And the winner is...

And the winner is...Eva!

"Daily entry:
I would like to try the fajitas
shopgurl101 at gmail dot com"

Congrats and thanks to all who entered the giveaway and I hope that if you were not chosen as the winner you'll still consider picking up a copy of this fabulous cookbook for yourself! It is available in bookstores nationwide now and I've even seen it at the “warehouse” clubs (Sam's, Costco, etc.) as well as on Amazon. It's a great book and we've really enjoyed the meals we've had from our gourmet session so far.

OAMC (Once-A-Month cooking) isn't a new concept in our house. Back when I was working 60+ hours a week as a corporate trainer, it's the only thing that kept my husband and I from having to eat out every meal! Once a month we would set aside a weekend to cook and we really enjoyed not only having hot meals from those sessions, but the fun of being in the kitchen together and sharing time was a double blessing. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. It's also great for gifting. For instance, when my sister had her baby (my niece, who's now almost 4!) I was able to gift she and her husband with several weeks worth of meals so that when the baby arrived she didn't have to worry about cooking, just thawing and reheating. I know her husband said it was wonderful to have :)

Whenever I start an OAMC (or, in this case, a two week session), I always start with setting up a spreadsheet of ingredients I will need for my session. I include EVERYTHING on this list, including things I KNOW I have in the pantry/fridge/freezer. I include a column to check off the items as well so that I can just go through the grocery/warehouse store and pick things up as I go. One of the wonderful things about THIS book is the pre-made shopping lists at the beginning of each session section. It makes list-making a breeze! Because I have already made up the spreadsheet for the two week gourmet session, I thought I'd share it with you here but please feel free to take it and make it your own. It's an MS Excel document, so you will need to have that to open it, but once you have the basics, it's easy to plug in your ingredients and go. Of course you also need to have the recipes from the session and I will share a couple of our favorites with you below, but one of the other wonderful things about this book is that it has an “assembly order” for each session. These list the process steps you will take to make the dishes so you don't have to figure out what to chop when or how much needs chopped vs. diced, etc. This makes the process MUCH easier and saves you time and calculations. Whenever I do an OAMC session on my own, that's one of the steps I have to take time to work out and believe me, it is time consuming! After coming home from the store, here are some photos of the ingredients that I placed out on the table to make prep much quicker and easier. Of course I put the refrigerator items away so they didn't get too warm, but having the shelf-stable ingredients out and at hand is a time saver.

Pantry ingredients:

Produce:

Dairy:

Frozen items:

Meats:

Canned & Dry Goods:


This session has a total of 14 dishes (two weeks worth) BUT some of the recipes serve more than 4-6 people, so we were able to divide a couple of them to make a couple of extra meals, giving us a total of 18 dinners from this session. We've only tried a few of them so far but all have been very tasty. Our favorites of those we've tried have been:

Pork Roast with Apples and Mushrooms

This is the “pre-freezer” shot:


And the finished roasted pork:

And the plated dish:


and the Spicy Korean Pork Barbecue

Heading to the freezer:

On the grill:

And the plated final dish:

Both of these dishes were great, but for very different reasons. The pork roast was definitely comfort food and perfect for company. We served it up with some buttered noodles and it was very tasty. The barbecue was tangy and slightly spicy (never spicy enough for my chile-head hubby, but enough for most normal people) and was great served with steamed jasmine rice and some Asian veggies. Even my 1 year old like it. I'll share those two recipes below. I also loved the Uptown Joes which are a nice take on sloppy joes with a little tang from the mustard in the mix.

