Fun Fall Festive Feast (FFFF)! ~ Dinner Party Tonight

Comida Cultural
564 followers
Let's have a ball.
It's fall!
The greatest thing about fall
is it means Christmas
is coming. So we thought we
would make for you a fun
fall festive feast.
An FFFF.
That's the anagram.
It's right before the holidays
so let's make a really nice dinner
for you and your friends. Why not? Why wouldn't you do it?
Your friends just want to see you.
Invite them over for an FFFF.
So what's on the menu?
Well, we're going to have
a beautiful stuffed
pork tenderloin.
We're going to use the sous vide. You can do it in the oven.
I'll tell you how.
It's delightful and really succulent
and yummy. And
slightly difficult so it's sort of a fun
challenge. Then we're going to have cauliflower
steaks kind of
broiled in the oven.
Crunchy topping. Very good.
We're going to have a very English thing
called mushy peas which is
usually served with fried fish,
fish and chips, and mushy peas.
But you can sort of gussy it up and it's
a very delicious, unctuous
sort of side dish.
And then for dessert we're going to make
fruit pound cake.
Kind of. It's like in between
a Christmas cake which you should have made
by now and
a pound cake.
It's a light fruit cake.
Like me.
So unlike Christmas cake
which is quite dark
and plummy, sort of
colored, this is more
light, more
sort of easy going
and doesn't have as much liquor in it.
And it comes from
Jacques Pepin who is
absolutely
fabulous and
used to cook all the time with Julia Child
and is a huge star
and is an absolutely fabulous
human being. This is his
book Jacques Pepin Celebrates
with probably the worst
cover of any cookbook
I've ever seen. Okay?
But the recipes are flawless.
So we're going to sort of slightly modify
his recipe just a little bit.
For some reason he
talks about making your own
candied peel which is not
necessary because you can buy it.
If you really
want to make your own candied peel, go ahead.
I bought it.
And then I soaked it in some
amaretto and brandy.
He wants you to soak it in
something Armagnac or something. But anyway
so we're slightly modifying it.
And we're going to use some very delicious
dried fruits.
Apricots.
Cranberries.
Soft and juicy
tart cherries.
Figs.
And we also have sweet cherries.
So I'm going to just kind of
make the batter for the cake.
And then I'm going to add these
chopped things until I like
the distribution. I can
show you his picture. We'll see if mine
looks like his.
So this is what he has it looking
like. Delightful.
And just for the sake of
contrast, on the next
page he has his version
of Christmas cake which is
more like that. We of course
do Fanny Craddock's
flawless Christmas cake recipe
which is even darker than this. But anyways
let's see what happens.
Oh here we go.
We're going to use a cup
of sugar and two and a half sticks
of butter. That's pound cake.
They don't say it's pound cake but it is.
So this is two sticks
as you know. So two and a half
sticks. Here we go.
There we go. With things like sugar
and butter
eggs like
really, actually really just
eggs and butter. You kind of don't want to
eyeball it because they're
involved in the leavening. You know you have
to be sort of careful with that.
There's two and a half sticks of butter
and he has a cup of sugar.
And we're just going to
combine them remembering
that most Americans
do not combine
their sugar and butter
enough.
It's not plugged in.
We made
a summer fruitcake which is
still heavier and more sodden
than this. This is more like a
tea cake. So
he wants you to use a loaf pan. We have this
very beautiful loaf pan
which would be very nice, right?
I thought it would be super cute
in a mini loaf pan.
But looking at this
I'm not sure how many it's going to fill.
And then I bought
and I have mixed feelings about
this. I bought a silicone
mold. Now I know
that chefs all over
the world and cooks
use these.
I don't know if I trust it
or something. But anyways, we're going
to try and make them in here
because I think that's a cute, cute
size for them. Okay, here we
go. This
is nowhere near combined
enough, just to tell you.
An example of
combining.
It should be light
in color and texture.
Jacques Pepin
is probably the most, I guess
the most famous for his
shows with Julia Child.
And they have sort of a funny
relationship.
That is nothing as good
as a great hamburger.
Yes, we're doing everything
from hamburgers to Chateaubriand
today.
We are cooking beef.
So good.
Now we're going to
add five eggs.
That's a lot of eggs.
It's going to be a very puffy cake.
These are room temperature
eggs. They're
chambered.
One.
I want you to add all the eggs at once,
which is maybe not that smart, but we're going to do that.
Three.
So
by the time you guys see this,
I will have closed
my show with Edgar,
which is already
a pretty
big success after
weekend one. So it'd be
interesting what they can put on the screen
here after it's
closed, right?
Okay, now before I add
the lemon, the salt, and the flour,
I'm going to cut the fruit.
