Filet mignon de Porc aux Raisins et au Cumin - Pork Tenderloin with Cumin and Grapes

I was doing some "Summer Cleaning" yesterday (LOOONG overdue!!!) and part of it included getting rid of some magazines that had been piling up next to our bed. I don't purchase many magazines except for the New Yorker; I otherwise rely on my appointments here and there to catch up with past news... or to the free subscriptions I somehow receive. My husband only subscribes to professional magazines, which titles are only relevant if you are into veterinary ophthalmology research (anyone?).

One exception are cooking magazines from France which my husband is really fond of.... He used to subscribe to one in particular when he was living in France (that was 14 years ago!) but kept an on-and-off subscription to that magazine since he moved to the US. While he has not had a subscription lately whoever comes from France knows to bring along the latest issue....
What I noticed over the years though, is that the amount of magazines piling up/the amount of recipes indeed made is really high...  "No time, not the right ingredients, difficulty finding a recipe in all the magazines... ", any excuse is good for me to hear.  We tried to find a solution to the "recipe access" issue, sorting out some of the recipes he would most likely make and putting them in dedicated binders....  Despite all this nice filing and despite dozens of magazines later, he has made only 4 recipes (the Charlotte aux Fruits Rouges, the Creme Renversee à l'orange, a Soupe aux Fruits Rouges et à la Mascarpone and this recipe.) 4.
My business hat tells me that 1) The magazine must be really excited about having such a loyal customer... 2) We should forget purchasing this magazine because it's a real waste of money, especially now that everything is a click-away... My supportive spouse heart actually loves having him dream in front of these recipes... but my practical head knows that I will most likely be cooking the next meals anyway (with or without a recipe from that magazine (because honestly, I am not a big fan of that cooking magazine myself)).

He would argue that this is the same with me and the Elle à Table that I ask visitors to bring (or that I purchase while in France)... and this would be true except that I never purchase the magazines to make something; I only get them to get ideas and then improvise around because yes, I don't have time to make elaborated dishes anymore and I do lack some of the ingredients (or if they are available, what should be an affordable meal becomes very expensive....)...  and despite that, my magazines/recipes made ratio is much higher!

One of the recipes he likes to make is this Pork Roast with Grapes and Cumin. I have come to making it myself as well (??!!) with generally great success -  it passes our children' "can-we-have-it-in-our-lunch-box-tomorrow? " test (i.e., a close to perfect score!))... and it's a relatively easy dish to make even the the night before...   so I would highly encourage you to try it out!

In the meantime, I'll see whether we'll come back with new cooking magazines from our vacation in France! Stay tune, you never know what could be cooking soon in our family! Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- 2 pork tenderloin
- 500 gr (1 pound) of white or red grapes
- 200 gr (about 1/2 pound) of small pearl onions
- 1 tbs honey
- 30 gr (1 oz) butter
- 1 tbs cumin seeds
- Olive oil, salt and pepper

• Peal the onions and reserve in a bowl
• Wash the grapes and cut them in half. Blend about 1/3 to make a heavy juice. Reserve.
• Salt and pepper the meat and roll it in cumin seeds (you can keep the tenderloin whole or cut them in chunks depending on the size of your cocotte)
• In a cocotte, heat the oil and brown the meat. Once all pieces are done, add the honey and the grape juice. Cook for another 15mns.
• In the same time, cook the onions in butter in a pan. Once they are cooked, take them out of the pan and drop the remaing grapes into it. Sautee the grapes for 5 minutes. 
• Once the meat is fully cooked, take them out of the cocotte, and deglacez the cooking juice (scrapping the bottom of the cocotte very well) and let it cook for another 5 minutes to thicken.
• Put the meat on a serving plate, laying the sauce over it and the onions & grapes around.

 My personal comments:

• I generally cook the onions wih the meat and add the grapes a few minutes before serving so that they are cooked but not mushy.
• I like to blend white & red grapes as well as white/yellow/red pearl onions.
• I serve it with mashed carrots and/or rice.
• You could make it with a pork roast - allow more time for cooking.

