Bacon-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Caraway’d Cabbage and Apples by Alison Roman

Imagine you’re in a grocery store, and you’re tasked with selecting the most average, inconsequential ingredient for every type of food. I know it’s a strange hypothetical but stick with me here. 

Snacks: saltines, Cheese: swiss, Cookies: Fig Newtons, Meat: ground turkey OR pork tenderloin, Veggies: definitely cabbage

Apples and bacon are excellent, but still, I was quite skeptical. Oh me of little faith. Leave it to Alison to turn dull foods like pork tenderloin and cabbage into something so fantastic. I ate seconds and thirds. I’ve never enjoyed cabbage so much. Unless finely shredded, raw cabbage doesn’t do anything for me. Sauteed cabbage is limpy and sad. But a roasted cabbage head gets tender in the middle and crispy on the outside, now that’s the kind of cabbage I’ll eat weekly! Okay, monthly. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. 

There’s not much more to this dish outside of the ingredients in the title, except for two that really pull it all together: caraway seeds and red wine vinegar. 

I must confess, I don’t remember ever cooking with caraway seeds, and I couldn’t have told you, even remotely, what they taste like. So I did a bit of a deep dive. According to Wikipedia, caraway is “also known as meridian fennel and Persian cumin” and “is similar in appearance to other members of the carrot family.” Another site says it has a bit of an anise flavor. Based on those descriptions, I was even more confused. But when I finally got ahold of the seeds, I saw that they are practically identical to fennel seeds, just a darker brown and a bit finer. And as odd as it sounded on the internet, they did add a slightly cumin-y, licorice-y, anise-y flavor that complemented the salty pork, tangy apples, and bland cabbage. 

The final finish with vinegar, something Alison calls for a lot, made all of the dish’s elements feel lighter and brighter. It’s also what gave the cabbage the final flavor push it needed. (Small confession. In my old advertising job, I worked exclusively on a client that made vinegar. Their ads always talked about how vinegar could “brighten any dish,” and I thought it sounded like hokey advertising-speak, a little ridiculous. How could you actually “brighten” a dish, besides shining a flashlight on your food? But now, as I attempt to write about vinegar myself, I honestly can’t come up with a better word for how it transforms food. If salt makes flavors taste more like themselves, then vinegar brightens them. Fine, I was wrong!) 

This meal was the simplest main dish to assemble so far. Which served me well, since I needed to put it together quickly and transport it to a dear friend’s apartment to roast. Kailey and I spent the evening talking about how much this meal surprised and delighted us, among other fun topics like popular 90’s Christian rock bands. Jars of Clay, anyone?

15 recipes cooked, 210 to go.

Smashed Sweet Potatoes with Maple and Sour Cream by Alison Roman

I first heard about this recipe from my friend Margaret well over a year ago. She had borrowed nothing fancy from the library and was immediately drawn to this recipe. We share a deep love for sweet potatoes in all forms. So it’s no surprise that this was the inaugural recipe, the gateway to my journey of cooking through Alison Roman’s cookbooks. 

The entire recipe concept is basically found in the name. A baked sweet potato, smashed and fried in oil and butter until the skin is dark and crispy, then smothered in fresh herbs, sweet maple syrup, and tangy sour cream & lemon juice, with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. It has all of the textural and flavor variance you could want in one dish: sweet, salty, sour, creamy, soft, crispy, crunchy. 

This recipe doesn’t need any selling, so I’ll just provide a few anecdotes about the ingredients used. 

Alison lets you know that small sweet potatoes are best, and she is quite right. Not only do they bake and cool faster, they also fit more easily into one pan for the crisping process and make for a better serving portion. Look for potatoes that are maybe just a tad larger than your palm. I also recommend baking all of the sweet potatoes at once, and storing any extras you know will become leftovers in the refrigerator before crisping in the pan and adding the fixings. That way you can cook them in the butter and oil just before eating, preserving the integrity of the crunchy skin. (Shoutout to Kearci, my nothing fancy benefactor and best friend, for that tip!)