Our only disappointment was in the Chicken-to-Go recipe. I think the fault lies with me in my preparation of this dish and not in the dish itself, but will share my thoughts anyway. The recipe calls for 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, sliced into ½ in. strips. I think we had larger than normal chicken breasts in this case which gave us a whole lot of slices. This in and of itself would probably not have been a problem since we did have plenty of breading, etc. to use for them, but... When you serve this recipe, you use a “round crusty peasant loaf” of bread which you put the chicken strips into. Either my loaf of bread was too small (possible) or I had too many chicken strips but they barely fit into the loaf (as in I crammed them in to make them fit) and then they never got crispy or heated all the way through. So we ended up removing them from the loaf and heating them on a cookie sheet in the oven, but by that time they were gummy from being stuffed into the loaf and just didn't crisp up at all. Meanwhile the bread dried out and was inedible. Flavors were good, but execution was poor in this case. We'll give it a try again in the future and probably just bake the chicken separately from the bread so that it gets crisped up from the start. If you pick up a copy of this cookbook and give this recipe a try, I'd love to hear your experiences with it so I'll know what to do differently next time...

Now for the recipes! As promised, here are two of the recipes from this session, the “Pork Roast with Apples and Mushrooms” and the “Spicy Korean Pork Barbecue”

The Recipes:

Pork Roast with Apples and Mushrooms

1 tbsp dried thyme
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
1 3-4 lb boneless pork loin roast

Sauce:
2 tbsp butter*
½ cup apple juice
¾ cup chicken broth
¼ cup dry sherry

4 small cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges (2 cups)*
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms*

(* indicates item is not used until serving day)

Combine the thyme, salt and pepper. Package in a sandwich bag. Combine the sauce ingredients and package in a 1-quart bag. Place the pork loin roast (still in it's store packaging) in a 1-gallon freezer bag, tuck in the bag of spices and the sauce bag, label and freeze.

To serve, thaw the roast. Rub the roast with the thyme mixture. Place the roast on a rack in a shallow roasting pan and roast in a 325ºF oven for 2 hours, or until the meat registers 160ºF on a thermometer.

Transfer the meat to a platter and keep warm by tenting it with foil.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet melt the butter. Add the apple juice, chicken broth and sherry, then add the apple wedges and cook and stir until golden. Remove the apple wedges from the skillet with a slotted spoon, reserving the pan juices; keep warm. In the same skillet, cook the mushrooms until tender.

To serve, place the slices of pork roast and apple wedges on individual plates. Spoon the mushroom sauce over meat.

Serves 12-14

Freeze in: 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag; 1 quart Ziploc freezer bag; 1 Ziploc sandwich bag.


Spicy Korean Pork Barbecue

1 lb pork tenderloin, cut into ¼ in. slices
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 ½ tbsp Thai chile paste
½ tsp ground ginger (or 1 tsp grated fresh)
1 tsp dark sesame oil
½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 ½ tsp chopped garlic

With kitchen shears, cut the tenderloin diagonally across grain into ¼ in thick slices. Combine the pork with the remaining ingredients in a labeled 1-gallon freezer bag and freeze.

To serve, thaw the pork and marinade and prepare a grill. Place a wire grilling basket on a grill rack. Remove the pork from bag; discard marinade. Place the pork on the grilling basket, coated with nonstick cooking spray. Grill 5 minutes turning frequently, or until you reach the desired doneness.

Summary of Processes: Cut pork diagonally across grain into ¼ in slices.

Serves 4

Freeze in: 1 gallon Ziploc freezer bag.

My Results:

The Pork Roast:

First observation... The Pork Roast recipe doesn't specify, but you need to keep the 2 tbsp butter for the sauce SEPARATE from the other ingredients so that you can melt it during the sauce-making. Instead of “Combine the sauce ingredients” it should say “Combine all sauce ingredients except butter”... so make that adjustment if you try this dish. I always advise reading completely through a recipe before attempting it and since I did that was able to catch this, but thought I'd let you know so you don't accidentally incorporate it into the other ingredients in the first steps. Other than that, the recipe works great and tastes great as well. My apples weren't “small” but were what I would consider “medium” sized and I only needed two to make the two cups of wedges so we used the extra two apples to make apple crisp for dessert :) This was a great recipe and one that I would definitely make for company in the future!

BBQ Pork:

This was our favorite so far. We don't have a grill basket and I didn't feel like firing up the outside grill (we use charcoal, not gas so it's a little more work...) so instead I used our indoor grill pan to make this dish. It grilled up perfectly and was super tasty. Recommend serving it with some steamed rice and veggies for a complete meal. Super yummy!

