Then Dinner

I took Friday off from work to spend a long weekend at my mother’s house, in upper Westchester. The night before we left, I still had that mountain of clean basil (not having been in the mood–perhaps because it’s not yet summer–to preserve it as pesto) and a pair of pork loins that needed to be cooked. These are the perfect ingredients for a warm salad. Santa Maria came up with this recipe a few months ago, and I loved it so much that I was looking forward to making it that Thursday night.

I got home from work late, but not so late that I couldn’t cook the dinner. Santa Maria was on our bed reading “Anna Karenina” when I started roasting two pork loins (far more than I needed, but I knew the leftovers make great sandwichs and we would want some of that meat on our trip north).

I use a variation on a recipe I got from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything.” I pour some olive oil in a small bowl, add a shake (about a teaspoon, or more) of Garam Masala, and some mustard, along with salt and pepper. I spread that on the lions, throw them on a baking sheet, and put under the broiler for about a total of about fifteen minutes, rotating them once or twice to make sure the get brown but not burned. I cook them to about 145 degrees, which leavs some pink meat but no risk of trichinosis.

At the same time, I roasted some asparagus that I had sprinkled with olive oil and salt and pepper. Usually I do these at 350 degrees, but I wanted to cook them at the same time as the pork, and I only have one oven. I couldn’t leave the there when the broiler was running as they would burn before they would cook. So I put them in the oven for a few minutes, transfered them to a cast-iron frying pan, and kept them cooking at a very low heat until the pork was done and I could return them to a more hospitable oven.

The warm salad is easy to make (the only other major ingredient is rice, and I had cooked some that morning), but I was too tired to be bothered. I called to Santa Maria to tell her that the dinner was ready, but she was having a hard time taking a break from her book. I couldn’t blame her. As good as my ingredients are and as much care as I take with my internal temperatures and spice mixtures, I would have to be a hell of a lot better to compete with Tolstoy’s prose, even in translation.

I didn’t want to make the salad myself, and I didn’t want to wait for Santa Maria, so I placed the pork, asparagus, and rice on my plate and sat down to eat it.

Santa Maria finally strolled into the kitchen and promptly set out to make her salad. She cut up the pork, the asparagus, and mixed it with the rice, added basil and dressed it with a vinagrette. I was jealous. She was so ravenous that she couldn’t even take a break long enough to let me photograph it.

I love to feed the children roast chicken, especially when Santa Maria is present, because she is so adept at getting the food cut up, and in front of the children. And they always eat everything more readily when she there. It’s magical, or so I think after serving the same meal one night when she was working—and watching Pinta reject every bite.

Roast chicken presents one difficulty. It takes time. Not work, but time: at least an hour in the oven. This is not a problem during the cold winter months when we are hanging around the house, But now that it is getting lighter in the afternoon, if not warmer, we want to run around and enjoy the fresh air before dinner.

So, the question becomes, how to speed up the process. It helps a little if I leave the bird out in the roasting pan for an hour or more to get it up to room temperature. And it helps a lot if I run the oven wicked hot, say 450 to 500 degrees. I haven’t found this to cause any dryness problems with the meat, although the tips of the wings tend to singe. The only issue has been that such high temperatures cause the oven to smoke like mad. And that tends to make the kitchen and the apartment mildly uncomfortable.

I discovered a little trick that is probably obvious to anyone who likes to make gravy. The smoke, as it turns out, wasn’t coming from the oven per se, but from the burning drippings in the pan. This evening, I poured some water in the base of the roasting pan while cooking the chicken hot and fast. The result: no smoke.

Plus the pan was unexpectedly easy to clean up. That might be the best benefit.

I’m not always making something new. Sometimes I’m just making work. Or rather, making do. This morning, I had to get the kids ready for daycare, which meant cooking some pasta to go with the Bolognese sauce I made the day before.

As I looked through the refrigerator, I noticed a couple of half empty containers of black beans and dhal. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I boiled each and froze them. I also noticed/remembered that I had bought a huge bunch of fresh basil with some vague intention of using it this week. I know the basil keeps longer if I wash and dry it, so I took it out of the fridge and got to work.

I didn’t have much to show for all my effort this morning. But I did get a nice reward. Santa Maria wandered into the kitchen after getting the kids dressed and said about the basil “that smells amazing.” I’ll take that.