Sour cream alternatives: If you’re like me and can’t have cow’s dairy (sad face), don’t be dismayed - you have options! I subbed the sour cream with Goat’s milk yogurt, which can be found at Trader Joes. Though the yogurt’s consistency is much thinner, it still achieved the creamy sour balance point to the maple syrup that Alison is going for. If cow’s milk doesn’t bother you, but you don’t have sour cream, then plain Greek yogurt will be a fine substitute. 

The recipe does call for some toasted buckwheat groats to be sprinkled over the finished potatoes, adding an extra crunch. I’ve never had these before, and didn’t plan well enough ahead to buy them. If you make this with the groats, please tell me all about it! I want to know if they add anything beyond texture.

Finally, a short PSA about flaky sea salt. Until a few short months ago, I was misinformed, and frankly downright naive about the difference between coarse Kosher salt and flaky sea salt. That is to say that I thought they were the same thing. I was gravely mistaken. Unlike coarse Kosher salt, flaky sea salt comes in actual flake (not grain) form, and maintains its structure even after being added to a dish. It provides tiny, delightful, salty bursts that punctuate bites and often linger in the mouth. They are visually lovely too and can make anything you cook appear fancier. It’s a small thing that I take great delight in. (This is the kind I use.) 

4 recipes cooked, 221 recipes to go.

Garlicky Broccoli and Greens with Hazelnut and Coriander by Alison Roman

Here we have another simple-to-make side that goes well with pretty much any main dish you can think of. Its ingredients are few and flexible, and it’s bursting with flavor and texture. This recipe comes from nothing fancy. 

The tenets of this dish are the greens - broccoli and kale, olive oil, garlic, lemon, a crunchy nut, and chopped coriander seed. Alison tells you that both grilling and roasting the greens are viable options. I’m confident that grilling would be delightful - I’d love to have taste some char marks on the broccoli stems. But alas, I don’t own a grill. Oven roasting it is. 

The torn kale and heads of broccoli are quartered - stem included! - tossed with oil, and roasted until slightly crispy. The inclusion of the stem was a relatively new choice for me - I usually get rid of it because it can be tough to chew and lacks flavor. Because of this dish, I’m no longer afraid of serving broccoli stems. When quartered, roasted and seasoned, they are a filling, tender bite of green that doesn’t overwhelm you with the fact that it’s a hunk of broccoli stem. Cutting them into quarters is really the right call here. 

Quartered broccoli & kale before they get crispy in the oven

While the greens are roasting, the garlic, hazelnuts, olive oil and coriander seeds get mixed together to prepare a seasoning bath into which the greens will eventually dive and relax. A few comments on the titular ingredients, hazelnuts and coriander seeds. 

I just don’t like hazelnuts. Their taste is revolting to me. I think I’ve always disliked them, but I didn’t consciously realize it until last year. I was travelling for work and had an hour to get lunch in the airport before my flight. Since the company was paying, I chose a sit-down restaurant. I ordered a beet and arugula salad with goat cheese and hazelnuts. After the first few bites, I noticed my mouth was scowling. Something in this salad tasted funky. I tried each ingredient separately to deduce the issue, and lo and behold, the hazelnuts were infecting the whole dish. It’s difficult to describe exactly what’s so off-putting to me. The only word that comes to mind is musty? Now that I know about my hazelnut aversion, I understand why I thought Nutella was gross as a kid. 

Anywho, if you too think hazelnuts taste musty, then I say swap those puppies for another nut like chopped almonds or pistachios, and call it a good day. 

If you’ve never purchased coriander seeds (found often at Whole Foods or in the bulk spice section of a place like Sprouts), now is the time. The crunchy texture of these tiny chopped seeds are the X factor in this dish, making it not your ordinary vegetable side. Coriander seeds don’t have to be one of those spices that you bought for one particular recipe and then languish on your shelf for the next 5 years, untouched. Once I discovered coriander seeds a few years ago, I’ve found myself reaching for them frequently. You just have to try them to fall in love. 

Alison tells us one more lovely thing about this side dish: it is still delicious when served at room temp. If you’re like me and you find it stressful to time your cooking so that all parts of your meal are simultaneously piping hot, then put your mind at ease, and make this dish first. It can sit on the table well ahead of mealtime, watching you prep its fellow delicious partners. 

3 recipes cooked, 222 recipes to go.