Tuesday, October 26

Seasoned Pork Tenderloin and Fried Potatoes

Yes, I know it has been a long time since I've updated. My excuse, as always, is that I've been too busy. The most complicated thing about blogging is hooking my camera up to the computer to transfer the photos every day. Now, though, I've got this cool card that automatically uploads the pictures to my computer and to the interwebs so it is much easier to blog. So, as always, I'll try to be better.

Tonight was Michael's night to cook. He made pork tenderloin -- it was already seasoned with garlic and a lot of black pepper -- and fried potatoes. The potatoes were delicious! The pork was pretty good -- it was a little peppery, but I got used to it after a little while. I'll be eating the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

The presentation isn't the best -- we'll be working on that in the coming months as well. The last few months have been kind of busy -- with the wedding and our new furniture purchases for the living room -- that cooking has sort of fallen by the wayside. I think we're ready to get back into it, though. So we'll see.

Sunday, October 3

Crab cakes and Homemade Potato Chips

My night to cook.  After we went to a local crab cake place (which, unfortunately, has since closed) last month, Michael commented that we could probably make our own crab cakes at home.  Crab was on sale this week (not the jumbo lump, but the back fin) for only $7.99 a pound at the grocery store, so I decided to try.  I followed a Cook's Illustrated (of course) recipe that uses very little ingredients other than the crab -- just scallions, a little breadcrumbs, a green herb (I used cilantro), egg, and seasonings.  For my first time cooking with crab, they actually turned out pretty good.  (And much cheater than buying crab cakes at a restaurant).  Next time, if I decide to use cilantro as the herb again, I probably won't use as much.  For the potato chips, I used our mandoline to slice the potatoes (the food processor takes too long to clean up), fried them up in the deep fryer, and dusted them with salt and Old Bay.  Yummy.

Saturday, October 2

Ribs and Potato Salad

Ribs were on sale at the grocery story this week.  (Yes, we finally went back to our menu planning and grocery shopping schedule) and Michael was still proud of his ribs cooking ability after his first attempt to grill ribs was so successful over the wedding weekend.  So he decided to try again.  This time he used the Should be Illegal recipe that I've used in the past.  They turned out wonderfully.  (You do have to cook them a little longer than the hour the recipe calls for -- more like 2 hours).

He served the ribs with potato salad which, for some reason, didn't turn out as well.  I forgot to tell him to add onion.  Maybe that was it.  Maybe the proportion of mustard to mayo was off.  Not sure, but it ended up a little vinegary.  Which was weird since there wasn't any vinegar in it.  The ribs more than made up for the potato salad, though.

Friday, October 1

Out to dinner night.

Now that our self-imposed rule of only dining at restaurants we can walk to has ended, we decided to try a fairly new place in Rockville, Againn.  (They also have a location in D.C.).  The restaurant is billed as an upscale British Isles restaurant.  It was fairly crowded when we got there, which was a little surprising for 8 pm at a strip mall type restaurant in the 'burbs.  Our table was near the bar -- Michael and I each ordered Irish drinks -- Michael's was Smithwick's beer (on draft), mine was an Irish cider (also on draft).  We ordered the spinach and artichoke dip for an appetizers, Michael ordered the bangers and mash, which I got fish and chips with mushy peas. 

The drinks were huge -- 20 ounce.  (Yet I still managed to put away 2 of them).  The appetizer (along with a bread basket) came out quickly.  Michael loved the bread and the spinach dip was okay  -- more spinachy than I usually like.  Our dinners were good -- Michael seemed to like the bangers (which are sausages) and mashed potatoes, served with an onion gravy.  The fish was okay -- it was a huge piece of fish (probably about 12 inches long) and fairly thick, so the "fried" to "fish" level wasn't quick right.  It was served with an oniony egg sauce instead of tarter sauce.  The chips (fries) were good and served with ketchup, a garlic aioli sauce (which Michael loved) and malt vinegar.  The mushy peas were mushy and I didn't eat them.

All in all, a fairly good dinner.  I wasn't really hungry for dinner.  (Had a large quiznos lunch), so maybe the next time we go, I'll be more hungry and could try one of their more refined entrees.