Prep list

Rory and I are hosting a couple of friends for dinner Saturday. I'm not doing anything too complex, salad, pork tenderloin with with a couple of sides and dessert. The meal is taken mainly from the Ad Hoc cookbook.

And while this meal is pretty simple, I find myself, for the first time, writing a prep list. Now whenever I go to the grocery store I have a list, I can't think of a time in the last couple of years where I haven't had a list when I went to the store, it just makes me more efficient. But for this meal, because of some of the little complexities, I find myself making sure that I take care of some of the little things too.

Most of the recipes are pretty simple but there are a few things I need to do in advance. I'm doing this smashed roasted potatoes, which call for garlic confit, and these torn croutons, which need the oil from the confit but I need to do it ahead of time.

Then there's the brine for the pork and the custard for the ice cream and we can't forget the brownies, but should I make them the day before or the day of?

Today:
Shop
Make garlic confit
Make custard for ice cream
Make brine for pork

Friday:
Churn ice cream (maybe, I might wait till Saturday)
Make brownies

Saturday:
Brine pork
Do everything else

Ok, looking at it now maybe I didn't have to write it all out and I'm probably going to have to work on the last day a bit, but still interesting to see the process.

Roast chicken with root vegetables

The picture didn't turn out that great, but the chicken was quite good, even though it was missing some skin around the breast, bad shopping on my part.

I threw some turnips in there for the first time with the potato and carrot was was underwhelmed. The turnip had a texture that didn't work for me. This was a basic roast chicken, though I used a quarter of the butter, and I didn't preheat the cast iron pan.

It all cooked in a 425 degree oven for about an hour. While the chicken was resting I cooked the veggies a bit more in the pan to get some more color on them. I'll do it again, I forgot how much I like roast carrots, they had a great flavor that just really popped.

This recipe was inspired from the Ad Hoc cookbook.

Ad Hoc pork brine

I was given a couple of cook books for Christmas, Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc and Michael Ruhlman's Ratio. I was very excited to dig into both of them, Ratio seems like an easy way to remember how to cook just about anything whereas Ad Hoc just seemed to have some great recipes.

My plan is to post more about these books as I use them, but I did already use the pork bring recipe from Ad Hoc. I wanted to make Rory and I something nice to eat before heading out New Year's Eve and found some nice bone-in pork chop at the store.

My luck with pork brines in the past had been hit or miss but mostly miss. I really hadn't cared for the flavor or didn't really notice it enough to care with some past recipes I had tried. This one was different though.

1/4 cup plus 2 TBLS honey
12 bay leaves
3 large rosemary sprigs
1/2 bunch thyme
1/2 cup of garlic cloves, crushed
2 TBLS black peppercorns
1 cup of kosher sale
8 cups of water

The cookbook recipe call for combining all ingredients in a large pit and bring to a boil and then cooling. I did that, but only added half the water., As soon as the salt and everything was dissolved I added the remaining cold water. You don't have to wait as long to add the meat this way. Also, I hadn't planned well so I needed to get the chops in there sooner rather than later.

I decided to do this last minute so I didn't have any rosemary and used dried thyme. I bring the chops for about seven hours and the results were spectacular. They had a great flavor and were really juicy. You probably don't want to bring them for much longer than eight hours, according tot he book.

I seared the chops in a hot cast iron pan and then put them in a 350 degree oven for another 15 minutes to finding cooking. These chops were pretty thick so if you get thinner ones you might not have to finish in the oven.