Coriander Beef and Sizzly Pork

Beef Slivers with Coriander, page 105, Revolutionary Chinese Cooking
Stir-Fried Fava Beans with Minced Pork, page 210, 105 Revolutionary Chinese Cooking

I don’t know exactly why, perhaps Mary can shed some light on the subject, but the vast majority of Asian cuisine seems dominated by two things: heat and quick cook time. Whenever we stray for two long away from some rice based delights, I’ll begin to get grumpy, not knowing why until I’ve got some Thai chili, Korean bean paste or Chinese sesame oil in my belly. Tonight’s two dishes shared both the aforementioned attributes and quenched my hankering to the fullest. Prepped to completion upon arrival, I can once again take little credit for this dish. Only 20 minutes were needed to chop, slice, pour and form so I don’t have to feel too bad for my lovely wife.

What I am loving about this book is than nearly every meal we take on is finished in under an hour, and that includes prep work, not to mention that we usually choose two dishes, a protein and a vegetable.

Having yet to season our wok, we’ve been using some good old Caphalon for our Chinese adventures thus far and while purists may scoff at our lameness, we seem to be adapting (I’ve had some trouble before with the high heat/non-stick combination thus far resulting in a pungent mélange of burnt garlic and too-spicy chilies). First up, the pork and beans. I will never, ever think of the combination the same. As the culinary savant handled this one start to finish, I’ll let her fill you in on the details but I’ll have you know, there remained not a speck of this dish upon dinners completion. Perfection.

Ground pork in my vegetables was the pinnacle of irritation in my vegetarians. “Why, why, why, would anyone put ground pork in green beans,” I would moan! Oh how young and naive I was.

For the cilantro beef, I was truly excited. Knowing that if this dish didn’t turn out, I might as well go back to Stouffers, hang my head in shame and pick up a lifetime supply of sweat pants and flip flops. Luckily, garlic, chili, great local meat and a ton of fresh cilantro (stems ON!) taste amazing. Start to finish cook time of about 4 minutes, this is one dish you’d be hard pressed to excuse your way out of. The marinade (made before by Mary, again) aside, this dish was perhaps the easiest we’ve made to date, yet so full of flavor and that world renowned “comfort” felt by eating delish Chinese that I know we’ll be revisiting this one for years.

So far Fuchia has little on Bourdain in terms of clear concise instruction ( I am desperately missing his equipment list positioned in clear sight adjacent to the ingredient list). For instance Dunlop’s cue for doneness when sautéing the ground pork and moving on to the next step is, “when the pork is sizzly and delicious.” Is sizzly a word? I would use it, but heck, the whole pot was sizzly, pork or not.

An interesting side note, if anyone cares to comment. Cilantro can taste a lot like Thai basil when heated in a dish such as the beef above, anyone else have a similar experience? I can’t for the life of me connect the two when eating fresh but did notice in Korea the substitution/interchangeability of the two when either was difficult to source. Anyone have anything else on this?

Recipe Ease 9, aside from the sizzle bit
Time 10, Dinner in an hour ( I can see it now “Revolutionary Chinese 30 minute meals.”
Make again 10. A very creative use of fava beans; I bet you could substitute lima beans is you had too, or if you were a masochistic.

Zi Ran Nir Rou: Beef With Cumin

Or thank goodness for the silk road!

Beef With Cumin; Revolutionary Chinese Cooking, page 102

When you think Chinese food, do you think cumin? I didn’t. But thanks to the silk road, Muslim traders and settlers, cumin has a place in Chinese cuisine. Dunlop notes that cumin is associated with the Muslim influenced city of Xinjiang.

Kevin, busy with work, took a night off from the kitchen and I was left to fend a pound of sirloin on my own. Sliced thin and tossed with soy sauce, shaoxing wine and potato flour to thicken, I stir-fried the beef with a handful of minced garlic, julienned ginger, firey hot long red thai peppers grown on Hedlin farms in La Conner and the all important cumin. I threw in a bit of chopped green onion when “the ingredients were sizzlingly fragrant and delicious,” as Dunlop said they would be

Cumin’s musky woody sent filled the house, and guess who came drifting out of the office, looking for the source.

Quickly, I fixed up another of Dunlop’s recipes, Chinese Water Spinach Stir-fried with garlic. No magic here, just Chinese water spinach (a product I had previously never used) thrown in the wok with minced ginger and finished off with a kiss of sesame oil.