So those are two of the 14 recipes in just this ONE session of the cookbook. I hope you'll give them a shot and let me know how they turn out for you!

Grilleration! Pork loin and Mexican corn on the cob...Yummy!

Today was a grilleration day and with hubby's help we had a terrific grilled dinner tonight of brined & dry rubbed pork tenderloin, grilled corn on the cob - Mexican style, and white jasmine rice. Today's recipes come from two of our grill cookbooks, one by the Cook's Illustrated Magazine group and the other by grill experts, the Jamisons. For those interested in adding these great cookbooks to their collection, here is a link to them on Amazon.com:





Both of these books are great and full of lots of recipes we are looking forward to trying, but tonight we used the recipe and directions for Charcoal-Grilled Pork Tenderloin from pg 86 of the first book, The Best Recipe: Grilling & Barbecue along with the recipe for Flame-Seared Corn on the Cob from The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking & Entertaining. The pork recipe calls for a 1 hour brine followed by either a dry or wet rub before grilling and we chose to use the dry Curry Rub for Pork from pg 77. Both the pork and the corn were fantastic and hubby did a superb job as grillmaster for the evening. Here are the recipes and my results:

The Recipes:

Charcoal-Grilled Pork Tenderloin

Serves 6 to 8

Pork tenderloin are often sold two to a package, each piece usually weighing 12-16 oz. The cooking times below are for two average 12 oz. tenderloins; if necessary, adjust the cooking times to suit the size of the cuts you are cooking. For maximum efficiency, make the flavor rub and then light the fire while the pork is brining. If you opt not to brine, bypass step 1 in the recipe below and sprinkle the tenderloins generously with salt before grilling. Use a spice rub whether or not the pork has been brined -- it adds extra flavor and forms a nice crust on the meat. If rubbing tenderloins with dry spices, consider serving with a salsa (see pg 75) for added moisture and flavor.

• 3 tbsp kosher salt or 1.5 tbsp table salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 pork tenderloins, 1 1/2 - 2 lbs total, trimmed of silverskin
• 1 recipe of wet spice rub or 2 tbsp of olive oil and 1 recipe dry spice rub (posted below)
  
• disposable aluminum roasting pan

1. Dissolve salt and sugar in 2 cups hot water in a medium bowl. Stir in 2 cups cold water; cool the mixture to room temperature. Add the tenderloins, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until fully seasoned, about 1 hr. Remove the tenderloins from the brine, rinse well, and dry throughly with paper towels. Set aside.
2. Light a large chimney starter filled with hardwood charcoal (about 2.5 lbs) and allow to burn until all the charcoal is covered with a layer of fine gray ash. Build a modified 2-level fire by spreading the coals evenly over half the grill bottom. Set the cooking rack in place, cover the grill with the lid, and let the rack heat up, about 5 minutes. Use a wire brush to scrape clean the cooking rack. The grill is ready when the coals are hot.
3. If using wet spice rub, rub the tenderloins with the mixture. If using a dry spice rub, coat the tenderloin with oil and then rub with the spice mixture.
4. Cook the tenderloins, uncovered, over the hottest part of the grill until browned on all four sides, about 2.5 min on each side. Move the tenderloins to the cooler part of the grill, and cover with a disposable aluminum roasting pan. Grill, turning once, until an instant-read thermometer, inserted into the thickest part of the tenderloin, registers 145F, or until the meat is slightly pink at the center when cut with a paring knife, 2-3 minutes longer. Transfer the tenderloins to a cutting board, cover with the disposable aluminum pan, and let rest about 5 minutes. Slice crosswise into 1" thick pieces and serve.

Curry Rub for Pork

Enough for 4 chops or 2 tenderloins. This rub works especially well with the Pineapple Salsa

• 4 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1. Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Rub the mixture over oiled but unseasoned pork (do not sprinkle pork with pepper) before grilling.

Flame-Seared Corn on the Cob

If you cook ears of corn on the grill in their husks, as many people do, you steam the kernels instead of searing them. By stripping the husk first and exposing the corn directly to the fire, you get a much deeper taste. The kernels shrink up slightly, condensing the flavor of each bite.

