Middle Hawthorne Requests My Vegetable Stir Fry With Seared Pork Medallions.

Here's our dinner, a night or so ago, made especially for Middle Hawthorne. The other afternoon,

I had my computer on with this particular post

from my blog displayed.

Middle Hawthorne happened to walk by and see it

and I do believe it captured his fancy.

So I made another version of it for dinner.

My stir fry ingredients, clockwise from top left:

Top cutting board:

Assorted peppers

Crinkly-cut carrots

Broccoli

Celery

Mushrooms Rosie Hint # 152: When cutting veggies and meat for stir frying, cut in uniform sizes, so everything cooks evenly.

Bottom right cutting board:

Sliced garlic

Mini red and white onions

Bottom left cutting board:

Bok choy (stalk and leaves)

I made a cornstarch slurry with equal parts

corstarch and cold water. (3-4 TB each)

I added in soy sauce and some of my veal stock.

(You could use beef or chicken. I'd prefer beef stock when using pork.)

I heated my wok,

then added the oil

and heated that up.

I sauteed my shrooms first

then added the onions.

Broccoli went in next for about a 30 second stir ...

along with the carrots.

Celery went in.

Assorted peppers got added.

Bok choy stalks.

And lastly bok choy leaves.

Stir frying is quite simple

and a quick way to produce a lovely meal.

Just line up your ingredients

in the order of how long they take to cook

with the longest cooking time veggies going in first.

And most importantly,

UNDERCOOK.

Trust me.

Add in the next veggie before the first veggie is cooked.

Keep your wok hothot

and work quickly.

Before all the veggies were done,

I added the corn starch slurry

and just heated through to thicken.

Turn off heat.

I still had the marinating pork medallions

from the other day

and they went into a hot pan with a combination

of oil and butter.

(I use either canola, vegetable, sometimes corn,

and my favorite is peanut oil,

but that's hard for me to find here,

and when I do find it at Harris Teeter,

it's too expensive.)

I cooked the pork about 3-4 minutes on each side

and poured the marinade in the pan to cook after I had seared the pork on the second side.

Bubbling marinade and seared pork medallions.

Good stuff.

Wokked veggies. Seared pork. Rice. And guess what. No leftovers. Life is good.

Monday Night Dinner - Pork Medallions and Vegetable Stir Fry.

Here's the money shot to get your attention.

Whenever I shop, I always check the flyers

for the local grocery stores and end up

going to whereever the meat is on sale.

And I buy in bulk,

vacuum pack the meat,

and put it in the extra freezer we have in our utility room.

So at anytime,

I can go downstairs and shop for dinner.

I am never without available protein,

and lots of it.

Yesterday,

I stood in front of my open freezer,

as if anticipating the second coming,

moving frozen packages around on shelves,

wondering what to pick for our dinner,

and finally decided on a pork tenderloin.

I sliced the pork into thick medallions ...

... and started on my marinade. First, I took a chunk of my frozen ginger, nuked it for about 15 seconds, and squeezed it to release all the juices.

The rest of the piece of ginger and about 4 cloves of garlic went through my garlic press.

Some brown sugar was added.

And some soy sauce.

A few tablespoons of honey. Now, you tentative cooks out there: This is a marinade. You really don't have to be exact about the amounts of ingredients. Just be reasonable.

I added the pork medallions to my bag, pressed the air out, and squished the meat and the marinade. I let it marinate for about 2 hours before cooking the pork. (Actually, I only cooked 4 pieces last night. The rest of the pork is still in the marinade.)

I heated my pan and added Canola oil to heat. (You could use vegetable, corn, peanut oil, or a blend. I just wouldn't use olive oil. I wanted a high smoke point oil and no extra added flavor from, say, an extra virgin olive oil. And I refuse to shorten that by typing Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Screw Rachael. Oh. And Rachael was nee Rachel and actually legally changed her name to add in the "a." I find that affective and just plain weird.)

Three to four minutes on each side over medium heat and the outside is seared and nicely caramelized and the inside is still a nice, healthy light pink. Veggie stir fry up next.

My veggies: broccoli onions red, orange, yellow, and green peppers mushrooms bok choy

I like my mushrooms seared, so they went in the hot oil first. Rosie's Hint #134: Do not salt your shrooms. Salting brings out the moisture and the mushrooms will steam, not sear.

Next, I added in my broccoli, since it will take the longest to cook.

After about a minute of stir frying, I added in the peppers ...

... some sliced garlic ... ... the onions ... ... and the bok choy. Just toss for a few seconds.

I had prepared a cornstarch slurry - water, cornstarch, soy sauce, and some of my veal stock for richness. (I used about 3 TB cornstarch and 2 TB water. You could substitute canned broth for the stock although it won't be the same as veal, since veal stock is a transcendental kind of thing, but at least it would give a bit a of flavor.) I drizzled the slurry slowly down the side of the hot wok, tossed the veggies to coat and let the sauce thicken, and cut off the heat.

Isn't this pretty? You always want to slightly undercook your veggies so they're nice and crisp and colorful and flavorful. Remember, they keep on cooking after you turn the heat off. Most people have a tendency to overcook both vegetables and meat. I urge you to avoid this tendency.

Rosie Prepares A Mother's Day Lunch For Mama Hawthorne.

