd made yesterday had only a few takers:

Meal No. 306: Beef Burgandy

The visit here by the crew from New Orleans continues to go well. They seem to have contented themselves with relaxing and reading here at the house, mixed in with excursions to walk downtown, catch a movie at a/perture, check out Kernel Kustard's, tour Wake Forest University, and so on.

Dinner on this Monday night was another new recipe, and I think it turned out decent. This is beef burgandy from the slow cooker, with rice and Fordhook lima beans and some heartland sunflower bread from the bread machine.

I also made a carrot cake, using the wonderful recipe from Southern Living in 1981 that was passed on to me by education friends and colleagues John and Ebbie Linaburg.

I made this a couple of Thanksgivings ago and it was darned incredible. This time, not so much so. And I'm all the more disappointed because I know how good it can be. The second time was not the charm. I'm still diagnosing what I did wrong, but it may be that using the microplane grater and not being careful about how packed down the shredded carrot became led to a very, very, very dense result. Not very cake-y. It was almost like a flourless carrot cake. It was dense like a fruit cake. But the crew said it was good, and I agree. It does mean that much smaller than usual pieces would have been called for.

Meal No. 305: Smothered Pork Chops

Part of what makes this an excellent summer weekend is the pleasure of visits from good people. Saturday morning, Nancy Mosley (grad student from Wake Forest, Class of 2004) and her husband Mark and their son Parker stopped by for a much-overdue visit. Then, on Sunday, Tim Schwarz (WFU Grad 2007) brought in a crew from New Orleans: his girlfriend Andrea and co-worker Julia and her husband Chris. It will be a great few days having them here, as long as they can stand the fact that my primary focus is on what kind of good meal we can have next, as opposed to planning and executing some bodacious city excursions and such.

The evening meal once everybody had arrived: smothered pork chops with onion-thyme gravy, with company mashed potatoes and garden peas. For dessert: the secret recipe chocolate chip cookies that are a rough approximation of the Doubletree special ones.

After dinner, things got fun. Fortunately, I left these activities to the young whippersnappers and contented myself with clean-up responsibilities. This is a game Andrea brought along as a gift to the Roediger House, inherited from her days at Indiana University.

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Braised Smothered Pork Chops with Onion-Thyme Gravy from Cook's Country [April/May 2011], p. 22-23.

Meal No. 304: Cheesy Hamburger Pasta Bake

It sure does seem like I've been a little lazy in the kitchen lately. Tonight's meal was another easy one: cheesy hamburger pasta bake, from a recipe card in Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks magazine. It was good enough for seconds!

Blackberry Buttermilk Cake

The latest issue of Bon Appétit had some alluring photos of the prep and finished product for a blackberry buttermilk cake. This past Wednesday morning, I woke up way, way too early and decided I'd use the extra time to make this myself.

I took it up to 6th & Vine where it was well-received by the staff coming in for the lunch shift.

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Recipe from Bon Appétit, July 2011, p. 106, 109.

Meal No. 303: Cajun-Seasoned Pimento Burgers

The habit I have of going into a repetitive spell from time to time has cropped up again. Although it was just recently that I had cajun-spiced pimento burgers on the menu here at the Roediger House, I went ahead and fixed them again yesterday. I needed an easy meal before a vet appointment and then a late-night drive up to Shenandoah County, VA.

They were even better this time, because I tossed more of the seasoning in and I also think I'd made a better batch of pimento cheese this time.

Meal No. 302: Beef-Mushroom Teriyaki Noodles

After taking some time on Tuesday to go through some recipe card magazines that have accumulated over the last several months, I ended up pulling out and saving quite a few of them. Most are fairly simple and do not require a whole lot preparation. I decided on that very hot first day of summer that I would not go the elaborate route, and this is last night's result: Beef Teriyaki Stir-Fry.

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Recipe from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks periodical/recipe cards.

Summer Solstice 2011

Summer was officially welcomed at 1:16 pm EDT, and the following two pictures of the Roediger House were taken pretty much at that exact moment.

N.C. State Games Bike Criterium

It was Cycle Sunday all day long in front of the Roediger House on Sunday. From early morning until just after lunch, it was the Powerade State Games of North Carolina Bike Criterium 2011, which involved a race course using the rectangle of Fourth Street, Poplar Street, Holly Avenue, and Spring Street. During the afternoon, the street closures expanded up to include Fifth Street, and it was the City-sponsored family event, Cycle Sunday.

This time around, the City and the event organizers did a much better job of giving residents a heads-up that the street would be closed, including a hang-tag on the front door, a flyer dropped off at the house, and a mailing.

Here are a few shots related to the Bike Criterium:

Barricades to Close Spring Street

Street Sweeping of Debris

Protective Gear on Signposts

A Race in Progress

Dude Walking Who'd Just Wiped Out