Meal No. 340: Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce

Dinner at the Roediger House often means multiple places are being set. When I snap up some pork tenderloin because it's half-off, I need several mouths to feed, and tonight there were willing accomplices in this endeavor.

I think of my cooking obsession as really beginning about 10 years ago, when I finished up my spartan living On Grounds at the University of Virginia and finally had a kitchen again. My mother helped me get things cranking by picking up a copy of Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine in the grocery checkout line. Since it was the Bake-Off issue, it was full of especially good ideas for meals and desserts. One of the first ones we tried was Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce, and that was the meal on this happy summer evening.

Of course, a picture like this one makes it look like I was cooking for Engine Company No. 9.

I got the cream sauce a little too salty, but all-in-all, this meal was none too shabby.

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Frank Hollands, "Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce," from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks: A Taste of the Bake-Off, March 2001, p. 41.

Meal No. 339: T-Bone Steaks

It was a pretty event-filled day at the Roediger House today, so let's run it down...

Twin City Taps Craft Beer Festival

Let's chalk up another advantage to downtown living.

The inaugural craft beer festival of North Carolina microbreweries happened here in Winston-Salem today, and it was hosted at BB&T Ballpark, home of the minor league baseball team the Winston-Salem Dash. And that's walking distance from the house.

Which is good, because although I've enjoyed many a Virginia wine festival, a beer fest was new for me, and I did not anticipate how much I'd actually consume in a short space of time. Let's say I managed to get loopy.

And cooked in the sun as well, but not so bad as to put me in pain. It's a nice reddening that resulted from outdoor exposure, which also made me thirstier. Still, I'm glad fellow UNC grad Steve Zorn suggested it, and that it coincided with a visit to Winston-Salem by former WFU student Byron Hoover.

We had us a good time.

Visit from the Hoovers

Byron's wife Laura did not have much interest in the beer festival, but she and their younger son Jonah came by and it was good to visit with them afterwards. We enjoyed munching down on some spicy bay seasoned snack mix they brought, which was most thoughtful. They are great folks and I like very much that their occasional trips back here to Winston (Byron and Laura met and married as students at Wake Forest) usually include swinging by the Roediger House.

Grilling Steaks

The Hoovers headed out but new WFU grad student Ben Phillis arrived to partake of the evening's grub. My altered state did not seem to interfere with grilling up some delicious t-bone steaks, along with russet and sweet potatoes and steamed asparagus on the grill.

Possum #3 Taken Into Custody

At the end of the late-night walk with Cyprus on Thursday night, we came up the driveway and she immediately treed a young possum that was lurking around my compost pile. So I set up the Havahart® trap yet again and, this morning, that possum was in it.

The babies can be so cute, but let them get a little age on 'em, and they are some ugly, ugly rascals.

Even their feet are disgusting-looking:

It turns out that McNeely Pest Control was at the house today, and they were willing to take this possum with them, since they also do wildlife control. That saved me a trip out into the country somewhere to release it, although I'm not stopping to think about what their plans were for this little menace.

Meal No. 338: Oven-Baked Chicken

Pot roast last night, and baked chicken tonight. Not sure why I'm on a comfort food kick, but there you have it.

This gave me an excuse to make cathead biscuits again, and they turned out pretty darned well. Made mashed potatoes and green beans to go with it.

Meal No. 337: Deluxe Pot Roast

Dinner for a crowd with the contrived theme of "Irish Night." I lack for great Irish dishes in my cooking repertoire so I decided to do a pot roast with potatoes and carrots, served over rice. Flavorful but I think the meat could have cooked longer.

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"Deluxe Pot Roast," from The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, 1999.

Meal No. 336: Caribbean Jerk Pork Chops

Talk about dee-lish-us. This evening's tempting Tuesday dinner was a first-go for me and I think it will have no trouble whatsoever replacing the margarita pork that I've made two or three times. Inspired by dishes made by Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q and developed by Food & Wine's Grace Parisi, tonight's Caribbean Jerk Pork Chops were amazing.

