Herbal Tongue Twister

For this weekends cooking adventure, we pulled another recipe from The Herbal Kitchen. We've done two recipes from the book before, both excellent meals with no daunting prep. And, again, the book delivers an easy, delicious meal. It also contained my favorite ingredient (kale) and one of E's (pork). Sadly, my photos all came out rather blurry and I won't post the recipe because it is straight from a cookbook. Instead, you'll get the least-blurry of the photos and a brief description of the recipe - anyone who has cooked a few times should be able to figure something delicious out. Without further distractions, the meal complete with centerpiece:

The basic idea behind the meal is you take one hard to pronounce pasta (orecchiette) and one delicious pork product (pancetta). Try saying those together ten times. While the pasta cooks, you brown the pancetta then add in garlic and pepper flakes, followed by diced kale. As that begins to brown, you throw in a little liquid for the finish, add in the paste, and toss it with parmigiano-reggiano. You eat it and are happy. You have it for leftovers, cold, from the tupperware, and notice that it is more delicious that way.

A Veritable Cornucopia of Valentine's Edibles (Verily)

The plan for Valentine's Day proper was to partake in some SF Beer Week shenanigans and get a cheap dinner and instead do a big, fancy meal cooked at home the previous day. The Beer Week event was a shit-show and we went elsewhere, but the dinner was a roaring success. We had worked out a decent menu consisting of things we both agreed would be delicious: a candied walnut, cranberry, and feta salad with a cranberry vinaigrette; rosemary and cranberry pork tenderloin with sauce; roasted root vegetables tossed in oil and herbs; hand-made truffles.

You'll notice a theme running through the meal - cranberries. We thought it cute to have a culinary theme, especially a red one (the default color of Valentine's). Spoiler alert: a very sugary theme can be a bit oppressive, especially when you have cranberry juice instead of wine with the meal. Do note that each dish, except the truffles (more on that later), was delicious on its own; having a link between two dishes is nice, and I'm sure a greater chef could have made it work. Also, cranberries turn purple-ish when cooked into things like sauces.

Also I want to re-iterate something: the pork was amazing. Seriously, a delicious testament to porcine perfection. It may not have equaled the levels of NOPA's pork chop (and, if you happen to find something as good, TELL ME) but for home-cooked meat I don't think I've had much better. The recipe was quick, easy, and not intimidating for a non-meat-cooker such as myself. Recipes, photos, and cutesy stuff follows.