Because
there's no baking soda
or baking powder ominously. There's a lot
of eggs, which is why. But
I kind of want to get this prepared so that
when the batter is ready, I can just
fold in the fruit and I'm not
hesitating. So in
order to do that, I have to prepare my
pans. Of course,
ever bake.
I'm just going to go.
Okay.
I've never used these, so fans
who've used these, they're like,
oh jeez. Or they're going,
yeah, it's pretty hard to use these.
But I see them on
shows all the time, and
I see pretty up there
guys using them. Okay.
So I have some soaking fruit
here. That's good.
And I'm just going to cut up
some pretty
fruit, right?
To use
as little bits, you know.
A couple of figs.
Some cranberries.
Okay, I'm just going to
rough chop this. So think, how
do you, first of all, take the stem.
How do you want this to look
in your cake, right?
So these are dainty cakes.
So you want dainty pieces.
Right?
I'm not really a religious person,
but I tell you that the Christmas time
and fall and Thanksgiving and all that
stuff is such
a fabulous time of year.
And I've told you a million times why.
Because people, you say,
you want to go out to dinner? Sure.
Yeah.
You want to come over? Have some cookies and
stuff? Yeah.
Yeah. Like, people are more inclined
to do that kind of stuff,
which I love.
Alright, that's plenty. And it looks nice.
Very nice colors, right?
I am now going to complete
the batter.
They want orange juice,
but our orange juice looked weird, so we're
going to use lemon juice, which is fine.
Now, it's going to look really
weird, kind of like it does right now.
Sort of alarmingly weird, actually.
They want three
tablespoons, so we'll use
about that much.
Some salt.
And there's
one and three quarters cups of flour.
Gentle now.
Okay.
Now I'm just scraping down the sides.
There's a little flour on the sides, and
I think we need all the flour
we can get here.
Ooh, the lemon is really nice.
Okay, it's just
incorporated. Don't overbeat this, because remember
that thing happens to the gluten strand.
Nobody knows what it is.
Alright, here we go.
So I'm going to get as much of this off
this as I can.
Because we need it.
It's kind of exciting.
A new cake.
Here's my
batter.
Now I don't want to overwhelm this,
right, with fruit. So I'm
going to just kind of do this.
Right? And I'm going to
see what it looks like.
And I'm remembering that we're going to use a very small
thing.
Okay.
Put a little bit more.
Then I'm going to put a little bit of this
dried
brandied peel in.
I'm going to use my hands, which are clean.
I'm going to kind of squeeze it a little bit
to get the juice out
of it. I mean,
in theory, you could use
all dried fruit if you want.
When you're
doing this part, just think about appearance.
What do you want the little
cakes or big cake to look like?
Right?
Probably, you want it to look
beautiful. So I'm using
a gentle touch. I'm not hammering
this. I think we need more
fruit. Okay, here's
some more of this fruit.
I'm going to squeeze over the cabbage
even though it's liquor.
I like to use amaretto for
a lot of things
because it adds a beautiful sort of,
not sort of, it adds a beautiful almond
flavor, which I think
is kind of delightful.
Alright, here we go. I'm liking the look of that.
This makes a little
bit of a mess, as you can see.
But then again,
a lot of good things make a mess.
Like dogs,
relationships,
things like that.
I'm just cutting up a little bit
more of the sweet cherries, not
the tart cherries. Okay.
That looks better.
Okay.
That looks good.
I decided to go ahead and use all
How many is that?
Twelve.
All twelve
loaves. Filling them is going to be an experience.
I think I'm just going to start by
going like this.
This is not easy.
We have some challenging stuff today.
Don't worry, I'm going to clean
this up. So the cherries
are beginning to bleed, which means
I want to get this into the oven quickly
because I don't want to
pink batter.
I'm smoothing it like this, smoothing it like that,
smoothing it. Then I'm going to
wipe the edges.
If these come out good, they're going to be
seriously on my holiday menu.
And you could use
any kind of fruit. Just cherries,
just dried plums,
just dried pineapple.
You know, whatever you want.
This actually fills twelve of these perfectly.
Alright, here we go. Now I'm going to try to clean
this. Let's see.
Okay.
Amazing.
Wow.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
I don't think you can put a
silicone mold in the oven
sans
tray. Because how the hell are you
going to pick it up, right?
Look at that. Not bad, guys.
Come on!
I mean, what are you going to do? It looks pretty good to me.
Oh, God. This was a mistake.
I should have put this on here first.
Alright, there you go.
I think it looks beautiful. Am I crazy?
Do I need to clean it more? I don't know.
I've never used these. I don't know.
Like, are they fussy?
