Cookbook Challenge #32: The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter

We got a little "cheffy" with the latest installment of the Cookbook Challenge!  This time, we cook from the pages of The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter.

Elegant cooking at home

"The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter" was a PBS series that aired in 1999.  It was hosted by...well, Chef Charlie Trotter, the highly regarded, Chicago-based chef of ...well, Charlie Trotter's, a world class fine dining restaurant (which recently closed after a 25 year run).  The book is a companion to this television series which is intended to demystify "the professional techniques and tricks behind Trotter's show-stopping recipes, making them accessible for home cooks."

Given that we are cooking high-end food here, most of the recipes in the book are quite involved.  These are not recipes that you can crank out for a leisurely weeknight meal.  There is a lot of prep work, planning, and (for most of the recipes) numerous ingredients that go into each dish.

The recipe I chose to make was the Dried Fruit-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin and Roasted New Potatoes and Bacon-Sherry Vinaigrette. 

Here is the breakdown: For this dish, you need to prepare a mixture of dried fruit (cranberries, apricots, golden raisins, currants) combined with fresh sage.  Then you need to essentially drill a hole through the pork tenderloin lengthwise and stuff it with the fruit mixture.  You have some roasted new potatoes to prepare, along with some wilted radicchio.  And finally, there is a bacon-sherry vinaigrette to serve as a dressing.  What I am saying is this; the recipe has a lot of stuff going on!

While I found it challenging to time everything (I am just a humble home cook after all, not a trained chef!), and you do have to be a little more aggressive than you might think when stuffing the pork to really show the pork who is boss - in the end, the pork tenderloin was outstanding.  The savory pork combined with the sweetness of the sage-infused fruit was a winner, and the bacon-sherry vinaigrette offered a smoky-acidic brightness to the plate that really elevated the flavors.  Roasted new potatoes with fresh thyme are very tasty accompaniments, too.  

Dried Fruit-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin, a la The Kitchen Sessions

One thing I didn't really care for was the radicchio.  Too bitter for my liking, even if it did look pretty on the plate.  But oh, the pork and potatoes with that brilliant vinaigrette!  That was enough to overcome my negative opinion of the radicchio.  What a fun and delicious plate of food.

I think it is clear that The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter is not a book for everyone - definitely something for the more adventurous cooks seeing to prepare high-end restaurant-type dishes at home.  While not a book I would probably cook from very often, it is fun to attempt dishes like this from time to time, and the instructions Trotter offered allowed me to successfully produce a delicious and attractive meal.  And in that sense, the book definitely successfully achieves its mission.  

Plus, I now have an awesome and dazzling new pork recipe to add to my culinary arsenal.