White Beans and Sausage Stew

Patrimoine génétique... I am not talking (again) about GMOs (but yes, try to avoid them as much as possible!!)... but about the inherited diseases that we might face one day for just being the children of our parents'. I never realized how important it is until we started talking about cholesterol in my family (they speak arthritis in my husband's!!). I won't go into much details but having had a blood work done recently, I had the unpleasant surprise to discover that I, too, have a cholesterol problem, albeit minor at this stage.

But I am not even 40! And I eat quite a healthy diet, exercise, don't smoke, drink a glass of red wine  (or Pisco) here and there, and I am definitively not overweight!! Quite unfair, I want to say! Fair or not fair, that's what genetics is about...and we have to accept it...

So what do I do to avoid having to take medication? The only adjustments I could make are eating less cheese (but considering the price of good cheese here, it's not like we eat triple-cream cheese every day!!), banning red meat while increasing fish such as maquerel, salmon and other omega-3-loaded fish, and reducing the amount of butter and eggs I use when I bake. Quite a challenge, especially when it comes to baking! That said, I feel that, as for anything else, I'll just make compromises: eating a very low-cholesterol diet to be able to have a nice piece of cheese once-in-a-long-while. Voila!

The other thing that I worry is how much will my children inherit: between le cholesterol de maman (dad's needs to be checked btw because he claims that he does not have any but I yet have to see the results!!) and l'arthrose de papa, I just hope that genes dilution won't make our children suffer from any of it. Time will tell...

In the short term, this is one of the few recipes I'll stop eating for a while (or at all), well at least with the sausage option.  This is nothing like a French cassoulet but since we don't have the right beans nor the right meat to make a real cassoulet in Philadelphia, this is a nice proxy. Which makes me think that I won't be eating the canned cassoulet we brought back from France last Summer. Anybody wants to come for dinner? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients
- Great Northern White Beans (preferably dry&soaked but canned will do to)

- 1 small onion, minced

- 2 garlic cloves, minced

- a few carrots, cut into small pieces.

- Fresh thyme

- Cumin seeds (1/4 ts, more if you like it a lot)

- Kielbasa sausage (enough to feed your family; more if you want leftovers)

• In a thick-bottom pot (like a cast-iron), saute the onion and the garlic in olive oil.
• Add the cumin seeds , the carrots and coat with olive oil
• Add thyme.
• If you are using canned beans, pour the beans into the pot, add the sausage and cook at low temperature for 15-20 minutes (you only want the carrots to be cooked)
• If you are using pre-soaked beans, you will want to cover the beans with water, add the sausage and cook at low temperature for about 1h30 (or until the beans are tendered). 

My Personal Comments

• You could add a few pieces of bacon or ham or even pork butt into the dish for extra cholesterol flavor!
• Don't hesitate to make more because it makes great leftover!

Duck Hachis Parmentier

I grew up eating à la cantine in France (ie, at school) and even though I was not a picky eater there were a few things I did not like and that would make me sick even before eating them.  Hachis Parmentier was one of them and it was dramatic (oui, oui, dramatique!!)  for me since it was on the menu at least once a month! Hachis Parmentier, a mix of ground meat (generally leftover) and potatoes puree, is a pillar of French traditional cuisine. Not the cuisine you'll be served in a top restaurant in France, but rather the one that you cook for your family or for a large group of people (like à la cantine).
It took me a long time to be able to eat Hachis Parmentier without gagging (too much school history)... and even longer to cook it myself. I still don't consider it "a real dish" but because it's so easy to make and generally popular among children, I have been cooking it more often. It 's the perfect dish when you ave 10 children age 1-to-12 driving you crazy running around you. I even think that it is a great alternative to the boring traditional pizza that people serve when five children pretend to come and sleep at your place!