Seated at the dining room table Kevin pondered over why he ever thought to hate Chinese food. Simple, elegant, and complex flavor profiles proved that there is more to what Kev and I grew up knowing Chinese food as.

Recipe ease:10
Time: 10
Make Again: 10 Not a bad thing to say about this recipe at all.

Zuo Zong Tang Ji…General Tso’s Chicken (Changsha Version)

Finishing out Les Halles with a whimper rather than a bang forced us to forgo may favorite recipe in the book, Choucroute Garnie. I’ll let the memory of that steaming bowl of porky goodness resonate untainted in my head for a while longer. Why ruin a wonderful memory?

We drew out the month mostly because, as we had been starting a new book somewhere around the middle, we thought it more efficient for us to start at the beginning of each month. That way we could better keep track of start/finish dates than our usual, “when did we start this book?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I thought you were keeping track of it.”
“I thought you were.”

I am so excited to start my foray into Chinese cooking. i have been dying for this cookbook for months, as I see Fuchsia (pronounced like the color) as a lady after my own heart. Though she accomplished in China in two years what I could only hope to have done in Seoul in about 10-getting the whole language bit down taking a good 5. “As Tuscany is to Italy, so Hunan is to China,” her introduction reads. How could you not want to cook out of this book

So here we are, going into our month long tenure with Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from the Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop. Our first efforts came in the form of the old take-out favorite General Tso’s Chicken with a side of fried cucumber with purple perilla (zi su jian huang gua) and some amazing xiao long bao (”little dumplings from basket”) Mary made last week.

Things are looking great to me as she states that the folks of the Hunan love pork (me too!), but as I started to make out this weeks menu, Kevin protested at my back to back pork dinners. “What?” I’d ask. “They are totally different. One is ground pork made into meatballs and the other is braised short ribs! Hello.” So tonight Kev’s favorite take out won. General Tso, I solute you.

The evening started off on the right foot, as you can see, our goods were ready to go this time and there was no frantic running around of the kitchen or last minute disasters to be had, it was a smooth operation from start to finish and I can truly say that we (I?) are learning from this little experiment.

After starting a new job as a recipe testing assistant to a local cookbook author I am insistent on drilling the practice of complete mise en place into being. Plus you can pretend you are on food network when you take the colorful ramekins holding a teaspoon of this spice and a tablespoon of minced so and so and ever so casually drop them into the bowl while showing off your cleavage-GIADA!

While I can take little credit for tonight’s amazing spread (I played runner more than anything else), I can say that after tonight, I’ve got high hopes for the rest of the book. Nothing like a month of French brasserie to get you hankering for some fiery chili oil Hunan eats.

Stir frying is a totally new cooking technique to me and at the same time isn’t. With Chinese cooking food is in the wok 1, 2 minutes tops, but as an American-er-Slow Foods cook, it takes me a little longer to register this notion into practice. Especially when trying to get two things out at once, as with tonight’s stir-fried cucumber and General Tso’s chicken. PS: if you have never tried stir-fried cucumber it is spectacular. Cooked over high heat with a touch of fresh red chiles, minced garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil, the cucumber takes on a more sophisticated summer squash flavor.

As the temperature crawls past 80, along with a new found hobby (exercise!), I lobbied for the inclusion of breast meat over all dark meat in this recipe. We met half way between with a mixture of boneless, skinless thigh and breast (thanks butcher man!) in order to capture the moisture of the dish while at the same time fooling ourselves that what we were eating was somewhat healthy. Marinated briefly in a mixture of dark and light soy sauce, an egg yolk and potato flour gave the chicken all it needed to crisp up into a deliciously golden nugget, not to cloying or thick it was the perfect coat. Tossed back in the wok with some chiles, ginger, tomato paste, sugar soy and vinegar and you’re done. Quick, easy, delicious. I’m going to love this cookbook.

recipe ease: 5 (if you can get your butcher to help with the meat, it helps)

time: 3 (quick with the high cooking temp)

make again: 10 (and again and again)

Steak Tartare…Mise en place neccesary

As well as Les Halles has been going so far, it was only a matter of time before disaster would strike (at least from me). While the end result was edible and somewhat decent (only after some major EMT-brand resuscitation from Mary), a major lesson was learned. Get your ingredients in line before jumping in to something you’ve not only never attempted before, but something that demands attention to detail. We decided to cook not one, two, three, or four dishes tonight but five. I overestimated my ability taking control of both the pork roast and the tartare while Mary produced three much more delicious entrants into the mix. The recipe sounded straight forward and I figured I could handle it. Wrong.

