2016 Cookery Project — Roast Pork Tenderloin with Carrot Romesco

Roast Pork Tenderloin with Carrot Romesco

Here’s the final meal from the first half of the 2016 Cookery Project.  I’ll be posting a project summary in a day or two.

I got this recipe for Roast Pork Tenderloin with Carrot Romesco from Bon Appétit, via Epicurious.   “Romesco” is a Spanish nut and red pepper-based sauce that can be used in the same ways that pesto can, although the two taste not at all alike.  In this meal, the Romesco was made with carrots, roasted pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and red wine vinegar, and sits at the bottom of the plate.

The salad is made of roasted carrots and baby mustard, which I’ve never tried before.  The baby mustard has a sharp, spicy taste, and a texture sort of like kale.

I browned the pork tenderloin in a pan, then roasted it.

It makes for a colourful dish, doesn’t it?

“Drip Painting”

Markus Linnenbrink, a German-born, Brooklyn-based artist, was commissioned to design and install the exterior image of the nine-story parking garage for the v upscale SLS Brickell Hotel and Residence in Miami.

In the video, he explains what he did with his nine-story “canvas.”

Here’s a look at the result:

2016 Cookery Project — Black Bean Salad and Bluefish

Black Bean Salad and Bluefish

Unlike my recent cold weather Rosemary-Pepper Roast Beef dish, this one could almost be an advertisement for Summer.  Look at the way those colours in the Black Bean Salad pop!  The salad is a mixture of yellow corn, diced orange pepper, red onion, green cilantro, and black beans, all seasoned with chili powder and fresh lime juice and singed over medium high heat, with halved cherry tomatoes added at the last moment.

The bluefish was broiled with nothing added except freshly ground pepper and a couple of dabs of butter.

Vivid Sydney 2016

Another Vivid Sydney Festival has come and gone.  Here’s a highlight reel from the annual event.

Being, as I am, easily distracted by shiny objects, I love this sort of thing!

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Here are some of the images that were projected on the Sydney Opera House during the festival.  All photos were found on the Web.

Found Image

No idea where this came from, but I like it.

2016 Cookery Project — Rosemary-Pepper Roast Beef with Butter Potatoes

I know it’s Summer, and warm weather is supposed to mean cold ovens and light meals, but every once in a while, you need good old-fashioned meat and potatoes.  So I made Rosemary-Pepper Roast Beef with Butter Potatoes, even though the recipe itself describes this as a perfect Christmas dinner, and you can’t get much further away from Christmas than late June.

(Or can you?  I can always tell when it’s the first of July, because that’s the day that the Metropolitan Museum Christmas catalogue invariably shows up in my mailbox.  It’s like the first robin of Spring, only not.)

Anyhow, here’s how I made the meal:  I put white and red potatoes in a 9-by-14-inch pan and drizzled melted butter over them.  For the roast, I grounded peppercorns, salt, and rosemary in the processor, then added olive oil.  This gave me a sort of paste, which I slathered all over the meat.

I set the roast on top of the potatoes, covered the whole thing with aluminum foil, and roasted it.  When it was done, I set aside the roast and deglazed the pan with white wine and lemon juice.

Maybe next week I’ll roast a turkey.

Barcelona GO!

Rob Whitworth uses a process called Flow Motion to take a trip through one of my favourite cities:  Barcelona!

At around the :50 mark, there’s a look at the interior of the Palau de la Música Catalana.  In a city famous for its architecture, this 1908 masterpiece by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner was the building that I fell in love with.   It’s a World Heritage Site and holds a concert hall that attracts more than half a million people a year for musical performances.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Europeans live better than Americans, and that’s especially true in the pleasure city of Barcelona.  I need to return.

You can see more of Whitworth’s work at the link.  Like Barcelona, it’s definitely worth a visit.

Brexit

This uncaptioned image has started popping up on the Web, following yesterday’s unfortunate decision in the UK.

Beau Thai — Lunch on 20 June 2016

I continued my exploration of the Shaw area of Washington this week with a visit to local favourite Beau Thai.  As I’ve mentioned, Shaw is one of the several parts of Washington that have undergone really amazing transformations in the years since the turn of the century.  It’s now the site of one of the hottest restaurant zones in the city, and it seems as if new buildings are going up or old ones are being renovated on every other block.

Beau Thai itself is sleek and trendy.  It’s been named “Best Thai Restaurant” in Washington for each of the last four years in Washington City Paper’s annual readers’ polls.  Meals here are promoted as fresh and authentic.  They’re also inexpensive.

Thai Sausage

This was a grilled pork sausage, served with fresh ginger, red onions, and peanuts.  Basic, but good.

Kao Pad Nam Prik Pao

Kao Pad Nam Prik Pao is fried chicken with a nice crunchy coating.  The heat—and it was sinus-draining, tear-inducingly hot—came from the fried rice with Thai chili sauce.

All in all. a good meal, but I’d question the “Best Thai Restaurant” in Washington award.  DC has dozens of comparable Thai restaurants, which is yet another reason why living here can be so very pleasant.

Mr. Robot — Another Season 2.0 Trailer

Remember when summer meant there would be nothing but reruns and burn-offs of failed series on television?  Neither do I, but people I trust have assured me that it’s not just an urban legend.

Things have certainly changed.  Game of Thrones is about to end another phenomenal season with a blaze of glory (hint hint), but UnREAL is newly returned, and the second series is as full of nastiness, plotting, manipulation, and cynicism as the first.  No, let me amend that:  This season is even nastier than last year’s show, which makes for absolutely addicting television.  Both the acting and writing on UnREAL are simply superlative, among the best on TV.

And we still have Mr. Robot, the other delicious surprise from last summer, to look forward to.

So here’s another Season 2.0 trailer.

Mr. Robot returns on 13 July 2016 in the US.