[img]1325|left|Alex Campbell ||no_popup[/img]Dateline Boston — It took four people to make dinner last night. A couple of days ago, S.O. announced he wanted to add some variety to our meals—he came home with a pork tenderloin. I looked at it in our fridge, sitting in the packaging. It looked disgusting. I am a tried and true meat lover, but detest the task of preparing it.
I decided to tackle this cooking project head-on. When I got home from work, I cracked open a cookbook and found a recipe for rosemary and garlic roast tenderloin. Mmm! I had all the ingredients for the rub: salt, pepper, dried rosemary, garlic and sugar. I took the pork out of its wrapping and put it in a pan, then slathered the rub mix all over it, like they do on TV. When I was finished, it resembled a giant slug that had crawled across a freshly mowed lawn.
The cookbook instructed me to put the tenderloin in a roasting pan and roast it at 450 degrees. I looked at my oven. There was a bake button and a broil button but no roast button. Bake sounds like cookies and broil sounds like meat. I pressed broil and set the oven to 450. I called my friend Melissa to make sure. She told me that “roast” was really “bake.” Although it made no sense whatsoever, I switched over to the bake setting. By now the oven was nice and hot. I asked Melissa what a roasting pan was. As I suspected, I didn’t have one. She said I could just use a regular pan.
I hung up with my friend, the gourmet cook, and put the pan in the oven. I knew I had to keep an eye on the pork. It was only one pound, and the recipe was for a two- or three-pounder. S.O. had made a point of telling me that it was okay for pork to be a little pink. I like my meat well done, but I told him I’d make it medium, just for him.
The next step was to baste the meat with white wine. I got out the bottle we’d been using for cooking and tried to take the cork out. As a non-drinker, I have never opened a bottle of wine. At least I found the proper tool to use. I screwed the bottle opener into the cork, then tried to pull it out. No dice. I called S.O. and told him my method wasn’t working. I asked, “Whaddaya do? Just put the bottle between your knees and pull?” Apparently not. S.O. talked me through the proper way to open the bottle with the tool I had, and I did it! I was ready to baste.
Which meant pouring liquid into a very hot pan. I had visions of smoke billowing out of the oven door as I poured the wine onto the tenderloin. I decided to make another phone call just to be reassured that this was okay.
I called Melissa’s S.O., Hiro, and explained the situation. He seemed to think it would be okay since it was only wine. I kept him on the phone while I poured the wine over the slug. He was right—crisis averted. I hung up with Hiro and went to watch TV while the meat cooked.
Fifteen minutes later, I poured more wine onto the meat. It seemed that enough time had passed for me to check and see if it was done. I consulted my cookbook; it said that when an instant read thermometer read 145-150 degrees, it was done. I got out the thermometer my aunt had given me a few years ago and used it for the first time. 145-150 degrees? I pulled it out when it reached 163—I didn’t want to see how much hotter it could have been.
I called Hiro back to ask what he thought. He thought it was done. I took the pan out of the oven and put the tenderloin on a cutting board. I cut a few slices, and…it wasn’t pink. Whoops. It looked great to me; I’d just have to wait to see what S.O. thought.
He arrived a few minutes later and declared that it smelled wonderful. I quickly (yeah, right) whipped up some green beans and risotto. We had ourselves a very fine meal, indeed. I may not be a master chef, but I can make dinner. With a little help from my friends.
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
