Uimhir decided that i was going to cook dinner yesterday and that i had no choice in this. The kitchen, you see, is my Kryptonite: all my amazing, wonderful, womanly super-powers instantly vanish the second i step foot in that dreaded room. Uimhir is a great cook. He can make anything, from the best home-made lasagna you ever had to chocolates that make Godiva hide for shame. Me… Well, did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons where Homer pours out a bowl of cereal and milk and it catches fire? Yeah, that’s me.
I looked through all our cookbooks for something easy. When i was seventeen my mom gave me a beginner’s Betty Crocker cookbook, in which i found a recipe for pork tenderloin. “Aha!” i thought. “Pork is cheap! I remember Uimhir said that. So if i mess this up, oh well, not too much money wasted.” If anyone reading this knows anything about food, they’re probably laughing now. But how was i supposed to know that tenderloin is the most expensive kind of pork?!
Having decided on pork, i needed a side. I kept thinking about my mom’s recipe for rice dressing so i decided to make that. From there it was pretty easy because if you’re going to have rice dressing you must have cornbread somewhere. So i went out and got all my ingredients. (And found out about that pork thing. Uimhir did laugh a little.)
I stared down my kitchen for a few minutes and, i swear, i heard the music from “A Fist Full of Dollars” in the background. (You know what i’m talking about–that classic western showdown sound.) I had absolutely no clue what i was doing and i wasn’t fooling anybody.
Then i remembered that Uimhir told me Julia Child dropped food on the floor ON TV. And then she LAUGHED about it and moved on! Moved on–just like that!
Then i remembered that Uimhir told me the first thing you’re supposed to do is mise-en-place. That’s basically the fancy word chefs used for preparing everything before you actually start cooking. So i took a deep breath, got my recipes, and read them over. I gathered all the ingredients on the kitchen counter, separated, of course, because there were three different recipes.
Here is what i made:
* Pork Tenderloin with Rosemary (from “Betty Crocker’s Cooking Basics: Learning to Cook with Confidence”)
Ingredients: 1 clove garlic; 1/4 tsp. salt; 1/8 tsp. pepper; 1 pork tenderloin (about 3/4 lb); 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray.
2. Peel and crush the garlic. Sprinkle salt & pepper over all sides of pork. Rub rosemary & garlic on all sides of the pork. Place pork in the sprayed pan.
3. Bake uncovered 27-30 min. or until meat thermostat inserted in thickest part of pork reads 160 degrees or pork is slightly pink when you cut into the center. Cut pork crosswise into thin slices.
*
* Momma’s Rice Dressing
Ingredients: 2 lbs ground beef; 1/4 cup each: onion, bell pepper, green onion, parsley; 1 can cream of celery soup; 1 can cream of chicken soup; 1 soup can full of water; 2 tbsp Kitchen Bouquet; 2 cups raw rice; salt, pepper; (sliced mushrooms optional)
1. Rinse your 2 cups rice and start cooking them in a rice pot.
2. Brown meat in a large pot.
3. Add bell pepper, onion, green onion, & parsley. Simmer 5 minutes.
4. Add soup, water, & Kitchen Bouquet. Add salt, stir till well mixed.
5. Add cooked rice. Stir until mixed well.
*
Okay, so i was in the kitchen. I had my recipes and my ingred–oops. I had forgotten to get both garlic and parsley. I figured i’d do fine without the parsley and that garlic powder would just have to do. After that, things went pretty smoothly. I say that, but nothing ever goes REALLY smoothly for me in the kitchen. I’m in a constant state of panic, running from one thing to the next with the constant knowledge that at any moment i am likely to screw the whole thing up or set the kitchen on fire. Or, more probably, do both at the same time.
Uimhir came in and reminded me to keep an eye on the ground beef (i was cutting up vegetables at the time) and He tried to show me proper knife techniques but since i was trying to do five things at once i was a bit short with Him and said that He would just have to show me later. Once i actually had to call my mom because i had mixed everything for the rice dressing but i was afraid to add the rice in because everything else looked really soupy. She assured me that the rice would soak up a lot of that, and it did, but mine was still a little wetter than i remember hers being.
I told Uimhir and He gave me another kitchen secret: “That’s how it’s supposed to be.” However it comes out, even if it looks a little funny, as long as it’s tasty then i should just smile and pretend that’s how it’s supposed to be. Most people won’t know the difference anyway.
I guess that was how it was supposed to be because everything turned out great! The pork was really juicy and tasty and the rice dressing tasted almost exactly like my mom’s used to. I haven’t said much about the cornbread but that’s because i could already make cornbread pretty successfully so it was the one thing i wasn’t worried about.
Huzzah for success!
–caisearbhán
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