Sunday, May 10, 2009. It's Mother's Day. Mr. Hawthorne and I traveled 300-plus miles to see our Mommies. Here's Mama Hawthorne multi-tasking as she checks her banks of emails and fields telephone calls from her numerous well-wishers. The ol' bird loves her computer.

She spends most of her day emailing

and checking certain people's blogs. I'm making a special Mother's Day lunch for Mama Hawthorne.

First, homemade applesauce. I peeled and cored and sliced three apples. Added the juice of one lemon. Some sugar. And cooked over low heat for a couple of hours ...

... until I had ... applesauce. And I like mine a bit chunky. Next I was going for a fruit salad. Here are the ingredients for my poppy seed dressing.

My ingredients:

1 TB chopped onion  
1 tsp salt
  a few grinds of pepper
 juice of 1/2 lemon
  1/4 cup cider vinegar
  1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil (I used canola.)

1 heaping TB poppy seeds

I added sugar to the lemon juice, pepper, salt, and minced onion.

I poured in the cider vinegar.

I whisked in the oil to make a nice emulsion.

Action shot!

And finally, the heaping tablespoon of poppy seeds went in. Tip # 331: Keep poppy seeds in your freezer. (Just cuz my Mama always told me to and I always do what my Mama tells me to. Right, Mama Hawthorne?) Now, on to my salad:

I made a trip to the Super WalMart in Danville and bought a pound of strawberries ($1.50), a bag of mixed salad greens, a cucumber, kiwi fruit, and an avocado. I sliced the fruits and placed them artfully upon the mixed greens. I liked my placement of the kiwi slices on the cuke slices and the pinwheel, splayed slices of avocado. And I always like some red in the mix.

Poppy seed dressing went over top and the sweetness of the dressing along with the delicious natural sweetness of the fruits, combined with the textures- the smooth, nutty, richness of the avocado, the tart, crispness of the cukes and kiwis, the sweet, meatiness of the strawberries - Gosh! What was not to like? This is one of those select offerings where you just know everything is spot on. Delectable goodness. In color. In texture. In flavor. In taste. In combination.

Next up, a pomegranate reduction sauce for my pork medallions. Now, you know how I shamelessly purloin others' recipes. In this case, it's Kelly's recipe (from Evil Shenanigans Blogdom) for Pomegranate Glaze). But I must give props to Marilyn, of Foodies Untie Blogdom, who went with her Mother's Day recipe for pomegranate reduction barbecue sauce.

That's another one I'll have to stea ... er ... try. Here are my ingredients for the sauce:

1 16-oz. bottle of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice
 1/2 cup orange juice
 2 TB brown sugar
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
 1 garlic clove, minced
2 TB onion, minced
 1 chipotle pepper in adobo, minced
1 tsp cumin
 1/2 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 TB minced onion

I poured the Pom Juice into my sauce pan.

Added in the orange juice.

The minced onion.

I liked both pics of the onions, so you got 'em both.

Now, for the brown sugar. Mama Hawthorne had 3 OPEN BOXES of brown sugar in her cabinets. And all 3 had rock-hard sugar in them. Doesn't that look like a loaf of bread to you? Yeah, but it's BROWN SUGAR, I tried to beat it up with an ice cracker I found in her drawer, but the darn thing broke. Sorry, Mama Hawthorne. But nobody every used that dang thing anyway. (At least, I think it was an ice cracker. Who knows?)

Anyways, the hard-ass brown sugar went into the Pom-mix.

I pulled out one chipotle pepper in adobo sauce.
A chipotle pepper is a smoked jalapeno pepper. 
And adobo sauce is this.

Chipotle pepper went into the pomegranate mixture.

Cumin went in.

Coriander went in.

And I didn't have my crushed red peppers from my garden and I didn't like the looks of Maxine's peppers (black, moldy, and old looking - Sorry, Max. Throw 'em out.) so I added Cayenne Pepper. I also added cinnamon. But upon tasting, I think 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon is too little. I'd add almost a whole teaspoon. Obviously, I didn't taste the cinnamon in the sauce.

Swirl around and cook over very low heat to reduce to 1/3 cup. This took me about an hour.

Keep going.

Ahhh...

That's it.

I'd picked out a nice pork tenderloin earlier. And I trimmed it of excess fat and silver skin.

I cut out four pieces from the middle, about 1-inch thick, and salted and peppered them.

Brought butter and canola oil to almost smoking, then added in the pork medallions. About 4 minutes on each side. Remove from heat and let set. Do not cut the meat for about 5 minutes. Let the juices do their business within the medallions. If you slice it right after cooking, you lose the juices.

Here's Mama Hawthorne's plate: Fanned out pork tenderloin slices with pomegranate reduction sauce, Last night's leftover ginger/lemongrass/lemon zest rice, Bacon/corn/sour cream side dish. And damn-it-all ... I FORGOT THE APPLESAUCE! Until I was washing dishes and Mama H. was still eating, and I looked at the stove top and there was the pot of applesauce. So I ran over to Mama Hawthorne with a scoop of sauce as she was eating the very last two pieces of pork slices. I suck.

Imagine this plate with my delicious homemade applesauce. Now, on to dessert:

I brought Mama Hawthorne some chocolate brownies. Kelly's Evilicious Brownies to be exact. With vanilla ice cream. And these brownies are TO.DIE.FOR. Thanks again, Kelly. Mama Hawthorne loved them. And I hope you had a nice Mother's Day, Mama Hawthorne!