Al Dente

What to Cook This Weekend: Ginger-Marinated Pork Tenderloin

I made this delicious pork recipe for the first time for Christmas Eve dinner. It was simple to prepare, and won raves from the whole family. The original recipe comes from the November 2003 issue of Gourmet, though I have adapted it slightly to my tastes. Serves four to six people.

Ginger-Marinated Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients:

3-1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
6 tablespoons ketchup
6 tablespoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 1-1/2-pound pork tenderloins
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. Whisk together broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, ginger, garlic, and vinegar and divide between two large, sealable plastic bags. Add one half of the tenderloin to each bag and seal, then marinate, chilled, turning bags over occasionally, 2 hours.
2. Remove bags from refrigerator and bring tenderloins to room temperature, about 1 hour.
3. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.
4. Pat tenderloins dry and reserve marinade. Heat oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then brown tenderloins on all sides, turning with tongs, about 3 minutes total. Transfer skillet to oven and roast pork until thermometer inserted diagonally into center of meat registers 155°F, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board and let stand, loosely covered with foil, 10 minutes.
5. While meat is roasting, pour marinade through a fine-mesh sieve into a saucepan and boil until reduced to desired consistency, about 10 to 15 minutes. Serve slices of tenderloin with sauce.

--KitchenMaus

Recapping the Weird and the Wonderful

Not sure if you caught this, but in the Amazon Kitchen Store over the last few weeks we featured some of our most unique products in a series called "The Weird and the Wonderful." In case you missed the series, I thought it was worth recapping on the blog. There's some pretty fun stuff out there! Check these out:

• Fred voodoo toothpick holder
• Animal House utensils
• Lush Life ice luge, ice kebabs, and other icy "essentials"
• Peanut butter and jelly Christmas ornament
• Lush Life bar and wine tools
• Fred Hot Head dog and frog mitts
• Kurt Adler nutcrackers
• Pie bird and plate sets
• Nordic Ware bundt pans in unusual shapes
• Whimsical cookie jars
• Capresso H2O Plus
• Mr. Bento lunch jar
• Built NY bottle carriers

Did we miss any unusual but useful kitchen products? Add a comment and fill us in on your favorites!

--KitchenMaus

A New Year’s Eve Alternative to the Basic Bubbly: The Black Pearl

Now, I’m okay with straight Champagne and sparkling wine (at least, I don’t know that I’ve ever turned any down), but why not set your New Year’s Eve party above the norm by serving something that’s still bubbly, but a little different from the run-of-the-mill glasses thrown out at most end-of-the-year affairs? I mean, isn’t the idea to have a party that people remember, one that stands out in your guest’s minds long after January 1? I think that serving up the exquisite Black Pearl, which uses Champagne or sparkling wine, but ups the elegance meter with cognac or brandy and Tia Maria (a coffee flavored liqueur created from a cane-based spirit, Jamaican coffee, vanilla, and sugar), allows any December 31 soirée to step away from the crowd of parties and be noticed. As a bonus, it’s really easy to make, and lovely to look at (as the copyrighted photo here by amazing food-and-drink-and-fashion photographer Melissa Punch shows).

Ingredients:
Ice cubes
1 ounce cognac or brandy
1 ounce Tia Maria
Chilled Champagne or sparkling wine
Cherry for garnish

Directions:
1. Fill a cocktail shaker half way with ice cubes. Add the cognac and Tia Maria. Shake well.

2. Strain the mix into a flute or wine glass. Top with the bubbly. Garnish with a cherry.

--A.J. Rathbun

Midweek Happy Hour: Mulled Red Wine

I made a batch of this over the weekend, and it got slurped up in no time at all! Make a double (or triple) batch for a party, or a single batch for sipping with just your closest friends. It'll keep your body and your spirits warm. The recipe comes from the November/December 2002 issue of Cook's Illustrated and serves 8 (or 4, if everyone wants a refill...and they will!).

Mulled Red WIne

Ingredients:
3 3-inch cinnamon sticks
10 cloves
10 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice berries
2 bottles full-bodied red wine
4 2-by-1/2-inch strips orange zest
1/2 cup sugar
2-4 tablespoons brandy (to taste)

Directions:
1. Toast spices in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add wine, zest, and sugar. Cover partially and simmer, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low once sugar has dissolved, and simmer one hour. Do not boil.
2. Strain wine. Return to saucepan, discarding spices. Stir in 2 tablespoons brandy. Taste and add up to 2 tablespoons more sugar and 2 tablespoons more brandy, if desired. Serve immediately in mugs.

