day 25: roasted pork tenderloin and grilled pork chop

Today, we roasted a pork tenderloin which was served with our roasted fingerling potatoes. I've never had fingerling potatoes before, but I've sure seen a bunch of them on Food Network. So it was nice to try a new ingredient. I also learned an easy way to truss the tenderloin and still be professional (I normally would just cut a bunch of small segments of twine and tie them around separately). My mom does it the professional way, yet I never learned that from her for some reason. So the pork is a bit overcooked, and my potatoes are way overcooked. Chef Brown did like how I laid my potatoes on the fresh rosemary while they were warm so they would open up the oils from the herb and infuse them with more rosemary aroma. Two things. First, I like that Chef Brown was able to appreciate that professionally, as he is not a lover of rosemary. And second, I was just trying to add something aesthetic to my plate...I never even thought of the potatoes having done that. In fact, what I was thinking when I was plating was, should I?..Chef Brown doesn't like rosemary. I should. And I did.

The pork chop. The money item. I love pork chops. And I don't care if I am in culinary school and made this Sauce Charcutiere or whatever. I love my pork chops with Heinz 57 Sauce, and that's how I'm going to have it later, when Lost comes on. I can't imagine a better Tuesday night dinner and a show. I'll call it wild boar chop and have one of my Hawaiian rolls with it, in honor of the island. So the pork chop is served with a Deutscher Kartoffelsalat, which is a warm German potato salad. I just love calling it the first thing. On top are braised cabbages and red onion in balsamic vinegar and currant jelly. My cabbage turned out fantastic. My potatoes were a bit acidic...I knew I'd used way too much white wine vinegar, and Chef Lora helped me balance it out with more sugar, which made it palatable...but, I should have started over. Chef Brown said my pork chop was perfectly well done...which is to say, overdone, as we were shooting for medium rare to medium. Today, we also drew menus for our final, and someone can shoot me now. I have to make that crispy skinned fish again, which I mangled the first time. However, I'm going to thank my lucky stars I don't have to make any Hollandaise sauce.