Let's see.
So, they're small.
So, I'm going to keep an eye on them
and use the toothpick test because
they're not going to take as long
as the loaf would take.
So, here we go.
350 oven.
I'm using convection.
You don't have to use convection.
Let's see what happens.
So, Linny and I
were talking about
Down's individuals
and I worked for a couple years in a
actually a year and a change, in a
group home for
Down's adults
which was an amazing experience.
Kind of life-changing experience
and fabulous.
And Linn mentioned that
at her street fairs, they have
a popcorn company called
Popcorn for the People
which is a company
run by
neurodivergent people and autistic people
and it's kind of an interesting thing.
And she also said it's hugely
popular. So, I thought
let's get a box and do a
little quick taste test
of Popcorn for the People.
So, this company was started
by Samuel Beer and his family.
Linn lives in Hoboken
and they sell a lot of
these in Hoboken, right Linny?
But it's, you can get it
anywhere. I'm interested to try it.
You know, one of the great
requisites of a happy
life is meaningful labor.
So, if you tell a lot of people who are
neurodivergent, who are Down's
or have something
that they can't have a normal job,
you're taking away something that will
enrich them immeasurably
and also make them feel
like they belong in the world.
Meaningful labor. We all need meaningful labor.
Meaningful labor.
Okay? So, this is an
opportunity for those people
to have a meaningful job.
Ah, Linn got me
kettle flavors.
Bizarrely dark chocolate espresso
question mark, but we'll try it.
Oh,
and French toast.
They have tons and tons of
flavors. Let's try
French toast. When I worked in
the group home, they were
all over 40.
The guys, they were all men.
Ooh, that's good.
French toast
tastes like French toast.
There's a sort of fallacy
that Down's people are always happy.
And that's another thing I just
it's important to know
that that's not true.
And it's also dismissive
of Down's individuals
that they're always happy. They're always smiling.
They never get anxious.
It's a complete fallacy.
So, just remember that they
get depressed and angry
and frustrated and all that
stuff. Here we go. Dark
chocolate espresso. They sell this
at street fairs.
And you can also buy this online.
Are they represented
at the booth? Oh, neat.
Dark chocolate espresso.
Very chocolatey.
I can see why this would sell.
Makes
kind of a cool gift.
Kettle.
I mean, I remember those guys
those four guys
so deeply.
One guy had Fragile
X, which is a beautiful name
for a pretty brutal
genetic disorder.
Fragile X.
It's beautiful. Anyways,
this is very good. Guys,
meaningful labor. It's important.
Popcorn for the
people.
Why not try it out?
I think they're primarily autistic
but it's all neurodivergent people
and they need meaningful labor.
And this is so sweet.
This bag was labeled
and packed by Bruce.
His favorite flavor is
Chicago baked
cheddar. Bruce.
His job specialty is
labeling bags of popcorn.
This one was
labeled by Elizabeth and her favorite flavor
is butter.
And hers is labeling
and filling bags of popcorn.
She labels infills.
This is by Michelle.
Her favorite flavor is
butter.
And she fills, labels, and makes
popcorn. Popcorn for
the people.
I mean, give me a break.
Yeah, those are done.
So now they've cooled and it's the moment of truth.
Does the silicone mold
work? It works!
Wow.
Holy cow.
I might be using this
quite a bit.
The sides didn't
brown, but I think that's okay.
Wow.
I mean, they come out effortlessly.
I think we
can say the silicone mold really works.
Oh, it's still pretty
hot. It's incredible.
Wow.
It's like an exquisite
pound cake
with salty
fruit
and a little
fragrant almond.
And it's still hot.
I mean, it's still really hot.
It'll become even more
cakey.
You know what this would be really cute for?
If you had the time and energy, is to
cellophane wrap these and give them as Christmas gifts.
Christmas morning.
Thanksgiving.
For a plated dessert, or just put them on
a tray and people can take them.
I mean, wow.
That's a really good cake.
It's really, really good.
Awesome. Fruit cakes came out perfectly.
Silicone mold rules.
Makes a good dessert for a
fall or a Thanksgiving or a
Christmas dinner.
Cake.
Let's make a stuffed
pork tenderloin.
The last time I made this, it disappeared.
Down the necks of my
guests.
Okay?
Here's a tenderloin.
You notice it's much, much smaller than
a pork loin.
This is the end part.
This is pretty beautifully trimmed.
I'm just going to take a little bit of this
off. And I'm going to attempt
to remove the silver skin, but
the truth is, I don't really know how.
I can try, but
you should try to get this off or get
them to take it off
for you.
It's fascia
like you have in your body,
too.
I'm not going to mess with that.