--KitchenMaus

Make a Donation to Fight Hunger

At Al Dente, we're among the planet's luckiest. We have more than enough food to fill our bellies and we have the luxury to be discriminating about what we eat. Others across the globe don't have this luxury.

Fellow foodies, if you were grateful for the bounty of food on your plate this holiday season, I would encourage you to think about making a donation to a hunger-related charity. If you're looking for somewhere to start, here's a list of charities that could use your donation:

Share Our Strength: Since 1984, Share Our Strength has led the fight against hunger and poverty by inspiring and organizing individuals and businesses to share their strengths.

Care: CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. They place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.

World Food Program: FightHunger.org aims to end child hunger by 2015. They aim to do this by holding an annual worldwide demonstration across the globe called Walk the World. Once a year hundreds of thousands of people in every time zone will take to the streets to call for an end to the needless suffering of hungry children.

Chefs for Humanity: Chefs for Humanity is an alliance of culinary professionals and educators working
in partnership with U.S. and global organizations, providing nutrition education, hunger relief, and emergency and humanitarian aid to reduce hunger across the world.

Oxfam America: Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 120 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. They are an affiliate of Oxfam International.

Action Against Hunger: The mission of Action Against Hunger is to save lives by eliminating hunger through the prevention, detection, and treatment of malnutrition, especially during and after emergency situations of conflict, war and natural disaster. From crisis to sustainability, they tackle the underlying causes of malnutrition and its effects by using their expertise in nutrition, food security, water and sanitation, health and advocacy.

Ultimately, you'll have to choose which charity best fits your philanthropic needs. Or, if you have a local or international charity that you have worked with but I have missed above, please feel free to leave us a comment and list it below.

--Sous-Chef-on-the-Run

PS.  As an added incentive, if you make a donation before December 31, your donation will be tax deductible for 2007.

Happy Holidays from Al Dente!

It’s Christmas Day, and hopefully you’re reveling in seasonal fun with family, friends, and loved ones, getting sugary with Christmas candy, or eating a big holiday meal (does anyone still have a Christmas goose?), or having a sip of the family punch recipe--I know the Al Dente bloggers are doing all of the above, not to mention enjoying those kitchen-and-home presents that have just been unwrapped (speaking of--if you get a special kitchen-and-home gift this year, one that really stands out, tell us about it, because we can’t get enough of hearing about your favorites). But in the midst of all this merriment, I wanted to be sure to take a second to pass a scrumptious seasons greetings to all of you, our wonderful Al Dente readers. Thanks for your support and patronage, and here’s hoping your holidays are as crisp and bright as a new candy cane.

Sunday at the Market with Patricia and Dorie

We're very fortunate that Seattle is a frequent stop on the cookbook book-tour circuit and this past spring celebrated food critic and cookbook author Patricia Wells visited Amazon for a late-morning talk over coffee. Wells has lived in France for more than 25 years and during our talk we asked her if she ever runs into  Dorie Greenspan and Ina Garten, two women who have also stopped by Amazon over the years and who also spend much of the year in the City of Lights. We pictured a high-end foodie sitcom of sorts, with these culinary all stars running into each other at the markets, shopping together, or tapping on each others' doors to borrow sugar cubes or exchange a recipe or two. Patricia was sweet enough to remember this and sent us an e-mail this past Sunday with photographic proof that such Parisian culinary adventures do exist. (A little French bird told us that we just might receive another photo for New Year's featuring a certain Barefoot Contessa.)

Happy holidays!

--BTP

There's a little corner of Paris that probably has more American foodies than many major American cities. The city's 6th and 7th arrondissement is inhabited by a happy party of part-timers and full timers, and since food is our mission, we tend to gather often for multi-course feasts. Cookbook writers Dorie Greenspan and Ina Garten are a stone's throw from our apartment on Rue du Bac. Eli Zabar and his wife Devon Fredericks are not far away, and restaurateurs Johanne Killeen and George Germon are just about to move in, too. So there’s never a problem if you need to borrow a tin of caviar or a few fresh black truffles!

