Impromptu Pork Medallions with Portabellas and Red Wine Sauce

I've had some epic food and drink in the last week, and it's always a good thing when you are too busy doing what you love to blog about it. Tonight, before going over to a friend's place for a lovely walnut pie and Lagavulin 16 year scotch dessert meeting, I tried to keep dinner simple. I boiled some potatoes with sage stems and a bay leaf, and seared some pork loin medallions from a giant Wegman's 4-pack I had forgotten about. Added two small portabellas, onions, garlic, fresh rosemary, and S&P to this, and after removing the meat I threw in about a 1/2 cup of red wine I was drinking and added more butter and a bit of Wondra flour and let it reduce, stirring. Then I poured this over the pork and ate as if someone who loved me cooked the meal. Which was the case.

Simple Comfort Food

I just downloaded some photos from my camera and found this shot from a few weeks ago. I think I was a bit beat and didn't feel up to going to the store, and improvised with what I had.

Luckily I had butter. These are boiled little tiny baby potatoes with butter and S&P, blanched green beans sauteed in butter with garlic and lemon juice (probably basil too), and some slices of salami. I tend to want meat with my meals, and these little morsels did the job. Overall, some simple just-north-of-Mediterranean farmhouse fare. I felt pretty good after this meal.

Don DeLillo, Gravy, and Mashed Potatoes

In White Noise (Penguin 1986, p. 175), our protagonist describes his teen-aged son Heinrich's dinner table demeanor in the midst of a discussion about toxic waste spills:

We watched him use a spoon to mold the mashed potatoes on his plate into the shape of a volcanic mountain. He poured gravy ever so carefully into the opening at the top. Then he set to work ridding his steak of fat, veins and other imperfections. It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

"This is the big new worry," he said. "Forget spills, fallouts, leakages. It's the things right around you in your own house that'll get you sooner or later. It's the electrical and magnetic fields. Who in this room would believe me if I said that the suicide rate hits an all-time record among people who live near high-voltage power lines? What makes these people so sad or depressed? Just the sight of ugly wires and utility poles? Or does something happen to their brain cells  from being exposed to constant rays?"

He immersed a piece of steak in the gravy that sat in the volcanic depression, then put it in his mouth. But he did not begin chewing until he'd scooped some potatoes from the lower slopes and added it to the meat. A tension seemed to be building around the question of whether he could finish the gravy before the potatoes collapsed.

An apt metaphor!