On Sunday night I made a pork tenderloin with a wine/fruit reduction sauce, with powder biscuits, purple potatoes in parsley butter, and steamed green beans. I also made an extra corn on the cob for boyfriend. Dinner was a big hit, accompanied by a $3.99 bottle of 2003 Trinity Oaks Zinfandel.
My first ‘mistake’ was buying a Niman Ranch pork tenderloin. Call me crazy, but I believe it’s ok to spend extra money on meat that I think was raised in an environmentally responsible way. I primarily bought it because it was smaller (.77 lbs) than the other ones available ($8).
Second: Purple potatoes corn, green beans, rosemary from the farmer’s market. ($4, 50 cents, $1, 50 cents for the quantities cooked respectively)
Third: Putting too much balsamic vinegar in a sauce for the meat. I ended up putting in more stuff to rescue the sauce. Not really a financial mistake so much as a culinary one, but I was torn between dumping it out and using another cup of wine (leaving one less to drink) and fixing my mistake.
Fourth: Buying specialty raisins for stewing in the sauce to give it deeper flavor. Plain old raisins would have been ok, but I like to buy really good dried fruit for my boyfriend’s snacks. It’s my way of spoiling him. But he’s ok with generic ones or Craisins. I should have stuck to the cranberries because the flavor would have been better.
The lucky breaks were few and far between, but there were a few.
First: The sauce I rescued was really awful in the saucepot, but really good on the pork. I put in a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of orange juice.
Second: I was reading a cookbook for roasting instructions and got inspired to make some biscuits, a really cheap add-on starch. They came out pretty well since I made them up. (Add forgot to add salt to the mix! oops!)
Third: There was just enough in leftovers for me to take lunch to work.
Overall, this dinner was a winner and I’m glad we’ve been doing some more formal dinners on Sunday night, even if we’re looking weary from working in the hot sun all day or generally scummy from chores. The food may be formal and laid out on the table with full settings (water glass, wine glass, shakers, napkin, etc.) but man-oh-man, we’re both in sweaty t-shirts looking ragged! LOL
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