In order to stuff
this, we have to
open it up.
It's nerve-wracking.
I'm not going to lie.
Because if you cut
through it,
it doesn't fall.
I'm just going to
cut
until I'm about
this far from the other side.
Nerve-wracking.
Okay?
Here we go.
I start with a very small cut.
Of course,
peruse.
Okay.
I'm using the tip of the knife,
sort of.
Okay.
You may notice that one side is
much thicker.
You can
do it like this.
We're going to hammer it.
Or you can attempt
to cut this also
and open a third piece,
which I've never done.
Then hammer it.
I made another cut
to kind of flatten it out.
We have a big piece of meat on the back here,
but it's okay. Get a plastic bag.
You can do it like this,
which is fine, or you can put it in the
plastic bag.
You don't want to hit the meat directly with the hammer
because
you could break it.
Pretty firmly,
I'm hitting it and touching.
Don't use this side.
As you get thinner, be careful because
one hit can break it.
I'm constantly feeling
the thickness.
We're basically using my recipe for this.
The only thing
I looked up when I made it was the cooking time.
Like I said, we are going to use
sous vide, but you
can cook it in the oven, and I'll give you the times
for that.
Order!
I banged me gavel. You what?
I banged me gavel.
Okay. For now, that's good.
I mean, it looks fantastic
to me. I'm just going to hit it
a couple more times, and then I might
hit it again before we
stuff it.
I'm going to leave this,
and we're going to move on to the filling.
Okay.
What is the filling?
The filling is
the following things.
A duxelle,
which is a dried mushroom
paste, which we're going to make.
Kind of similar to
the lining, one of the
linings of a beef wellington.
It doesn't have to be that dry,
though, for this because
there's no pastry
to be sobbed
by the mushrooms. It's these three
things, as I said.
A mushroom duxelle,
chopped
shallots,
and spinach,
and a secret ingredient,
which is
pistachios.
So I'm just going to get this ready to be
fried up.
I think half is going to be plenty, but we'll see.
Sorry, this is
a terrible job I'm doing here, sort of like my
brunoise on the pasties.
Okay.
These are
baby portabellos,
and
the thing about these,
and all mushrooms, dinner
partiers, new and old,
do not rinse mushrooms
in water, ever.
They
will fill with water. So what
do you do? First of all, they're grown and cultivated.
They're not coming from the ground.
Like, these aren't foraged.
Let's put it that way.
So how do you clean this? You wipe them.
These are already wiped, but you basically
just wipe it until you
don't see anything.
This is not dirt. It's part of the mushroom.
Anyways, do not
rinse them,
guys, okay? So cut these
with this big machine. You don't really need to.
Last night, of course, I tried yet again
to use the small food processor,
and the same thing happened. It always
happens when you try to use the small
food processor, which is it didn't work.
And you end up dirtying
two machines.
You want to make this into
sort of a...
like that.
Falcon enamelware.
Great products.
So this is how it looks,
and we're going to put it in a dry pan.
No oil, okay?
And we're going to sort of
dry it out a little
bit. It will sizzle,
it will release liquid,
and then it will
dry.
And then we're going to put it on a paper towel. You'll see.
It's labor intensive, so this is
a labor of love. This is like a
nice, fall, beautiful,
possibly romantic. If the boy
or the girl is coming over, you could make this.
Probably get a marriage proposal out of it.
We're going to just dry this out,
then we're going to deglaze the pan.
We're going to cook the shallots and the pistachios,
but before we do that, we're going to
grind the pistachios, which I forgot about.
It doesn't matter if there's
mushroom in here. Now this is
too big. Pretty good.
It looks wet because of the
mushroom.
So I'm just going to leave that in there until we're ready.
I mean, it's just divine.
Now, you can
also do a lining of prosciutto here
in case you made any holes.
So remember that.
If you're nervous when you buy your tenderloin,
buy a pack of prosciutto because
if you do bash through it,
you can put a lining here
of prosciutto. I did break
the magic of television one. It has a big
hole in it, but who cares, right?
Okay, so let's make a duxelle and
fry off the interior ingredients
of our succulent
tenderloin. You note,
although the pan is seasoned,
I put nothing in this pan.
Hot pan!
Nothing in it.
I'm going to wait until it gets a little
hot. You see I put nothing in it.
Hot pan! No
olive oil.
The pan is seasoned. It has oil soaked
into it, but it's, um, okay.
Now, this might
seem weird.
That's it. So I'm going to
cook this. I'm going to line
the falcon with a little paper
towels because we're going to drain it
again after we dry it.
Even though it doesn't really need to be
that dry for this prep because
who cares?
So a duxelle is kind of a
classic French thing.
