The best-laid plans

As part of my recipe-weeding effort, I'm trying to get in the habit of planning out each week's menus and matching dishes to whatever is on sale at the grocery store and the feasibility of cooking on busy school nights. This turns out to be harder than I would have figured.

To wit: Chuck roast was on sale this week. If I have a recipe that involves chuck roast, it's lost in the black hole that I call my entree binder. Meanwhile, I have about 40 sirloin recipes needing testing, but at full price, steak was not in the budget this week. Pork tenderloin was on sale, and a little shuffling and flipping later, I came up with a maple-glazed pork that looked like it was worth trying.

Butternut squash also happened to be on sale, and I jumped for it. Butternut squash is an anomaly in our household, being one of the few (perhaps the only) vegetables that I eat and nobody else does. Usually it's the other way around; I have an intolerance/allergy to the cruciferous group, which rules out an amazing number of green things. Some red and brown ones, too. But squash is OK in my book, especially with butter and brown sugar.

So I had a butternut squash and a goal: to flavor it enough that the boys will eat it. All three of them.

I wasn't in the mood to dig through more binders, so I went to epicurious.com, a.k.a. Bon Appetit online, and ran a search until I found something I liked. It just so happens Bon Appetit was the source of both recipes: pork tenderloin with maple glaze and roasted butternut squash with brown butter and nutmeg.

I have to say, I'm a little proud of my pre-planning. First, I decided to peel, seed and chop the squash ahead of time so I wouldn't be scrambling at 5:30 p.m. I also actually thought to read through the pork recipe -- OK, I just wanted to see if I could roast it and the squash at the same temperature -- and discovered that I'm supposed to cook the thing in a covered skillet on the stove top. So now I knew I might want to halve the tenderloin to fit neatly in the skillet instead of trying to shove the whole thing into a too-small pan in one piece, and probably burn myself again with hot olive oil.

The next dilemma was seasoning. The pork recipe called for dried sage, we didn't have any in the house, and buying a new jar was cost-prohibitive. (The back-to-school shopping bill just came in. Right now, ramen noodles are cost-prohibitive.) I decided to substitute dried savory, which I was pretty sure was tucked away in the cupboard somewhere. It turned out I was wrong. There was no dried savory, nor thyme. What we did have, however, is about a quart of marjoram courtesy of some craziness in a spice order some time ago. Problem solved.

After reading through the recipes carefully, it appeared I needed to start the squash first, then the pork and some boiled rice on the side at the same time. All seemed to be going well; I even got the pork in the skillet without anything spitting at me. Then I realized I forgot to start the timer on the squash and had to keep a really close eye on it. Then I realized I set up the coffee pot for a late afternoon pick-me-up and forgot to press the start button. 

The squash finished roasting first and I started melting the butter to toss with it. The rice finished cooking a minute later. The pork took forever. As it turned out, so did the brown butter. It melted quickly, but did not turn nut brown. I checked the pork. I checked the butter. I checked the pork. Finally, it was done. I removed it to a plate, deglazed the pan... and remembered the butter. It was now a darker brown than I was aiming for, but fortunately, not burned.

I tossed the butter and nutmeg on the squash along with a hefty sprinkling of brown sugar. My oldest wandered by and said, "Oh boy! Peaches with brown sugar." I hated to disillusion him. A minute later my youngest came in and said, "Oh no! I don't like squash!" I thought briefly about telling him, "No, honey, they're peaches." But I refrained.


THE VERDICT:
The pork was pretty good, but a little too much trouble to make on a regular basis. My husband said it reminded him in a good way of pork sausage. The maple flavor didn't come through that strongly to me, but the sauce was still tasty. The boys were OK with it.

As I expected, I really liked the squash, especially the browned butter. I thought the texture was great -- not too firm, not mushy. My husband didn't like the texture and would have liked it a little softer. He also called the spicing "subtle," a.k.a., he didn't notice it. My oldest didn't like the flavor but ate it without complaining. My youngest complained vehemently about having to eat squash and refused to finish it. I'll keep the recipe, but it may not get used frequently.