Dorie and I get together often, and we manage to talk nonstop wherever we go. When she is in town, we meet on Sunday mornings at the Boulevard Raspail organic market, and talk so much that our shopping list has to take a serious back seat. We meet at the potato galette stand for breakfast and go on from there.

We all love to cook for one another, and surely one of our New Year's feasts will be made up of some of the fresh black truffles just coming into season: There might be scrambled eggs with truffles, fresh pasta and truffles, for sure the Chaource cow's milk cheese layered with the fragrant mushroom, and a lamb's lettuce salad dotted with minced truffle trimmings. Dorie will prepare dessert, of course, hopefully it will be her famous Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart.

Champagne and wine will flow freely, with our favorite house champagne, Rose de Jeanne, a 100% pinot noir from winemaker Cedric Bouchard, a white Châteauneuf-du-Pape old vines wine from Château du Beaucastel, and our own red Cotes du Rhône, Clos Chanteduc.

Dorie, her husband, Michael, myself and my husband, Walter will be sure to toast all of our readers, thanking them for their support, and wishing them a very delicious 2008!

Patricia Wells
Paris, France
23 December 2007

Celebrity Chef Blog Recap

Season's Greetings Al Dente Readers!

We hope you've enjoyed the series of unique and delicious recipes from Joanne Weir, Rick Bayless, Tom Douglas, Elizabeth Karmel and the many other talented chefs who participated in our blog this holiday season. In case you missed some posts (or you're new to Al Dente), you can read all posts here. Feel free to leave us your feedback using the comment section below.

Happy Holidays from the Home and Garden team at Amazon.com!

--Sous-chef on the Run

What to Cook This Weekend: White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

This tasty cookie recipe (which shouldn’t just be regulated to the weekend--especially since Christmas is next Tuesday, and these will make a scrumptious Christmas day snack) comes from Al Dente reader Leslie, who says, “These truly are amazing! I think white chocolate is just OK, I like cranberries and oatmeal, but for some reason the combination is incredible. Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!”

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup all purpose flour
1-1/2 cups quick cooking oats
3/4 cup dried cranberries
6 ounces white chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, using an electric hand mixer, combine the sugar, brown sugar, and butter; mix well to cream together.
3. Add the egg and the vanilla extract and mix until combined.
4. Add the cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and flour and mix well.
5. Fold in oatmeal, cranberries, and white chocolate chips, making sure all ingredients are uniformly distributed.
6. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and place them 3 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, just until the edges are lightly golden.
7. Remove cookies from oven and let cool 2 to 3 minutes on sheet, then transfer them to a cooling rack.

--A.J. Rathbun

Holiday Eats Reader Recipe: Reindeer Antlers

Thanks to all our readers who submitted recipe favorites for our Holiday Eats series! We had a hard time choosing only one to share with you all, so we just had to pick two! Here's the first one, and look for the other in our What to Cook This Weekend column this afternoon.

This recipe was submitted by Doug Jacobsen, and we loved it for three reasons:

1. It's simple. Who needs a whole lot more hard work this time of year?
2. It's a fun family recipe--kids will enjoy making (and eating) this recipe with you. And, sharing culinary traditions with children is an important part of the holiday season.
3. It's great to have on hand during the holidays. Mix up a batch and leave a bowl out for your holiday guests to munch on.

And, without further ado...

Reindeer Antlers

Ingredients:

1 16-ounce bag of white chocolate chips
3/4 cup Rice Krispies
3/4 cup Cap'n Crunch
3/4 cup salted peanuts
3/4 cup broken pretzel sticks

Directions:

1. Mix together cereals, peanuts, and pretzels in a large bowl or a Ziploc bag.
2. Melt white chocolate in a microwave or on the stove using a double-boiler. As soon as the last chip is melted, turn off the heat (if using stovetop method) and pour the cereal mixture into the chocolate. Mix until the cereal mixture is covered with chocolate.
3. Spoon chocolate-coated mixture onto foil or wax paper. Set aside to set up, about 20 minutes.
4. Break into smaller pieces, if desired. Store in an airtight container until ready to eat.

Notes:
If you want less crunch and more chocolate, use only 1/2 cup of each: cereals, peanuts, and pretzels.

Thanks to Doug Jacobsen for submitting this fun and delicious recipe! Happy Holidays!

--KitchenMaus