The end.
See the bubbles?
Now for
beef wellington, you
have to wait until there's really
no bubbles at all.
See all that water?
Okay, so this dried out
a lot.
I'm going to remove it
and put it in this paper towel.
And this makes almost like a paste.
Okay, and I'm going to
deglaze. It's going to go berserk.
Don't get upset.
Okay, so I'm
deglazing with a little vermouth.
So I'm cleaning the pan.
Which is the
other function of deglazing.
It gets all the yumminess
from your mushroom duxelle into
the liquid.
I'm going to cook this down.
It's labor intensive, but it's easy
labor. And you can
also watch your shows.
I watched last night
when I was doing this, I watched
three old episodes of
Great British. It was fun.
Okay, this is perfect.
Ready for my shallots.
Here they go.
Oh, this already
is divine.
Okay, I'm going to
put a little knob of butter in here.
You know, you can make up your own filling
if you don't want to put pistachios.
But just think of how it's going to look.
What do you want it to look like
when they cut the slice?
And that will tell you what to put in it.
Just a little
piece of butter there.
My niece,
as you know, is a physician and
I had a huge
everything bagel
with melted
processed cheese and
scrambled eggs on it.
And I sent her a picture saying
AMA, against
medical advice.
As you know, she runs
Health Meets Wellness.
And she's doing pretty well. I'm going to get
the pistachios.
I'm just going to put these in
and we're going to sort of dry this out
a little bit because it gets a little bit
moisty.
I mean, if this doesn't look
like a really good filling for pork,
I'm not sure what does.
I'm going to use one of my favorite new ingredients,
green peppercorns.
I don't even know what to say.
They're absolutely divine.
I should have ground them, but I'm going to grind them in my hand
and they'll soften
in the roast. I should have ground them, but I forgot.
Oh,
what a flavor. I'm being very
conscious of flavoring
this because, or seasoning this,
because the pistachios
have salt.
Mamma mia.
Oh my god.
Mmm.
A little bit of pepper.
Let's talk about sage.
Let's talk about sage, baby.
Let's talk about you and me.
Let's talk about all the herbs that we can
use when we're cooking.
Let's talk about sage.
The problem with sage, too much sage
and it tastes like cough medicine.
It's a beautiful flavor.
It's strong.
Okay, so you don't want to add too much
sage. I'm just going to cut a few
little pieces because we will also
wrap a little bit of sage around it.
Just a tiny
little
seasoning. There.
Alright.
So I'm putting this on a plate
for a second because I kind
of want it to cool down a little bit.
You should really
let it cool completely. You just
don't want to put a hot filling in, something that
you need to set up because
you have to, it'll weirdly cook
the inside.
Oh yeah. I'm going to
just put it in the regular fridge because I don't want to
disturb the dogs who are sleeping.
Alright, here we go.
Let's stuff the
loin. So you're going to
roll it, but it's going to be
hard to roll because it's going to be
filled. So I didn't take
the silver skin, so I'm going to try to
roll the silver skin in. I mean, if I can't,
I can't. Here is
our mushrooms. So
put this on your
loin, your flattened loin.
And then just kind of
press it out.
Pretty flat. Make sure it's
all the same height.
And when you run into problems
rolling it, don't give up.
Okay? You can do it.
I'm also flattening it.
I'm not just drying it. So you see
how like the steps are easy,
but there's a lot of steps. Okay?
Now I'm going to take my filling
and my spinach.
So this is, you've got to do this carefully.
Take a piece of spinach like this.
Okay? And you're going to actually
press them in
to this like this.
Take the stem off.
Big pieces.
If you can find them. Or if you can
get bigger. This is baby spinach. I don't know why
I bought this. The bigger leaves
are obviously better.
Pistachio.
Which has cooled. You're going to lose some of this
when you roll it. Just be ready.
Now I'm going to mash this flat
the same way that I did the rest of it.
If I was alone and I was doing
this for a dinner party, I'd be drinking.
Now
you've got a challenge.
Okay? Because it doesn't want
to roll. It wants to be
flat.
Okay? I'm actually going to
fold this in like
that. Here we go.
And fold this under like that.
Now we're going to tie it. Okay?
It's not big enough to do a spiral.
It's not flat enough to do a
spiral. So really this
is your challenge. Is tying it.
We're going to tie it
in little pieces and then we're going to trim these.
We're sous vide-ing
so you can use any kind of string you want.
I don't use nylon string
obviously.
Don't use plastic.
So this is
not the most gorgeous thing on the planet.
But it sure
is gorgeous on the plate.
There's a way of tying a roast where you
you can look it up online
where you put a ring around the end
and then you wrap it around the back of your hand
and it makes the line down the center.
