my food network application

It is time to recount my third experiment in the kitchen. I have been trying to decide how to recount this latest adventure, because I can hardly believe it even happened. I look at the pictures that I’m about to post, and I still can’t believe it. I’ve been eating leftovers for a few days, and I still can’t believe it. Good thing I have a blog, because if there weren’t a place to document this, I might not believe it happened in like a month or two.

On my last cooking blog, there was a comment from my cousin Mary. You may remember Mary as the cousin who showed me the wonder of hot air popcorn poppers at the cousin reunion, thus illustrating yet again that when she says something about food items, you should listen; I first had this hunch about her knack for food when I went to visit her family in Charlotte when I was little, and she made me an ice cream sandwich with fresh baked cookies. It was a culinary delight unlike any I had known in my young life. In her comment, Mary gave me some words of encouragement and said she’d try to send some recipes for me to try.

While that was an extremely heartening comment, nothing could have prepared me for the wealth of information that was sent me to via email just a few days later. I got an email that included three recipes: pork tenderloin, shepherd’s pie and creamy cheesy chicken. I’m still pondering how to do this, but I’m hoping to give these dishes some fancy names, like Elvis Porkley’s Love Me Tenderloin. Although they will probably just have Mary’s name somewhere in there; just as I grew up with a dish called Anna Cay’s Potatoes in honor of the aunt who gave my mom the recipe, my children will likely grow up with something called Mary’s Pork Tenderloin or Cousin Creamy Cheesy Chicken. Anyways, like I said, I’m still working on that part.

All of the recipes looked doable, which is saying something as I have expressed before my extreme apprehension about cooking meat. I decided to try the pork tenderloin first, because Mary used the word “foolproof” in describing it, and that was a word that appealed to me immensely. And so, after having committed the recipe to heart (it is only a paragraph long, but I can recite it for you), I headed off to a new corner of the grocery store: the meat section.

Finding the meat was kind of like a scavenger hunt, because never ever have I bought a big ol’ hunk of it before. I was to find not pork loin, but pork tenderloin, a small one. Well, just like when you can’t find a fork for all the spoons, all I could see were pork loins, but thanks to the very specific instructions I had memorized, I knew that was not for me, and I persevered, finding a tenderloin that weighed in at 2.25 pounds. Do I know how much I weighed when I was born? No. But I think I shall always know how much that pork tenderloin weighed.

Then it was time for another scavenger hunt in the spice aisle, cause I needed garlic pepper. And garlic is a word that shows up on a lot of different things in the spice aisle, but yet again I persevered. Those were the only two ingredients I needed for this recipe! Then I got some bread and some beans for a side dish, but I can go ahead and tell you now; the side dish will not prove very important to this story.

At home, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees. Another reason this recipe intrigued me was because it called upon the full power of the oven, and I wanted to see what that bad boy taking up so much room in my kitchen could do. I rubbed garlic pepper all over the pork tenderloin and then cooked it for an amount of time that is an ancient family secret. It has to do with the weight of the pork tenderloin, but I can tell you no more.

While the pork tenderloin was cooking and my apartment was filled with delightful smells, I managed to make a side dish, which was green beans and tomatoes, a recipe described on the internet as Fagiolini di Sant’Anna, or Saint Anna’s Beans. I have wanted to try side dishes, since so far I have made things that are like self-contained meals that don’t require side dishes. This one was okay. As you will see below, it added some beautiful color to the plate. However, next time I make this dish, I will just make the meat and I will only eat that until my stomach explodes.

When the meat came out of the oven, I got to use my utensil that is like a big fork. Uh, I just googled and I think it is called a carving fork. But I used a regular knife. I carved that meat into medallions and I placed it on a plate that also contained the green beans, two slices of fancy cheese and some bread. I got out my fancy Biltmore Estate wine and poured a glass. And then I looked around to see if there were any magazine photographers because man oh man I have never been so pleased with myself in my life. Here is my creation:

And here is another close-up of the food, because a vision like this deserves another image.

Now, I think I would have been okay if it just looked nice. But that meat melted in my mouth like butter, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Like I said, next time, I’m just making the meat. It is also very good as leftovers, and today I had a pork tenderloin sandwich, with Italian bread, cheese and Dijon mustard. It was so good that it made me think I could open a deli, and the deli would only be known for pork tenderloin sandwiches, to the point that if someone orders something else, everyone else rolls their eyes and there’s an old woman in the back making pork tenderloins all day while I supervise. I’m not sure who the old woman is yet, but she’s in my daydream about this. It would be good if she spoke only Italian and wore black and was hunched over. I must have seen this woman in a movie about a deli.

But I digress. The point of this entry is to celebrate the fact that I cooked meat and to celebrate my cousin Mary who gave me this incredible recipe. Thank you very much Mary. You are the official chef of this blog until I think of a better title. The rest of you, should you feel compelled to send me “fool-proof” recipes, I regret to inform you that you have a lot to live up to.