Poached Eggs on Toast, Pork Tenderloin, Beef with Mushrooms and Chicken Coq-au-Vin (Sans Vin)

Last Friday's Dana-Farber happy hour ended with the more (*ahem*) dedicated among us being invited up from the 14th floor to the 15th floor happy hour, which apparently was still rich in drinks and pizza and looking for takers. This one was sponsored by Invitrogen, whose sales rep has become a regular at some of our social gatherings, both in and out of the institute. The long and short of it is that we had plenty of food and drink and Melissa and I were sent home with two magnums (plural magna?) of wine that were leftover from the whole affair...

Saturday we got up quite early to get some home improvements taken care of (plumbing repairs that we no longer trust our property managers to do properly) before a quick wine shopping at Trader Joe's with Amanda and an afternoon of lab work for me.

The first food entry for this post is Melissa's Saturday afternoon lunch. When I went to work at the med school, she went to work on something to eat. She started with this heavy German bread she keeps in the freezer (her best approximation of Vogel's toast, something she really misses from home), and topped it with mushrooms pan-fried in butter, a perfectly poached egg and fresh pesto she made from the basil we're growing out in the garden. This was a really tasty treat, as I found out when she replicated it for me on Sunday morning when I was poking around for a bite to eat...

Saturday evening we had pan-fried pork tenderloin (seasoned with only soy sauce and cracked pepper) with mashed potatoes and asparagus. The potatoes were boiled in chicken stock before mashing to give them extra flavor, and then Melissa added in some finely chopped marinated green peppercorns. If you can find these in your local supermarket, buy them. They are great when used whole in stews (as are dried black peppercorns), and they give an unexpected kick to almost anything you dare to add them to. Not tongue-scorchingly spicy, just a concentrated hit of pepper. As is our habit, we had the asparagus simply blanched in boiling water then tossed in olive oil, sea salt and ground pepper. A 2007 Bogle chardonnay was just right for this meal.

Sunday we had a nice, leisurely morning together with some good coffee and an on-demand movie or two, then packed up in the early afternoon and caught the commuter rail with Amanda and Evan out to Framingham, MA, where our friend and used-to-be Dana 14 colleague Kim was having a BBQ at her pond-side home in the 'burbs. It's a nice area, and she has lots of space for grilling and volleyball, the latter of which occupied me for most of the day. We had ribs, chili, German sausages, eggplant, and beer galore to distract us from the really bad weather. After the thunderstorms passed, though, we got right back out in the yard with our volleyball and some water balloons. A great time was had by all, and when we returned to the city we were treated to a night of fantastic sleeping weather with temperatures in the low 60's and relatively low humidity after the all the rain -- open windows and a good fan were just perfect. It really is better then air-conditioning...

We started the work week off quite well with a Monday dinner of pan-fried flank steak (medium rare, as you can see) with roasted portobello mushrooms and Melissa's new favorite salsa (recipe in a previous post). With this meal we worked on the magnum of YellowTail cabernet sauvignon that was donated to our cause by Invitrogen last Friday, but ended up using a large portion of it to build traps for the surreal fruit-fly invasion to which we were subjected without warning last night. I don't know where the hell they came from, but they came in force. There was no rotting fruit in our kitchen, but they sure liked the wine...

Tonight's dinner was chicken coq au vin -- sans vin. Add in dijon mustard and tarragon with some potatoes, onions, peas, whole garlic cloves and black peppercorns in Melissa's own chicken stock, and we didn't miss the vin. Besides, a glass of chardonnay (another 2007 Bogle) on the side did much more for the dish than reduced wine would have.

We continue to fight the Drosophila invasion -- any advice out there?