But I'm a little nervous
about doing that with this because the bottom is
open.
So I don't really want to
do that because I'll be lifting it up
too many times.
This is kitchen twine.
Very normal sort of thing. Kitchen twine.
And I'm doing it
fairly tight.
Because as we sous vide it
will knit together
the end, the bottom.
Okay. Now we're going to
trim these.
Now why am I trimming them?
Well because after we sous vide it
we're going to sear it.
And you don't want big pieces of
burnt string in your pan.
This should set up
for a little bit.
Maybe an hour in the fridge.
Overnight is fine.
You can put this in there before you go to work.
I'm just going to look at the bottom.
There's the seam. Little explosion there.
Doesn't really matter.
Okay. Because this is pretty good.
And it looks
divine.
Okay. We're going to take a
plastic vacuum
sealing bag.
And we're going to actually seal it
and make a bag because this is a
strange shape.
The last little doodad we're going to do
which is going to make it extra hard to get in the
sous vide bag, is we're
going to put dots of butter like this
and we're going to stick
pieces of sage to those
dabs. Okay.
Now, this sage is going to
sear off, basically.
So, it's just very beautiful.
I like to do it.
Is it necessary?
The answer is no. Does it make it more difficult
to get it in the sous vide bag? Yes.
If you're doing this in the oven, I would
not put the sage on top
because it could burn.
Well, we're going to burn it in the pan.
Actually, leave the sage on top.
Okay. Now, we're going to make a sous vide bag.
Now, yes. Is there a problem with the
fact that I smashed a huge plastic
bag that had to be thrown out?
Now, we're going to use another huge plastic bag.
Yeah. There is a problem.
And the problem with sous vide bags is that
the cleanable ones
aren't really that good.
So, if somebody in the world
could please make a reusable
sous vide bag, it would be really
great.
Okay. This is my
very temperamental food saver.
Okay.
We're going to make a seal
on the bottom. This is extremely
temperamental.
I'm going to do like this, and I'm going to press
seal only, and I'm going to press down
because you have to.
Check your seal.
Make sure your seal goes all the way
across the bag.
Very important.
Now, look.
For Christmas
and for a special meal,
it's not the dumb
thing to do to wrap
this before it goes in
here. So, I'm going
to do it. I mean, yeah, you
can complain. You have every right to complain.
Okay.
Sticky side out.
So, if it really matters,
wrap it. Now, in theory, could
you wrap this in
cloth? The answer
is yes. I think
you could wrap this in cloth.
Okay. Here we go.
Pick it up.
Put it in.
Oh, I made the bag way too big.
Oh, well.
Okay. Here we go. Now,
food savers,
as all of you out there who have food
savers know, they don't
really work.
You have to coax them to work.
So, you want to put this in this little
thing here and just
come on.
Come on.
Don't let your
hand off here.
Perfect. We're going
to cook this at 147,
which is
in between, this is sous vide, not the
oven, which is in between
the way a
chef would do it, which is quite pink,
and the way it's overdone.
In other words, exactly right.
People in your house
don't really want to eat super pink
pork. So, I
sort of split the difference between
overdone and
pink. I'm going
to put this in the sous vide bath
for one hour and 30 minutes.
Here is my
special sous vide bin.
Is it corny? It's corny.
You can use a bucket.
But I got to tell you, this thing is a lot easier.
And also,
the water doesn't
evaporate. I just put it in the
fridge for a minute.
Come on, little
fella. Here we go.
Close.
One hour and
30 minutes.
Set timer.
We're going to do a kind of interesting
side called mushy peas,
which are
English, perhaps edging me
closer to my MBE.
Mushy
peas are essentially blended peas.
They're served with fish and chips
commonly. They're also sometimes
battered and fried.
You can buy peas with french
fries and it's called a pea mix. So, if you're
a veg and you go to a fish and chips place, you go,
pea mix, please, and they'll give you
mushy peas and french fries.
So, a very funny story about
Ricky Gervais' sidekick, Carl Pilkington,
was he went to have sushi
with Ricky and he ate this big
thing of mushy peas and, of course, it was the
wasabi. So, it looks like
wasabi. But it's
really just peas and some flavoring
and a little bit of cream. You can make it as
choppy looking as you want.
It is pureed briefly.
And we are going to use
thawed peas.
We're going to use a little bit of shallot.
We're going to use some cream
and some vodka.
And we're going to blend it up until I like
the look of it. And then we
are going to gently warm it
before service. This can be made a day in advance
if you choose.
I am also going to
put in a small amount of herbs,
which is not something you would get
in a... I'm messing up my chances
for an MBE.
