I'm cooking my way through this month's Cook's Illustrated and last night made the pan-seared, oven-roasted pork tenderloin with a garlic cilantro sauce and smashed potatoes.

I'm not normally a huge fan of pork tenderloin, but man, was this good. I didn't think unbrined pork could taste this good, even. And the sauce was incredible- while the pan-seared pork is oven-roasting, you cook a garlic paste in the still hot skillet, getting all the pork fond in there. You cook it for a long time, and add brown sugar and chile flakes and then cook it some more, and then lime juice and chives and cilantro and the leftover pork juice from when the pork rests (after the oven-roasting). And then whisk in some butter. Yum.

The smashed potatoes, too, were incredible. I was a little dubious about putting cream cheese in my mashed potatoes, but, you know, if Cook's Illustrated told me to put dirt in my mashed potatoes, I would. I think they were the best potatoes I've ever made. However, they were also MUCH more caloric and fatty than the buttermilk mashed potatoes from A New Way To Cook, which are also excellent. So I think these smashed potatoes will be my splurge potatoes and the buttermilk mashed potatoes will be my usual potatoes.