My Bad!

So...um...Moroccan night didn't go so well. I could blame it on the beef I used, or I could blame it on the very vague recipe instructions, or I could blame it on the chef...but it wasn't good. I mean, the taste was good, but the beef was so tough that it was pretty much un-chewable. I sheepishly trekked back to the kitchen to heat up some leftovers because dinner was not workin' out so well this evening.

Sometimes this happens. Don't feel bad about it, but learn from it. In this case, I think the issue was some gristly, tough meat, mixed with the wrong type of cooking method, and the possibility of a terrible recipe. I know when I try it again, I will learn from my mistakes and make a much better dish. Unfortunately, this time around it just wasn't what it should be.

It's too bad because Moroccan cuisine is a very interesting one that I'd like to learn more about. I love the idea of dried fruits adding sweetness to an otherwise spicy sauce, with rustic meats slow-cooked to perfection of a low flame. Sounds delicious, right? Well, it looked good anyway...

Everyone Makes Mistakes!

So...tonight's dinner did not go as planned. All I can really say is that sometimes we all make mistakes, and not every meal will come out perfectly. I should have known that this wasn't going to go well when my mise en place took way longer than expected...but I plowed forward, nonetheless. The plan was to make Lia's Pork Tenderloin with an Artichoke Tart, from Top Chef's Quickfire cookbook. How she did this in an hour, I can't be sure!

Yikes! That's some mise en place!

Because this quickfire challenge's purpose was to use a store-bought frozen pie crust, the recipe also called for a store-bought frozen pie crust, which I allowed to thaw. The instructions asked me to use a pie weight while baking the unstuffed crust, but as I've said in past posts, I'm no baker...so I googled what I could use as a pie weight. The website I found said rice...but I didn't even think about putting something in the lining of my crust before adding the rice! Because of this mishap, my crust CRUMBLED when I tried to pour the rice out! :( (I'm adding a pie weight to my Amazon shopping cart tonight!)

I pieced the larger pieces of the crumbled crust back together in the pan, and poured the artichoke mixture in anyway, but it was a mess! Look what happened!!!

Can I have a do-over!?

The fennel and pear salad came out well, and the Meyer Lemon reduction sauce that went over the pork tenderloin was syrupy and tartly delicious. My pork tenderloin didn't cook completely in the time the recipe called for, so I left it in a little longer, and I ended up with some very juicy, perfectly cooked slices of pork in the end.

All in all, dinner was tasty, but it looked pretty messy, and I think it could have been MUCH better. Too bad I didn't think to thaw both of the crusts I had purchased...I could have started over if I had...but as it was, I made the best of a bad situation, and it all goes down the same way, right? Normally, after I complete a recipe to my satisfaction, it gets a check mark so that I know it's a keeper...but this one hasn't earned its check mark yet...I'll have to give it another go in the near future. I need a few weeks to get over this attempt first! :)