Summer Daze, bentos to the rescue!


Ok we had a 2 week intermission, not my fault mind you :). With all of my wife's work craziness and the travel we decided to put off last week's bento to this week. (Course I had already made half of it.) I continue this week on the fruit theme, the heat here is abysmal and I can't fathom eating anything on the heavy side.

Easy peasy, we start with a basic salad and a pear balsamic vinaigrette. Nothing fancy here, I needed to fill the space, and I had bagged salad from last week's bento to use up.






We head to our soup course: we have a chilled Melon Ginger Soup. The recipe is courtesy of a local restaurant, "The East side Cafe", they pride themselves on an organic menu from a local farm they own and run themselves. I didn't get to taste the soup after the ginger got a chance to really sink in, but from the hint I got I'm sure the soup will be very good in the morning. Chopped cantelope, watermelon, and honeydew to give it texture and a bit of ginger to give it a zip.


This side is from watching foodtv: Onion and Goat cheese tartlet. My wife swooned as she saw this so I really had no choice but to make it. It's a very simple recipe, you basically use a puff pastry shell and fill it with a custard, top it all off with a cube of goat cheese, voila you have a nice appetizer. This was actually an easy side to churn out, I'll be using it as a party appetizer in the future.

Finally we come to the entree: Basic pork tenderloin here, topped it off with a blueberry sauce. I decided a nice drizzel of the red wine I had on-hand to deglaze the pan would give the sauce a nice umph that it would not have otherwise had. I think it was a good choice, it added a bit of flavor complexity that spikes up the pork (I had only used salt and pepper when I cooked the tenderloin)

It does feel really good to get a chance to cook again. I hope to continue regularly so please stay tuned. Thank you to the loyal readers that come to peruse the blog. I still welcome suggestions, please send them over.

Box Contents
  • Salad with pear balsamic vinaigrette dressing
  • Ginger melon Soup
  • Onion and Goat Cheese Tartlets
  • Pork Tenderloin and Red Wine blueberry reduction

Comments

QueenKatofTypos said…
Wow, that all looks yummy. :) I've never heard of a blueberry sauce for pork... must taste it!
Ironjack said…
Real simple if you want to try it. In the same pan that I baked the tenderloin. I sauteed 1 chopped small onion for a couple of mins. Dropped in what I estimate to be 1/3 cu of red wine. Cooked off the alcohol for a min, then added a cup of chicken broth. I boiled this down to about 1/2 and tossed in a tbsp of butter to help thicken it up a bit.

Thanks for visiting!
swan said…
Soup looks FABULOUS! Will you share the recipe?
Ironjack said…
Absolutely! Possibly the easiest recipe for a soup I've ever run across. Enjoy!

Ginger Melon Soup

3 cu cantaloupe cubed
3 cu watermelon cubed and seeded
3 cu honeydew cubed
2 cu fresh orange juice
1 tbsp fresh ginger peeled and minced

Place 1 cu of each melon in a large bowl. Puree reamining melion and orange juice in small batches in a blender or food processor until smooth. Add puree to cubed melon and stir in ginger. Chill for 1 hr.
swan said…
Thanks for the recipe, will try it very soon. I know melon breaks down quite a bit when blended. What's the approx. yield for this recipe so I can plan # of servings?
Ironjack said…
Well. I know it all adds up to 10 or so cups of liquid. The difficulty is that when cutting up the fruit depending on how small the cube you get different results.

So my modification on the whole thing: 1/2 a honeydew, 1/2 a cantelope, 1/2 a "personal sized" watermellon (about 8 inch diameter) ended up yielding something on par 14-16 cups of liquid (or mostly filling my largest disposable glad ware) Sorry I can't be more precise. I believe the original recipe says it served 6. I think standardize on weight would have been more useful for a consistent result on servings.

Hope that helps lemme know if you need anything else and thanks for dropping by!

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