My first mistake was to start the dressing (which would serve as the bind in the recipe) without getting anything else prepped. I got the egg yolks, and mustard mixed and added my anchovies (as the recipe instructed). I then began to wonder how entire anchovy fillets might taste next to raw beef. Oh, I was supposed to finely chop the anchovies? Whoops. Chopping anchovies, in a viscous mixture of egg yolks and dijon in next to impossible. I tried the whisk bash, the fork mash and finally settled on using my fingers to tear apart the minuscule fish by hand. Not appetizing (and probably not legal in anywhere other than the home). Once the Worcester sauce, ketchup and Tabasco were added came the onion. Not prepped. Then the pickles, not prepped again and finally capers. Also not prepped! I’m batting 0 for 6 now at this point and sensing my in the weedsness, Mary took pity and finely chopped the sirloin. Guess what, also not prepped!

To add insult to fatality, after being clearly instructed to half the dressing (as were only making .8 lb of steak as opposed to 1 1/4 lb.) I promptly dumped the steak into the dressing. At this point the dish resembled thousand island dressing with bits of meat floating around for show. Ready to pitch the mess at the wall, once again Mary stepped in to remedy the situation quickly spiraling out of control. Pressing the liquefied meat through a strainer, she was able to rescue what was surely destined for the compost (after I would of cleaned it off the wall in a bout of shameless self loathing no doubt), pop it into the circle form, plate it and arrange some toasted baguette (I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, ALSO not prepped!).

The end result was a passable tartare, a little light in color and heavy on the caper flavor. The fact that it was edible and marginally enjoyable falls squarely on the shoulders of Mary. That’s why she gets the big bucks and I need to get my act together. Mise en place. MISE EN PLACE!

Canard a l’Orange…Duck in Orange Sauce

duch a l’orange
les halles cookbook, page 194

I live on a lake, with ducks, I live on a lane named after a type of duck, Mallard lane to be exact, so I couldn’t help but think twice about consuming one of these fine feathered birds, worried that their wild brothers could attack me at some point. You saw Birds, right? What you don’t know is that Hitchcock had another script, one that was axed by the producers due to its horrifying content, titled Ducks. It’s true. I just read about it on Wikipedia.

As the local farmer’s markets have picked up, along with our twice weekly visits to stock up on produce and local meat I’ve begun to pay more and more attention to grocery store butcher prices. Buying local, grass fed organic has been only marginally more expensive (and often not at all) than buying at WF especially in the smaller quantities needed in order to serve two. With that, we realized we most likely were not going to find duck at any markets (yet…I’m betting on September…) and set out to pick one up, hopefully not too outrageous in weight at the grocery store. At $11.99/lb we were slightly concerned. Soooo, a duck, which serves “two reasonably hungry adults,” according to Bourdain and weighing, on average over 5 lbs would cost us around $60. Tough to swallow. Thank god for Uwajimaya’s wonderful freezer section crammed full of fowl of varying degrees of size and quality. $12 total and we were on our way to Duck a L’orange. Now if I only had an orange shag rug and some velvet paintings to round out our evening that could of taken place in 1963.

The cooking process for this duck was something of an exercise in patience, filled with seemingly asinine steps meant to confuse, taunt and generally poke fun at my obvious lack of education on the art of fine French fowl-cooking. 25 minutes at 250 degrees, take out of oven and let duck come to room temperature. Pump up the temp to 350 and go for an hour and a half. Huh? Why? What does the resting do, besides add about an hour of cook time to an already laborious evening. I like to think it’s just a French thing, meant to propagate the idea of slow cooking and mess with the minds (and schedules) of over busy Americans (cause it’s all about us isn’t it?).

I have develped a bit of a food crush on duck. The game-y-ness of the meat, the succlence of the meat, and can we talk about the skin? Move over pork rinds. I’d say one of my biggest culinary regrets is not trying peking duck in China.

My only hang up with this recipe was the construction of the sauce. Classical French cuisine is built on sauces. Escoiffier had a mind boggling recipe collection of them, used to add richness, flavor, and eye-appeal. At some point in the California cuisine revolution of America, sauces were thought of as heavy, excessively rich, and cloying the natural flavor of the meat. But done right, sauces elevate flavor and appeance of the dish. But please explain to me, senior Bourdain, how to make a light caramel from sherry vinegar (it was supposed to be red wine-Ed.) and sugar. Didn’t happen. Let us also talk of the delights of deglazing the pan with Grand Marnier, while it didn’t “flame up and set my hair and eye lashes light,” it did set a streak of panic in me as I watched flashes of my mother in law’s new $40,000 kitchen burning to the ground.

