Quasi Mystery Basket Dinner

We had a full-on mystery basket dinner scheduled for Sunday. Each couple attending brings three ingredients and we all get together, figure out how to use all the ingredients, and make a meal. Some people use this as an opportunity to try to stump me (good luck with that) while others want to learn how to cook some ingredient that they would like to try at home. We always seem to end up with far more than three ingredients per couple and we always have a blast.

Our karmic forces were clearly in disarray Sunday because from early morning on, the phone let us know that one couple after another could not make it (for very legit reasons, not the least of which is that it is prime cold season). In the end, only Kelley and Marco Due showed up, but that's plenty of people for a nice relaxed dinner. And after my week of scrambling at the restaurant last week, relaxed is just fine by me.



Kelley and Mark brought chorizo, andouille, baby artichokes, cream cheese, and a blend of Israeli couscous, orzo, split chickpeas, and red quinoa. I contributed pork tenderloin, fregola sarda, pimentón, fresh green chickpeas (far right in the photo), and goat cheese, plus some random bits from the fridge (pecorino sardo, onions, green onions, yellow tomatoes).

Prepping baby artichokes is tedious but I love them so much that I am willing to go to the effort. Though I have to say that standing for an hour a prepping a bushel of baby artichokes for the restaurant is just no fun. But as long as I'm doing them in family-sized scale and I get to eat them, game on. Everybody else shelled the green chickpeas while I got to work on the artichokes, then Mark came and gave me a hand stripping the tough outer leaves off the artichokes. Happily, I only found one that had developed enough choke in the middle that I had to remove it.

This mix of ingredients is highly coincidental—déjà vu even! Saturday night, Kelley and Mark were at the restaurant for a tasting and for one of their courses I did a "risotto" of Israeli couscous, peppers, chorizo, artichokes, and tomatoes, finished with pimentón and goat cheese. What is really too funny about this is that they bought their ingredients for the mystery basket dinner before coming to the restaurant.

That couscous dish on everyone's mind, we decided to reprise it by pitching all the ingredients into a pan risotto style and serving it with roasted pork tenderloin. I ran out to the garden and picked some sage and rosemary and minced that fine along with garlic. This became the quick rub along with salt, pepper, and olive oil for the pork tenderloin.


And here's dinner. Not too shabby! Mark and Kelley, good time!