Cooking method: Grilling
Serves 6 as a side dish

• 6 large ears corn, husks and silk removed
• about 8 tbsp (1 stick) butter, preferably unsalted, melted
• flaky salt, such as Maldon or French Fleur de Sel

1. Fire up the grill, bringing the temperature to medium (4-5 seconds with the hand test).
2. Brush the corn lightly, using a couple of tbsp of the butter.
3. Grill the corn uncovered on medium heat for 20-22 minutes, turning on all sides to cook evenly and brushing with more butter after about 10 minutes. This cooking time is longer than technically necessary to cook the corn, but it concentrates the flavor of the kernels, contributing to the deeper taste.
4. Brush the corn again with butter, sprinkle with salt, and serve right away.

Esquites - Ears of corn Mexican style
Dress the grilled corn with the rich mayonnaise (recipe follows) slathered over each ear. Sprinkle with ground dried red chile, cotija cheese, or queso fresco and offer lime wedges to squeeze over as well. It's much better than it may sound to the uninitiated.

Rich Mayonnaise:
Start with 1 cup of mayonnaise. Mix in 1-2 tsp olive oil and a pinch of coarse salt, either kosher or sea salt. Use it like regular mayo or for something different smear it on corn-on-the-cob and then sprinkle the top with Mexican style cotija cheese.

My Results:

I began following the directions for making the dry spice rub. As mentioned in previous recipes, I buy curry powder in bulk and store it, with a few extra bay leaves, in my freezer in mason jars, which you can see in the photo below. I mixed the ingredients up into a small prep bowl and set aside as shown in the second photo.





The spice rub smelled fantastic from the start so I was really looking forward to the end results. After mixing up the spices, I created the brine for the tenderloins and placed them in a large plastic bowl in the refrigerator to brine. Here are the ingredients I used:



While the pork was brining, hubby lit the charcoal for the grill and I whipped up the rich mayonnaise and prepped the corn for roasting. Here are the corn ingredients:



I purchased pre-prepped corn from our local grocery which had been mostly de-silked and had part of the husk and base removed, so all I had to do was remove the remaining husk and silk. Makes it very nice for quick prep with a little one underfoot. The husks and silks went into our composter out back...

After an hour, when the coals were nice and hot,I drained, rinse and dried the pork loins, rubbed them generously with olive oil and then rubbed them down with the curry rub. Boy did these smell amazing!



Hubby took them out to the grill and followed the instructions for grilling them, turning to ensure even browning. He also added the corn at that time, although in hindsight realized we should have started the corn a bit earlier since the pork was done quite a bit before the corn.

Here is a photo of the finished tenderloins, ready for slicing:



I didn't make any sauce or salsa to go over the meat, which, in hindsight I would probably do next time. The meat was perfectly cooked and very delicious (thanks to hubby's expert grilling!) and was neither over nor underdone. I think that a nice orange marmalade sauce (just some melted marmalade with a little soy sauce and ginger added) would be perfect on this meat as would the pineapple salsa mentioned in the recipe. Next time...

And here is the grilled corn in all it's Mexican splendor:



If you have never tried corn this way, please, please do! It is absolutely fabulous! I have had it this way at carnivals and fairs in the area but never made it at home. My husband and brother-in-law had neither one had it this way and both loved it, each eating at least two ears! We couldn't locate cotija cheese on our shopping trip but instead used a local queso fresco which was fantastic with a salty bite that was perfect with the rich mayo slather. Yum yum!

All in all this was a fabulous meal. Even little E, our 10 month old, enjoyed the roasted corn (sans the Mexican topping) and she has always refused corn in the past. I did serve some white jasmine rice with this to cut the heat of the curry rub, but it was probably not necessary as the curry was hot, but not overbearingly so. We will definitely do this again, perhaps with one of the other rubs in the book, or maybe just as we did this time. I hope you'll give this a try yourself and let me know how it works for you. For tonight, we have four very happy tummies in this house! Be sure to check back tomorrow for a "company" dish we're taking to a family meal...