A 3-course collaboration.

So this is a month late, but I don't care. Before I left for UCI, Brian and I collaborated and made a 3 course meal.

Menu:
Seared Scallops over a Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Pork Loin Roulade with Cranberry-Pear Stuffing over a Balsamic Cranberry Reduction
Pear Soup


And what better way to show collaboration than by putting your knives together? Mine's the professional looking one.


So the first course was seared scallops over a roasted red pepper sauce. That, of course, meant we had to roast peppers.


For some reason, I didn't take any more pictures of the process. Final plated pictures are at the end of this post.

The 2nd course was a pork loin roulade stuffed with cranberry and pear stuffing, over a balsamic cranberry sauce. Here's Brian spiral-cutting the pork loin...


... so that it unrolls into a nice flat sheet of delicious (expensive) pork.

His knife is shiny, but it's just not professional-looking, don't you think? Totally.


Of course, season the pork, as you would with almost everything you cook.


Make the stuffing (cut up pears and somewhat stale bread, add cranberries, add a bit of chicken broth and roll up the pork. That's me rolling up the pork, and trust me, it ain't easy.

So when making roulades (especially big roulades like this), you want to secure whatever you're rolling up, either with kitchen twine or with toothpicks. I didn't have kitchen twine, and this was too big for toothpicks, so uh.....we used floss to tie up the pork.

A lot of floss.

After about an hour of roasting, take the whole thing out, sear it in a big pan, and let it rest for a bit. Then cut it up and serve.


Final pictures, with commentary:

The seared scallops were pretty good! That was actually my first time eating scallops--I don't know if it was a good idea to cook something I've never tasted before, but it worked out. The roasted red pepper sauce, on the other hand, was waaay too mild. Using bell peppers wasn't the best idea.


The "pork" part of the pork roulade was great. No wonder a whole pork loin is expensive...
The stuffing was too fruity. Looking back, I don't know what we were thinking when we decided on a pear-cranberry stuffing...with a cranberry sauce.

That balsamic cranberry reduction was great, though.


The pear soup was pretty easy. Sauté the pears in butter and brown sugar, and let it cook in the butter-brown sugar mixture until they become soft. Then blend it up (my stick blender got some good usage that day) and serve.


Overall, it was...alright. I think our total cooking time was 6 hours or something ridiculous like that. Cook more, learn more, eh?