Recipe Ease 7
Time 8, suprisingly quick, just under 2 hours.
Make Again, 8, depending on the price of duck.

Back to the Northwest…Scallops

Coquilles Saint-Jacques with Champagne
Les Halles Cookbook, page 106

I’m honestly getting a little tired complementing this book in the form of, “if you source your ingredients locally, use what’s fresh and don’t try to dress up your food in fourteen layers of flavors, you’ll most likely turn out a decent dish.” I’m not though. Tonight’s scallops in a champagne sauce might be the crown jewel of Les Halles (thus far). I’m still not altogether sure whether it was the recipe (while brilliant, easy and altogether obvious in hindsight = I love scallops, I love champagne, cream is mighty tasty as well!), or the diver scallops procured at a bargain twice the price (23.99/lb) by my lovely wife. The texture, searing and sauce came together like magic this evening, and dining outside amidst 75 degree evening weather made it all the better. And to top it off, the recipe only used 1/2 cup of champagne! That stuff doesn’t keep friend!

Oh Kevin, you obviously aren’t reading through the recipe lines. A half a cup of champagne added to any recipe is merely an excuse to buy a bottle of bubbly and drink it. Silly toodie.

I cannot sit here and honestly say that this recipe didn’t have it’s hang-ups. I was most excited to deglaze our pan upon completing the scallop searing with God’s bubbly nectar. The problem arose in the fact that we opted to ignore the whole, “clarified butter part.” The deglazing was honestly a disaster with black (not brown) chunks of burnt scallops swimming amidst a bubbling champagne as if struggling for life.

OHMIGOD. Kevin, thought that the brown chunks were from our pan, like the actual elements of the pan. No. I was supposed to clarify the butter. But I didn’t. So the brown bits were the burnt butter fat. Not “chunks” from my beloved orange cast iron 8inch Le Creuset skillet. No. Again we had to have this conversation.

“Hey, who’s in culinary school?”

“I know but…”

“No. No buts. Me. I’MMMMMMMM in culinary school.”

It’s my trump card.

Anyway, scraping that operation altogether, we restarted with a fresh nob of butter, added a new 1/2 cup of champagne (sigh) and begin anew. The end result was a fantastic sauce of citrus, bubbly and cream. What scallop wouldn’t love that end?

Recipe Ease 9
Time 8
Make again 9, save for the price of sea scallops, dang ya’ll they expensive

Poulet Roti…Roast Chicken, to you..

Poulet roti, “That’s roast chicken numbnuts!”
Les Halles, p. 181

On page 181 of the Les Halles cookbook, Bourdain eschews, at length, his laundry list of gripes and concerns with both the cooking technique and (subsequent) reputation of one of the most far-reaching mains ever cooked, roast chicken. To sum it up, as per, the concerns deal mostly with overcooking and (over) acceptance of sub par prepared food. The dry, crispy skin, no moisture (but no pink! weee!) versions many consider just fine and dandy.

Bourdain sets the stakes high for this one, “…if you can’t properly roast a damn chicken then you are one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron. Take that apron off, wrap it around your neck, and hang yourself. You do not deserve to wear the proud garment of generations of hardworking, dedicated cooks. Turn in those clogs, too.” Ouch. But, as most of us have experienced it is sometimes the simplest of dishes, those that demonstrate the most basic of culinary technique that are so easy to completely and utterly quaff on.

After an entire page dedicated to this cause, I was determined like I’ve rarely been to get this bird from oven to plate with juices in tack (and pink! In the right places…). After a beautiful yogic (is that a word?) leg trussing courtesy of Mary, the bird, full of herbs, an onion and lemon, was ready for the oven.

To truss the bird Bourdain instructs bypassing the popular kitchen twine method for the pretty-when-raw-but-falls-apart-when-cooked crossing the drumsticks and poking one through the skin of the thigh. “Lie on your back on the floor, put your knees together, and draw them both up to your chest with your arms. Press them against your chest. You should look pretty funny down there- but that’s exactly the point position I want you to put your chicken in. Knees up, ass out,” Bourdain instructs.

After the nip tuck we took our herb butter- made from our fine selection of herbs I am proud to say that I am not killing, but growing- and inserted under the skin.