Maybe I shouldn't put the herbs in? No, I'm going to
put a tiny bit of thyme.
Shallot. It's going
in here so you don't have to worry too much about it.
Right?
Put a little bit of cream.
Just a little to start. You can always
add it. You can't take it away.
Little bit of butter
for your peas.
Little bit of butter for your peas.
On
Great British Menu,
Great Great Great Show, or
MasterChef The Professionals.
You can also put mint in here.
I just don't have any. They're always
reinventing this. You know, they're always like
the deconstructed
mushy peas, which is weird because it's
pretty deconstructed.
Little bit of salt.
I'm going to see how this processes before I put
any more in here. Any more liquid.
Okay.
English people are dying all over the
place right now.
Pulse.
It should be a little more
than that, but that's close to how I like
them. I'll show it to you. It's
almost like a bright
green sort of
kind of like a paste, but it's a chunky paste.
I'll show you.
And this is considered, you know, a very
very very English thing.
In fact, I think it's only in England
that they have this.
Oh, it's good.
Oh! Oh my gosh,
that's so good.
Do it to taste. You're at a dinner party. You know
what you're doing. Then I'm going to
scrape it into a little pan.
I'm just going to warm it before
service. It's finished.
That's it.
Okay. I'm just going to
decant these mushy
peas into this
very nice saucepan
I just found. You can make
these in advance, like I said. I'm
really just heating them.
And if I'm not crazy about the
consistency, I can always add more
cream or more butter.
These look like mushy peas to me.
They can be much
more wet if you want.
Okay.
I'm going to put a little more cream in here
because it's a little bit, tiny bit
tight.
A little bit.
That's a pretty
stiff one.
That's plenty.
And we're just going to heat this through.
Okay? And then we're done.
A little bit of mint would be sort of
fab, I think, in this.
I just didn't buy any.
All right, guys.
That's ready. Basically
it's just heating. So we can move on
and finish up.
Oh, I didn't see you there.
Welcome to Dinner Party Tonight.
Actually, we're just
making some roasted cauliflower
steaks.
If you're a vegetarian,
one of the common things you'll see in a restaurant
is cauliflower steaks. We're just
doing it as a little side dish.
They tend to put a lot of
heavy, buttery
things on it because
they want it to be like a steak.
It's frequently inedible.
But ours is very simple.
It's just a panko, sprinkling
with a little bit of capers and some
shallots. I'll show you.
Shallots.
I have a regular old baking sheet
here, and
these are panko breadcrumbs,
which are just white
breadcrumbs.
And I have some butter. Oh, yeah.
This should be melted,
but it doesn't really matter.
So melt the butter
before you put it in the breadcrumbs.
But it's fine. The butter
is very soft, so it's fine.
Okay.
Just mixing this together.
We're going to cut the steaks in one second,
but I'm not going to put a ton of these in.
Okay.
And then we just want...
Okay. A little salt
and peps. Not too much salt because
the capers are pickled,
so they have quite a bit of salt.
Peps.
Peps and heimer.
Okay. We're going to
try to cut steaks, which I've never done.
So these
are trimmed by the farmer.
So you want to trim these a little bit
because they haven't been cut in a while.
Oh, my God!
It
could work!
Okay. I'm just... I'm cutting
the bottom of the stalk.
The very bottom
because it's... I'm going to do it like this
so I don't have to do it again
because it was brown.
Okay. Sharp knife
is a prerequisite.
Okay.
It looks like a brain!
Doesn't it?
Yes, Randy!
It does!
There you go. Think we can get one more?
I don't know.
Je ne sais pas.
No, you can't. So here's some small little pieces.
Little tiny bit of olive oil.
Okay.
A little bit of pepper.
Oven is at 400.
This is
a nice thing to make for people who don't eat meat
but it's also... it's kind of a hearty
side. It's not
messing around, you know?
And we're going to cook it only until it's
crispy on the top.
We're not going to... we don't want to cook
the hell out of it because we have the mushy peas, you know?
You don't need two mushy things, is what
I'm saying. Just kind of
put this on.
I'm just trying
to evenly distribute the rest of the
crunchy topping.
Looks pretty delightfully delicious to me.
I don't know about you guys, but I think it's looking pretty good.
Now, if you want
to be kind of fancy, you're going to put a little
bit of pink peppercorns on here for color.
Also, they have a delightful
flavor.
Not too many.
You could put togarishi
on here if you wanted.
One of your dinner party tonight favorites.
Let's take it to the
stage.
I'm putting this in. Now, I need the oven to be
kind of hot, so I have it on
convection 400.
But I'm going to actually raise it
a tiny bit.
Keep your eye on it.