The salad was topped with the last of Sunday's home-made blue cheese dressing, the sides were baked North Carolina sweet potato and blue cheese coleslaw (from yesterday and made with North Carolina red cabbage). The barbecue sauce was also terrific, with just enough kick from the jerk rub paste to make it special. I had to wait until late-night before breaking out the last of last night's lemon buttermilk pie, a must-have dessert with a tall glass of cold Vitamin D milk.

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"Caribbean Jerk Pork Chops," from Food & Wine, June 2011, p. 88.

Meal No. 335: Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers

Hello again, peanut butter bacon burgers. This is your fifth appearance at the Roediger House, and you seem to get better every time.

First fixed only last November, this is definitely one of the House favorites and a meal that actually gets made on command of the uninitiated. I'm always happy to oblige.

You might say: it's just burgers. But I have to take this meal up a notch. For instance, each and every time, I have ground my own beef to make the patties.

There's a particular technique that's recommended for forming and cooking the patties, and I find it best to follow those instructions.

Anticipating five eager mouths to feed this evening, I managed to stretch the beef without making the burgers paltry. The classic burger sauce is homemade. The peanut butter is homemade. The buns have been buttered and browned in the skillet. Tonight's accompaniment was homemade blue cheese coleslaw.

For dessert: I made a lemon buttermilk pie that was just spot on.

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Approach to burgers and recipe for the classic burger sauce: Cook's Illustrated, No. 93, July/August 2008.

Ina Garten's "Blue Cheese Coleslaw" from FoodNetwork.com.

"Buttermilk Lemon Pie," from Taste of Home.

Meal No. 334: Creamy Pasta With Asparagus, Parmesan, and Crispy Prosciutto

Stuck away in a folder for several years now has been a 30-minute supper recipe card from the center section of the recipe magazine Cook's Country. Tonight, it finally got taken for a trial run, and the results were mighty fine.

Oh sure: it could use a bit more cream sauce but the flavors were all really nice. I also threw in the remainder of the pine nuts I'd toasted for last night's quinoa.

I also took the extra (extra, but still simple) step of making homemade blue cheese dressing to put on a simple hearts of romaine salad. Instructions for that came from The Joy of Cooking.

And since I've been in the mood to play with dough a bit, I attempted another recipe for making some bread to go along with it all. This one was for honey wheat dinner rolls and was clipped from a King Arthur Flour catalog, quite some time ago.

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"Creamy Pasta with Asparagus, Parmesan, and Crispy Prosciutto," from 30-Minute Supper Recipe Cards found in the October/November 2007 issue of Cook's Country.

Meal No. 333: Whole-Grain Pancakes for Sunday Morn

Weekend pancakes usually follow a few days of hankering for them. On this Sunday morning, after a couple of hot Roediger House mugs of Tully's Italian Roast coffee, I tossed some whole-grain pancakes into the griddle and served 'em up with pure maple syrup and a tall glass of cold, cold milk.

Meal No. 332: Grilled Maple-Bourbon Salmon

I think I tend to note with some regularity (and some repetitiveness) that the week's specials at Harris Teeter supermarket have a lot to do with determining my evening meal choices. That's true tonight, when the wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon was nearly half-off its usual price. A recent issue of Cuisine at Home had a simple but tempting recipe for maple-bourbon glazed salmon on the grill, and that sealed the deal.

Also new on my list of dishes were the sides...

Instead of plain quinoa, I followed the recipe on the package to make a pine nut and parsley quinoa pilaf. I also found a recipe for grilling broccolini in that same magazine, but I went with broccoli crowns tonight and used the grill basket. There were several happy faces around the dinner table, which almost always is well-populated with good friends and fun characters.

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"Maple-Basted Salmon," from Cuisine at Home, Issue 87, June 2011, p. 42-43.

