Now We're Cooking

Adrian and I have been cooking a lot since I've been home, but never together. This little apartment and kitchen do not lend themselves to working together. Until today. Adrian is taking food to a friend's house for dinner and he asked me to help him. My job was to rasp the orange peel off an orange, grate garlic and chop pecans. Chopping nuts is tough because they tend to fly all over the place.

I remembered that I had one of those cute little choppers advertised on late night TV. I didn't buy mine that way, but I love it like those people on the infomercials. Adrian said I was having too much fun with it, so he used it to chop mushrooms. Fun. And it was much easier to chop the garlic fine this way rather than grating it with the rasp.

I was also about to throw out this old bottle of Armagnac because the cork had rotted. I'm not sure where I got this, maybe when I was in Armagnac years ago. I somehow got the cork out and Adrian used some of it in his dish. I saved a little for me. It was like lighter fluid. I'm sure it will be good in the stuffing.

Stuffing? No, not an early turkey. Adrian does not like turkey. He has stuffed a huge pork tenderloin that he had butterflied. He made this shortly after I came home in October. He didn't have string that day and asked the butcher for some when he picked the pork up today. But I had recently seen Jacques Pepin use the method you see below. It was easier to put tin foil trusses around the roast than to figure out how to tie it with string.

Those lucky guys will be eating Adrian's pork roast and potato salad for dinner tonight. And lucky me had the fun of helping him prepare it.