“Is that it?” I ask Kevin.
“No. You have to salt the skin and rub it with butter.”
“The herb butter?”
“No.” Kevin replies.” The softened butter, but I don’t think it is that softened.”
“How the hell am I supposed to so that?” I shoot back, fingers coated with fat, rubbing all the salt and pepper off the bird with a grotesque hunk of butter. Freekin’ Bourdain.

This is when I quit and let Kevin take over

I opted to cook the chicken on the third rack for the first stage of cooking (375* for 30) and the fourth for the second stage (450* for 25) in order to give a decently brown (but never crispy Mr. Bourdain! not to worry) exterior. The end result was a basically brainless, moist and very tasty bird that I feel confident that I or anyone with any inkling of ability should be able to pull off time and time again. Except for that trussing, I’ll leave those to Mary and buy some more twine…

I can safely say that I am not, at least in this particular instance, ” [a] helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron.” Wonderful.

Personally I think you’re more of a univalve.

Recipe ease: 8 trussing and buttering is for the birds
Time: 10 pretty quick for a whole roasted bird, prep to table in less than 2.5 hours
Make again: 9

Onion Soup, Les Halles

Onion Soup Les Halles
Les Halles cookbook, page 45

Here is a tip for making French Onion Soup from scratch- and from scratch I mean even the stock from scratch. Don’t start at 5pm. You won’t eat until 10pm. You may be saying, “but Mary, duh. Who in their right mind would start a soup so late in the evening?” The problem here is that what on paper looks so straightforward, so basic, onions, caramelized, then stewed, covered in cheese and fired off in the oven, is not. Here is a dish where it is not your creativity, your twist on the classic is what makes it, but rather to quote Michael Ruhlman- who is actually quoting his uncle, in the book, The Making of a Chef, your skills, “as an artist are placed in the service of,” the onions.

When making French onion soup you must put your skills as an artist in the service of the onions. This is what takes five hours on a weeknight. The upside being I got a couple new kitchen toys for this one, two super cute le creuset mini casseroles, and a chef’s torch.

As both a cheap ass and a lover of French Onion soup, I was thrilled when this recipe was called upon. For some reason (I’m betting on the cheap part), any dinner that ends up costing more than what a favorite restaurant might charge, better taste as good or better. Often, this is not the case; such are the perils of honing any craft, cooking perhaps, especially. So, onions? Cheese? Bread? Some herbs and a little wine? What could end up costing? Well, the casseroles-ettes and the torch were something I hadn’t been counting on and quickly added up to a hefty mid week dinner tally.

Of the torch, Kevin remarked, “I think we are the only people who cook with a toaster oven and a hot plate, and have a torch.” I might add that his mood improved once he had the opportunity to play with fire.

Men.

After 5 hours of onion carmelization and stock making, the house smelled like our favorite bistro back in Seoul and I was allotted the task of filling the torch. This might be fun. As you can see in the picture, in the absence of a broiler in our “kitchen,” we would need something for epitome of French Onion soup, the cheese melting/browning. Enter the torch. Oh, beautiful torch, I should of never doubted your brilliance, you were worth the extortionate $50, charged by Sur La Wallet.

Recipe Ease: 5-10 Monekys could make this, but it takes a chef to make it right.
Time: 7 An all day cooker
Make again: 10.

Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart…

Les Halles
Soup au Pistou, page 42

“Most soups get better the next day.” Bourdain notes. “This is not one of them.”

If you didn’t already guess, Soup Pistou is the French Minestrone with Pesto, of sorts. And Bourdain suggests, no demands, only the purest, finest, ingredients. “The day before you make the soup, soak the beans in plenty of cold water for 24 hours. Since you have the time, you might consider making your own chicken stock at this point.” Ha. Note how the word “before” is italicized. His editorial choice, not mine. It was hard enough for me to even soak the beans. “Crap,” I’d yell out, at 10pm after cleaning the dishes, realizing I’d forgotten to soak the beans. And so we’d put the recipe off, again, for the next day, hoping that I’d remember to put the beans in a large casserole, and cover with water, before 10pm. (I did eventually get the beans in the pot, but forgot to take them out after 24 hours, an extra 12 never hurt any bean.)

I can’t blame Mary for the gaffe; I hadn’t even glanced at the book prior to making this dish. I’ve realized and commented aplenty to the fact that our dishes seem to shine all the brighter in direct relation to the amount of time (or lack thereof) involved from start to finish. For some reason, our attempts at raw bean cooking have always turned out less than stellar. I would blame the water quality, the old bay leaf or shody ingredients in general. I think now, we’ve realized it might be the time management issue (or lack thereof, again). Bourdain mocks, as if directing his instruction squarely at our little kitchen operation, “Do not cook the beans to mush, please.” Well, they weren’t mush, but they were a little soft.

