Summer Dinner, Pork and Salads

Brian and Will

On the menu:
-Kasha salad
-Pork tenderloin
-Chopped salad
-Bread and cheese
-6-pack Sol, 12-pack Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager

“Kasha salad—only for hippies and Mennonites. Wait, type something funny about hippies and Mennonites and attribute it to me.” –Will

“Did you know I once hooked up with a Mennonite?” –Brian

Kasha salad ingredients:
-1 cup kasha
-2 cups chicken broth
-1 egg
-olive oil
-1 medium broccoli crown
-7 roma tomatoes
-1 medium Vidalia sweet onion
-1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley

Cold pasta and/or grain salads, like greyhounds (and Brian’s favorite summer drink, the caipirinha), mean the beginning of summer. While there are a lot of bad, oily pasta salads out there, a good non-lettuce salad is a great hot-day side. This one was Will and Brian walking down the crunchy-people aisle after we couldn’t find faro at the Teeter; you could certainly could get a similar result with other grains (quinoa, Israeli couscous, etc).

First thing: get the onions chopped. Fill a container with enough water to cover the onions and enough salt to make the water taste saltier than the ocean but not so much to make it cloudy. Pour in the onions and leave sitting for up to an hour. You might as well chop the broccoli into 1” diameter florettes, chop the tomatoes, and mince the parsley now too—that knife’s only getting more terrifying as you run through those Sols. Reserve those vegetables for now.

Combine the kasha and the egg, then toast the kasha for 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat. Bring the chicken broth to the rolling boil at the same time. Put the kasha into the chicken broth; reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. If you’ve already spent a couple hours drinking $2 Miller Lites on a patio and you accidentally turn the heat off in the middle (Will), don’t sweat it. Just crank it back up and take a guess at how long ago you ran your sweet, perfectly round ass (as judged by yourself) into the burner knob. Remove from heat.

Pan-fry broccoli for 3-4 minutes in a couple tablespoons of olive oil (just enough to keep it from burning). Put the broccoli, tomatoes, onions, and parsley into the still-hot Kasha—it’ll hold it’s heat for a solid half an hour. Cool (throw it in the fridge if you’re impatient) and serve after dressing to taste. You can use any vinaigrette – equal parts oil and vinegar, with enough mustard to emulsify, and then salt, sugar, pepper and garlic to taste, works really well. Remember to keep the dressing LIGHT – this is a summer salad. Let the vegetables do the work. There’s plenty of flavor and texture to take care of it. You’re more than welcome to go with a simple acidic dressing too of just lemon and olive oil. If people are really worried about flavor, have them salt and pepper it more aggressively. Or pour them a little more wine.


“We’re pretty much done at this point. All we need to do is pull the pork?” – Brian

The pork is simple. Mostly because it was storebought, but it need not be (storebought, that is. Pork Tenderloin should never be difficult). You can season these bad boys with just about anything. This particular one came with the garlic-peppercorn crusting, but teriyaki is good, so is sweet and sour…honestly, the options are limited only by creativity.

Pre-heat the oven on Bake/Roast to 425. Stop living in fear and take it out of the oven at 142-145 degrees—there are now barely any trichinosis cases a year (12) because of, as Wikipedia says, “legislation prohibiting the feeding of raw meat garbage to hogs.” While it’s shocking that Congress finally stood up to Big Raw Meat Trash, it means you don’t have to cook your pork to 165 degrees and make it a tasteless, dry, chewy (and just plain inferior) piece of meat.

Chopped salad was a simple corn, bean, tomato, cucumber, onion salad. Bread was a whole wheat round with some smoked mozzarella cheese spread (both from the Teeter).