The good thing about Hachis Parmentier is that you can make your own version depending on the meat leftover you have. In this case, we had Duck confit one evening and I had leftover so I used duck meat. You can also serve it with or without cheese on top (I prefer cheese) and with additional vegetables if you feel like it. What would prevent you from making it this week? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients (serves 6)
- 1 pound (500 gr) of ground meat, cooked
- 3 shallots, minced
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 2 Tb of tomato paste (two small tomatoes, diced)
- Olive oil, salt and black pepper
 - 2 pounds (or about 1kg) of potatoes
- Milk or/and light cream.
- Parmesan cheese

• Pre-heat oven to 360F (180C)
• In a large pan, saute the shallots and garlic in olive oil. 
• Add the meat and tomato paste and cook for 10 minutes under low heat.
• In the meantime, boil the potatoes. Once cooked, drain them.
• Mash the potatoes and add warm milk/cream until you reach desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper
• Place the meat in a large deep dish. Cover with mashed potatoes and cover with ground Parmesan cheese
• Cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes until cheese is fully grilled.

My Personal Comments:

• You could add a carrot or a few dices of celery to the meat for extra flavor/veggies or make a sweet potatoes/carrots puree instead of mashed potatoes.

Stuffed Tomatoes With Quinoa

We are in for another Winter storm today and the only thing I really want to eat is something that will keep me warm. I like the American expression "Comfort Food" that tends to describe a lot of recipes with pasta, potatoes or rice. Interestingly, I can't think of any equivalent in French, amusant, non? (Maybe Quebecois have an expression to suggest?)
On a day like today, Tomates Farcies (stuffed tomatoes) seem the perfect thing to have. Yes, I know, eating fresh tomatoes in Philadelphia in the middle of Winter is not eating "local"......but tomatoes are in season in Florida, so I'll just say that they are as local as can be at this time of year!
Tomates farcies is a very traditional French dish that some families only serve in the Summer (when tomatoes are in season). BUT if there is something I don't enjoy it's tomates farcies in the Summer. Because, somehow, even though les tomates might be de saison, the whole dish is hors saison. See, tomates farcies is a warm dish that would totally fall into the "Comfort Food" category.

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Roasted Pork, Pumpkin and Garlic Heads

 

 My husband had bought a pumpkin at the market and used half of it to make pumpkin Soup (similar to the Butternut Squash soup I made a few weeks ago except with pumpkin). The other half was sitting in the fridge and I was wondering how to cook it. I had not read David Lebovitz's Pumpkin Ice Cream recipe yet (soon to be made), but I had looked at The Pioneer Woman's recipe for roasted garlic and potatoes. We somehow had lots of garlic heads and I remembered a Superball Party back in California where my friend had made roasted garlic. This was a very "ta-da" moment where the taste you expect (garlic) is not at all what you get (this wonderful smooth caramelized taste) and you just fall for the dish. [I had another "ta-da" moment with Vegemite in Australia one day but in a different way!]

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My Potée Lorraine

In addition to being Mr. Big Sweet Tooth, my husband is also a Big Meat Eater. While I could go for weeks without eating meat and feel great, he, on the other hands, NEEDS meat more than once a week! That's why I have come to cook more meat than I would otherwise (hey, that's a small compromise!)... The other day, I asked him what he felt like eating (already anticipating that he was going to answer something with "meat")...Because we had just bought a large green cabbage at the Farmers' market, he said "une bonne Potée".  A  Potée Lorraine is a stew of smoked meats and sausages, with cabbage and root vegetables that is originally from the Lorraine region , in Eastern part of France.

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Pork Roast with Prunes, Apples, and Potatoes

This is maybe one of my favorite dishes! I don't know when my parents or grand-parents cooked it for me but I have always liked it. Every year, I can't wait for Fall and Winter to arrive to be able to make it! I like it because it's sweet and savory at the same time, because you don't really know whether you are going to eat an apple or a potato (children can't be picky!!) ... and also because the prunes are adding a nice sweet taste to the pork roast. Simply delicious...

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