Barbecued pork tenderloin with herb butter

After a wonderful week at Naramata in the heart of the wine country in the Okanagan, we were lucky enough to prolong our vacation by one more night staying at my friends house in Summerland.  This is always an excuse to cook up a feast to enjoy sitting outside on a warm Okanagan evening enjoying old friends and wine picked up at the surrounding wineries.

This evening there was going to be 9 of us and I was picking up the food.  I chose pork tenderloin as they are lean and tasty and feed a crowd with out spending too much money.  The only drawback of pork tenderloin is that like chicken breasts it can be a little dry, so I decided to butterfly the tenderloins and smear with herb butter, to help keep them moist.

Monk McQueens

If I was going to give a prize for the best deck in Vancouver, Monk Mcqueens would come very high on the list. It is set over the water in False Creek and is extensive, my only complaint is that on a very hot sunny evening like the one that we were lucky enough to have there is no shade.  Even the umbrellas are not the kind that bend.  I really think they should invest in some bending umbrellas.

They advertise themselves as a fresh seafood and oyster bar and the menu is very heavy on the seafood with a few non fish choices. We had trouble choosing a wine, and when we finally chose one, we decided that we did not care for it. They very accommodatingly said that as this was one that they served by the glass we could pick another one at no cost. We wanted to order a couple of appetizers to share as a couple of party were not staying for dinner.  But there are not a lot of choices on the menu that lent them selves to this.  We decided on panko coated calamari $14.00 and tuna poke $15.00.

The calamari was crisp and fresh and served with tatziki.  This was good but nothing out of the ordinary.  The Tuna poke was in fact soy marinated tartar with avocado and won ton chips.

Grilled chicken marinated in yogurt

Marinating chicken breasts in yogurt helps keep them moist, and when you are cooking with skinless boneless chicken breasts you have to take all the help you can get to keep them from being dry. Since my husband is away for a week back east, I was cooking for myself and was trying to keep it lean, and so I bought two free range chicken breasts and had one for dinner and put the other in the freezer in the marinade for later.

I wanted to add some flavour as well as moistness so I used some garlic and herbs de provance.

For two chicken breasts.

2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons of herb de provence (or any other herbs you have on hand)
1 teaspoon of course salt
1/2 cup of plain yogurt
2 chicken breasts.

Combine the garlic, herbs and salt in a pestle and mortar or mini chopper.

Grind up to create a flavour paste.

Olympic mini cup cakes

At work we decided to celebrate the coming London Olympics by having our own mini Olympic games.  So what is more appropriate for a mini Olympics than mini cup cakes.

We organized 4 events, running relay, egg and spoon race, 3 legged race and shot put (with bean bags), there were six teams China, Romania, India, Philippines, Canada and of course Team Great Britain.

The event lasted about an hour and there was much hilarity as batons (bananas) were squashed, equipment failed (nylons tying legs together ripped) and sadly Canada and India failed to win even one medal. We put this down to Canada being really much better at the Winter Olympics and India's athletes were underfunded and lacked proper equipment (there nylons ripped). I am proud to say however that Team GB won the medal count, we can only hope the same is true at the larger games in London.

Clafouti

For dessert for French Bastille Day day dinner clafouti was requested. Clafouti is a very traditional french dessert, usually made with cherries, but other fruit in season such as plums and blackberries can be used.  But we are in cherry season so we used cherries and in honour of Julia Child's 100th birthday on August 15 this year we stuck pretty close to Julia Child's original recipe.

Recipe for 6 servings

1 1/4 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar, divided
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup flour
3 cups cherries, pitted
powdered sugar, for garnish


Preheat oven to 350, combine the milk, 1/3 cup sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt and flour. You could use a blender, but I used a whisk and a bowl.


Lightly butter deep pie plate or some other similar baking dish, and pour a 1/4-inch layer of the blended mixture over the bottom. Set remaining batter aside. Place dish into the oven for about 7-10 minutes, until a film of batter sets in the pan but the mixture is not baked through. Remove from oven (but don’t turn the oven off, yet).

Distribute the pitted cherries over the set batter in the pan. I have to say thank you to Helen for pitting all these cherries, we had to make two dishes and that was a lot of cherries.

Deconstructed ratatouille

To go along with the leg of lamb we decided to make ratatouille, but I wanted to use the barbecue to roast the vegetables rather than cooking them on the stove, so stopping me from slaving over a hot stove on a very hot day. I bought the mini peppers which are so prevalent here at the moment, they are so sweet and full of flavour, and I wanted to serve them whole. So we came up with the idea of just combining the ingredients that usually make up ratatouille and calling it deconstructed, which is very trendy these days.  Never let it be said that I am not on the cutting edge of food trends.

To feed 13

2 bags of mini peppers
1 large eggplant sliced
4 zucchini sliced
20 small tomatoes halved

First I roasted the mini peppers whole, until they were slightly charred but not too much.

French style Barbecued leg of lamb

For the bastille day dinner, I had decided to cook lamb as the main protein and as there were going to be 13 of us I decided to cook leg of lamb rather than rack, for mainly financial reasons.  It was a very hot day, so having the oven on for any length of time was not on, so I cooked this on the barbecue.  As this is not a very French way of cooking, I used French flavourings and added a red wine sauce at the end, so that if fit the brief.

I deboned these legs myself, but you can buy them already deboned, or if you are lucky enough to be getting local lamb from a butcher, you could probably get the butcher to do this for you. I cooked to two legs and this fed 13 with a little barbecued chicken.

After deboning the legs I smeared the inside with a grainy dijon mustard and sprinkled on a thinly sliced garlic clove and a sprig of fresh rosemary and salt and pepper.

I folded the meat over itself enclosing the rosemary and garlic and trussed them up to hold it all together.