For the soup we threw onions, garlic, tomatoes (concassee, of course), zucchini, fennel, chicken broth, boquet garni and macaroni. Is this not the makings of a tasty garden bounty soup? One in which the fine taste of the ingredient (mostly sourced from the farmer’s market, naturally) would shine through? Sounds like it, doesn’t it. Well it wasn’t. Snooze a rooze. Even the pistou couldn’t stir the soup’s soul.

The freshest of ingredients were most definitely used. Unfortunately for this dish (or perhaps my under developed taste buds), the end product seemed boring. Yes, it was hearty, filling, fresh and you could taste all of the ingredients. There just didn’t seem to be anything to hold your attention. No kick or special flavors. It was, literally: white beans, tomatoes, zucchini, a little garlic, salt and pepper and some pesto. All fine, all some of my favorite ingredients. There was no wow factor. While I definitely wouldn’t state this recipe was bad, nor this dish inedible, I would suggest that perhaps the tradition behind dishes like this are propagated less by contemporary interest and more by years and years of tradition. Like a story passed down from generations, however interesting (or not), there is an engrained duty to keep the burners on.

Hmm, Bourdain. Looks like your good looks and wit couldn’t save you this time.
Recipe Ease 8. Freekin’ beans.
Time 2. Beans, beans, beans
Make again, 1. There have to be better soups.

Mignons de porc a l’ail

I, Mary-Elizabeth W. Crowe, do solemnly swear, to read a recipe all the way through, before I make my shopping list. I will not merely peruse the ingredient list, ticking off items in my pantry. No. I will read through the preparation steps, noting when things need to be marinated over night, or stacked together like legos.

Why the till death do us part oath? Most of these recipes Kevie-poo and I do feed between 4-6-8 people. Kevin, and I, we’re just 2. Even when toodie pie wants leftovers for the next day, we still cut these recipes down by a third at least. That is all fine, but our precious Mignons de porc a l’ail called for four 10oz tenderloins. So what did we do? We bought one. If I had read the recipe I would have noted that we’d need at least two to layer. Being the crafty quick thinker I am, I sliced the tenderloin lengthwise in one quick swish, much like Uma Thurman lobbing off Lucy Liu’s head in Kill Bill, sans the yellow jumpsuit.

Right from the start I knew this recipe would turn out great. Again, like so many times in this cookbook, the ingredient list gives you the confidence you need to make great food. Pork tenderloin, garlic confit, bacon and white wine, can you do much better? To top it all off, this recipe takes all of 10-15 minutes to prepare, save for cooking/oven time.

After near 5 months in culinary school I know what confit means. Cooked and preserved in one’s own fat. But let’s be honest. What do you think of when you hear confit? Duck? Me too. So imagine me trying to imagine just what the heck duck cooked garlic would entail. Thankfully, after coming to my culinary senses, and flipping to page 262 as instructed, garlic confit is just garlic slow cooked in olive oil. Why not just call it roasted garlic? Gotta do the French thing, don’t you Bourdain?

Speaking of the confit, Mary has recently found her green thumb (I’m not sure she ever really had one (it’s more of a Gucci green)) in the form of an herb garden just outside our door. The thyme, straight from our pot and into the tin foil confit package smelled sublime after about five minutes in the oven. After slicing the tenderloin lengthwise, adding the puree and some thick cut, smoky bacon, and tying it up like the most delicious present ever gifted, it was time to sear. What I’ve found during the course of this book, is that when something calls for searing on “both sides,” searing on all four is twice as nice. High, high heat and a pair of tongs = a smoky room and some great browning, I’m slowly getting over my initial fear of burning down the house due to excessive heat. Some time at the bar of Coastal Kitchen further solidified my belief. High heat = good food.

Dude! I have been telling you that all along! Might I add, that at one point I tried to take over the recipe, deglazing the pan, adding white wine, chicken stock (“ at this point you should, if you can, whisk in a spoon of that good demi-glace from your stash,” Bourdain mocks) and parsley, when Kevin tries to hip check me outta the way whining, “This is my dish. I’m the one who cooks the brassiere type food. You do the weird hippy whole grain Asian stuff. Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.”

Recipe Ease: 7. More labor intensive, but worth the work.
Time: 3. Resting in the fridge after working halfway through? This one takes some advance planning.
Make Again: Garlic, Bacon, and pork? Yes. Again, again, again, and again. 10