"Grilled Broccolini with Lemon-Mustard Vinaigrette," from Cuisine at Home, Issue 87, June 2011, p. 41.

Meal No. 331: Crab-Boil Country-Style Pork Ribs

So many grilling-themed recipe magazines have come into the house this summer that I was all but certain I'd seen a good new recipe for country-style pork ribs that I could try. So while at Sam's Club I went ahead and picked up a pack of them. But when I got home and started reviewing recipes on hand, I came up empty (or would have had to repeat something I've already made).

This led me to foodily.com, a site that John Lloyd turned me onto. You put a key ingredient into the search window, and foodily.com does a meta-search of multiple recipe sites. It is well-designed and very nicely set up, and I enjoy using it from time to time.

The barbecue sauce that goes with this was really different and really good. It should have made me think "Cajun," but it actually had an air of Asian about it...in a good way. Baked potatoes, green beans, and Granny Wilson's cornbread were great accompaniments. And I'm glad there was still some homemade vanilla ice cream in the freezer from this past weekend's batch.

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"Crab-Boiled Country-Style Pork Ribs," from Emeril Lagasse and the Food Network.

Homemade Pimento Cheese Again

This latest batch of homemade pimento cheese might be the best yet. I'm still grateful to a good college friend who brought Palmetto Cheese with her on a visit a few months back, because it inspired me to try to create my own version of it. Not sure if it matches up, but it's more than suitable as a replacement.

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"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

Trash Trees Fight for Their Lives

Back in May, I got Ken's Tree Service to take down the problem trees, especially those awful trash trees that had gotten such a serious foot-hold on the rear retaining wall. It was great to see how nice and clean things looked once they were all gone, although it continues to be an adjustment to now do without all that great shade (especially in this summer's unusual heat).

But trash trees get ahead in this world by persevering and fighting quickly against the odds, and as you can see from the picture below, they are doing their darnedest to come back from the dead. It's still going to take me a while to get around to the final removal of the stumps, because it will need to be in conjunction with the demolition and rebuilding of that wall. For now, this is going to be a persistent but much smaller problem to contend with.

Summer Fruit Tart

I was looking back through some of the pictures I've taken recently and realized I never did a blog entry about this fancy-dancy summer fruit tart I made a week or so ago. I usually don't worry too much about trying to get an arty look to my grub: I just want it to be edible and to be eaten.

But this rascal turned out mighty purty.

Summer Sunflowers

The dry summer and the overwhelming heat do not seem to have slowed down the emergence of sunflowers under my bird feeders, where sunflower seeds have a tendency to fall. I guess the squirrels did not get all of them before they were able to sprout and take root.

I also like that there was a spunky male cardinal nearby, with a strange cock to his head, while I was snapping this shot.

Doctor Who Series 6 TV Party (and Chili)

Six-Hour Chili for 6 Hours of Doctor Who

The show is so good that it's not really a huge feat to make me a fan of it, but I find myself all-too-quickly seduced into loving me some Doctor Who from the BBC. I'm not yet so manic about it that I'm having to go back and watch all the available episodes from the last 50 years, and I am still learning the villains and the backstories and the past companions and all that.

Still, it was tough to have the DVDs sitting around here at the house for that period of time between their release and when the Doctor Who Series 6 (Part I) watching party was scheduled for. But finally the day arrived, and a giddy happy anxious and enthused crowd packed itself into the upstairs TV room over bowls of Six-Hour Chili (Meal No. 330) and watched all seven episodes this evening.

In addition to the chili (which I forgot to photograph in the run-up and rush of getting the watching party started), I had on hand made-from-scratch brownies, brioche-topped peach and pear cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream, lemon sponge pie, and Bundt butterscotchy coffee cake.

And there were some special drink inventions, too: Doctor Whowaii, Amelia Pom, River Thong, and Two Thousand and Lime Space Rory Williams. Did you know there was a pineapple version of Fanta? And that the Fates intervened just in time to allow real and true Peach Nehi to be found right here in Winston-Salem?