I would boil it for a split second at the
end, especially if you have a gas oven.
Because you want the top
to be crunchy.
And you want, of course, the cauliflower to be
cooked. So this will take...
Gosh, I don't know. It'll take
15 minutes.
Let's say 20 minutes.
Here's our pork
loin.
Cooked to perfection.
I'm just going to release it from
its baggerini.
Okay, there you go.
Oh, it's beautiful.
It smells
of fall
and quiet times.
Don't
cut the strings.
There's your pork loin.
Now, you could serve it like this.
It's a little wan.
W-A-N.
I don't know if you want to do that.
It seems weird to me.
So you want to sear this.
Now, how are you going to sear it?
You're going to take a pan.
You're going to melt some butter in the pan
and some olive oil so the butter doesn't burn.
And you're literally going to
brown it in the pan.
Then you're going to pour this juice in there.
Going to set it on its serving
tray and pour the juice on top of it.
Let's take it to the stage.
Alright, here we go.
We're going to sear it and then it's going to rest.
And you can finish up all your other dishes.
Looking good. Okay.
Hot pan! Olive oil!
That's right.
A little sherry.
Juice for the cook.
Okay, here we go. Little olive oil.
You want this to be kind of
searingly hot, guys. Okay?
Searing the
loin!
Now the very easy thing to do is to do this
outside if you have a grill.
And you can really get it going.
So I'm turning it. I'm going to sear
the presentation side again
after I put the butter in.
That makes it brown
more beautifully. It's quite
stuck together now.
Kind of getting some
color on all the sides.
And then once more
on the presentation side.
Leave it there until you like the way it
looks. It's sous vide.
This is a matter of a few
minutes extra. Don't worry
about it. Rolling this around
in here. Picking
up my presentation.
Picking up the loin.
Setting it down.
Now I'm just going to pour this in.
You don't even really need any
heat right now.
A little vermouth. Never
hurt anybody. Let this
cook down a tiny bit.
And I'm just going to put a
tent over this. A loose tent.
So the sauce should be
the essence of the thing.
Right? So we use the
scrapings from the bottom of the pork.
A little bit of the filling came out.
Which is fine. I'm not going
to sieve this.
I'm going to pour it with the little bumpy
things in it because
it's better.
Alright.
I mean this is
going to be really good.
Getting the string off.
A little bit of a hassle.
But you can do it. You're a dinner partier.
Stuff
pork loin.
Resting.
The cauliflower should be ready.
Turn the heat up a little on the mushy
peas and you're ready to go.
Okay. This is done. I checked
it with a fork. The pork went
straight through and it's nice
and crispy on top.
That looks pretty damn
good to me.
Okay.
Peas
are nice and hot.
Mushy peas aren't so mushy.
They are lovely
like a pea slushy.
Yummy peas.
Mushy peas.
Please give
me peas and
make them mushy
peas please.
So
what I'm doing here is
I'm cutting a slice
right next to the string
and I'm going to pull the string
before I give it to my
guest. That's what we've chosen to
do. I could cut it and
pull it but you see
what happens. So I've decided to
cut a piece and let the string
fall and just not let them see
the string. But it's up to you
how you'd like to do it.
However, do not serve string.
So today
we made a fabulous fall
festive dinner.
We had stuffed
pork tenderloin with pistachios
and spinach and mushrooms.
We had cauliflower steaks
with beautiful
capers and breadcrumbs.
We had mushy peas.
We made them our way
but I think they're pretty good.
Then we had delicious light
fruit cakes. Individuals.
People love individuals.
We also sampled
popcorn for the people.
What a day.
What a meal.
Get ready for the holidays.
If you haven't made your Christmas
cake, make it tonight.
We made a fun
festive fall
feast.
I mean, come on.
Can't beat this is all I gotta
say. We wanna say thank you guys
so much as always
for watching the show, for sharing
your great successes
and your losses with us.
For being so
kind and so loyal
to Dinner Party Tonight.
If you feel like it,
press those buttons that make the algorithm
work. Nobody knows how it
works but if you could do that, it'd be great.
And try to make one of these
things. You know, the pork loin
is intensive. It's intensive.
But you can do it. And everything else
is very easy. So this would be
a great meal to just
ask somebody over. That's all we
want. That's all Dinner Party Tonight
wants. It's called Dinner Party Tonight.
Call your
friend and say
do you wanna come over tonight?
And if you don't like what you made,
you don't have to serve it.
They just wanna see you.
So have a Dinner Party Tonight tonight.
Dainty
pieces for a dainty cake.
Dainty pieces
for a dainty cake.
Dainty pieces for a dainty
cake. I say a dainty
pieces for a dainty cake.
