Looking in the refrigerator she found a number of things that had to be used or lost, so she put together a dish that illustrates particularly well her mastery over the use of leftovers.
The dish was pan-fried pork tenderloin with portobello mushroom, beets, fennel bulbs and butternut squash puree. It was beautifully presented with a careful arrangement and a garnish of feathery fennel leaves fresh from the garden. Note that the pork tenderloin is the only ingredient that is new tonight: the beets and fennel were leftover from last night's roasted veggie salad, the butternut squash puree was actually last Saturday's squash and goat cheese soup, and the portobello was the lone morsel that didn't make it onto the grill last Sunday. The smaller plate in front is mine -- I came home feeling not-so-hungry due to my consumption of Bertucci's pizza for lunch and Domino's pizza at happy hour. Why do I eat such things despite my knowledge of what culinary jewels await when Melissa takes the helm in our kitchen? I guess I still have a graduate student's inability to pass up free food at work. Such is life...
Melissa did something really smart that added a nice dimension to the flavor of the pork. Knowing that meat fresh off the heat should rest for a few minutes before it is cut so that the flavorful juices re-absorb into the meat rather than dribbling out all over the cutting board, she topped it with the juicy mushrooms she had pan-fried together with the pork while it waited to be sectioned and presented. We buy whole pork and beef tenderloins from the wholesale club and butcher and freeze them at home, which results in a much better quality-to-price ratio than we find in the local grocery stores -- plus we control the portion size.
We had a nice dry Gancia Prosecco (Veneto region, Italy) with the meal. We love bubbly, and Prosecco is always a crisp, fresh drink, especially with warmer weather foods. Pear, melon and apples abound in most of these wines, and many good labels go for $10-$20 ($11 in this case, although it was probably overpriced since it was from our local small bottle store).
I'll wrap this up so I can get back to the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which Melissa is watching live right now. She actually changed it to the HD channel because the definition was insufficient. So far the best bit was when one contestant (and the entire viewing audience) mistook the Hindi word "numnah," referring to the pad or cushion placed under a horse's saddle, for the similar "numbnut," which could be used any number of ways. Much to his relief and ours, the misunderstanding was sorted out before he began to spell...
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