Meal No. 329: Deviled Chicken Thighs

There were overnight guests around the dinner table, and we sat down to a late-night meal and a bit of catching up.

Fortunately for me, we did not get around to eating the good South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese I'd made.

Meal No. 329 was Deviled Chicken Quarters with three-cheese pasta bake and cat head biscuits.

For dessert, homemade vanilla ice cream:

Addendum: The next morning, as they were leaving, they offered a nice gift to Cyprus...a UNC kerchief for her to wear. And Eli discovered she likes to give great kisses.

Speaking of UNC things, my Toyota Tundra is now sporting a new North Carolina license plate:

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"Deviled Chicken Drumsticks," by Ian Knauer. Gourmet, August 2008.

"Cat Head Biscuits," by Cali Rich. Cook's Country, April/May 2010, p. 12-13.

"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese," adapted from Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

Meal No. 328: Grilled London Broil

Somehow, Thursday night at the Roediger House turned out to be a night of revelry, laughter, fun, shouts and hoots, and a drinking game, mixed in with some episodes of Doctor Who from the BBC.

I do love my beer and try to keep some good offerings on hand here in my multiple refrigerators. And most nights I'll have a couple, or maybe three, in connection with dinner. I am getting too old to consume a dozen, and that's what made getting my day started on this Friday a bit of a chore. Still, a young whippersnapper who thought to challenge me went down in sleepy defeat.

Now, for the evening's supper...

Tempted by the half-price sale going on at Harris-Teeter, I figured I'd give myself another shot at trying to make a good London Broil meal. This one is grilled, and I slipped up and let it stay on the grill long enough to overcook. But it's a good-looking piece of meat and it gave off a wonderful aroma both when it was cooking and while I was slicing it. I added a Bernaise sauce to it because it was quick, not because it was the proper accompaniment.

And I'm just not a fan of tough meat. I also tried making angel biscuits but I don't think I was using good yeast, and the fat did not mix in very well. The asparagus were way over-cooked (foil packet on the grill also) but the baked potatoes were good.

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"London Broil for a Gas Grill," from Cook's Illustrated, May/June 2006, p. 11-13.

Meal No. 327: Tomato-Gorgonzola Rotini

A meal I made at the beginning of the month has already made a re-appearance at the Roediger House. It's what happens with these really good recipes that fill a particular craving niche. It also helped that it was pretty quick and easy to make, because my other ideas for dinner were not in line with the time I had allotted myself.

This is rotini pasta with a tomato-gorgonzola cream sauce. It might have come out a bit heavier on the tomato and less creamy this time, but it didn't earn any complaints from the consumers around the table.

It was also kindly greeted when it showed up again late-night in the midst of a lot of alcohol intake.

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"Tomato-Gorgonzola Sauce with Pasta Shells," from Cuisine at Home, October 2007.

Meal No. 326: Two Versions of Wahoo

I've never made wahoo before (also known as ono in Hawaii, I've been told). For this inaugural adventure into a new kind of fish at the Roediger House, I decided to give the two fillets different treatments. On one, I put some of the Park Hill spice and mustard rub, since I had it on hand for the salmon the other night. On the other, I put Chef Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Redfish Magic (which would be much better if I'd pan-seared the fish). Both were good.

I also tried another new risotto recipe, with moderate results. A third new thing tonight was broccoli with pine nuts and parmesan, and while the broccoli could have been cooked a bit longer, it was still worth all the extra crunching. I was happy that there was still some of last night's peasant rosemary bread, which reheated nicely while the fish was baking.

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"Creamy Baked Risotto," from Cook's Country, April/May 2010, p. 23.

"Skillet Broccoli with Garlic, Pine Nuts, and Parmesan," from Cook's Country, October/November 2010, p. 23 (yes! same page but different issue!).