Tag: Trish Magwood

The Cooking Chronicles: Seared Pork Tenderloin with Cocoa-Spice Rub and Mushroom Risotto

Similar to our Mother’s Day dinner in May, I corralled my sisters into assisting with our Father’s Day dinner this past weekend by assigning them each a dish. Amanda helped out by making a salad, and Felicia cheated a little by providing a store-bought cake (albeit my Dad’s favourite – Black Forest).

For the main course I decided to make a Michael Chiarello recipe for a seared pork tenderloin with cocoa-spice rub. It seemed easy enough, as the majority of the work was simply creating the rub itself. Mack, my tireless sous chef, trimmed the tenderloin while I measured out the spice ingredients, and once the meat was in the oven, we were able to focus all of our attention on preparing the side.

I’d been a little afraid of attempting a risotto recipe, but Trish Magwood’s straightforward instructions in Dish Entertains calmed me somewhat. We didn’t make it to the market on Saturday, so ended up with mushroom instead of asparagus flavouring. The true secret (if there is one) really is to add the simmering stock in half-cup increments, allowing the rice to slowly absorb the liquid. The entire process us about 25 minutes (Mack, the official risotto stirrer, thinks it may have been longer), and resulted in plump and tender grains and a creaminess that could not be achieved in any other way. Of course, the finish with a generous amount of butter and parmesan couldn’t hurt either.

Mushroom Risotto

The fragrant rub turned out really well, and the pork was juicy and flavourful. My cold was frustrating my ability to taste the rub, but I was told it was quite good. The leftovers worked great as an addition to a pita sandwich!

Seared Pork Tenderloin with Cocoa-Spice Rub

It was a nice sit down meal with family – something we don’t take the time to do often enough.

The Cooking Chronicles: Pad Thai

It seems after years of holding out and not buying cookbooks (instead, choosing to rely on printed recipes gleaned from the internet), the floodgates have opened. I mentioned buying Diners, Drive Ins and Dives a few weeks ago, and along with that, also ordered Trish Magwood’s James Beard Award-winning Dish Entertains. I especially like the book because of its beautiful pictures, which not only provide satiating shots of food, but also really great serving and presentation ideas.

I’d been eyeing the recipe for Vegetarian Pad Thai for some time (a Food Network version, similar, but not the same is here), and finally got around to purchasing the needed “Thai essentials”, as she calls them. Of course, not being able to live without some protein in the meal, I decided to add shrimp to the mix.

I put Mack in charge of making the sauce, while I washed and prepared the vegetables and began heating up the noodles. Our only missing ingredient was chili flakes, so we were forced to substitute chili powder. As expected, this impacted the desired flavour and resulted in more sweetness than heat in the final product.

When we finally poured the sauce into the wok, it looked like an overwhelming amount of liquid to be incorporating. Surprisingly, the noodles soaked up most of it, and we ended up with a dish that wasn’t too wet or dry. I made sure to be overly generous with the amount of chopped peanuts I included on my finished portion (as I find some restaurants tend to scrimp on them), and for the most part, our pad thai was satisfying. It didn’t pack enough heat for reasons mentioned above, and for Mack, was too sweet for him. Done again, we’d make sure to have chili flakes on hand, and reduce the amount of sugar added.

Pad Thai

As this was our first try at a Thai dish (and one that looked remarkably easier than Chez Pim’s more authentic, but time consuming version), we were very happy with the result. I’m sure this is just the beginning of many happy returns to the pages of Dish Entertains.