Welcome to Cooking Stuff! This week marks three years of this newsletter. That’s the longest I have ever stuck with a job and today I feel the same excitement as I did in 2020. Thank you for being here!! Love you, mean it big time today.
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I have been sitting on this recipe for some time and while there is nothing wrong with that, I don’t like doing that. I thrive in the heat of the moment situations when I am filled with passion and excitement to share. This recipe came to be in winter and I have a little anxiety that its saucy coziness will feel out of place now in spring. But I don’t want to wait any longer to share it, I love it. I want you to love it too.
Here is the run down, we are marinating and cooking pork tenderloin. The pork gets cooked in the marinade which thickens into a sauce. Then you serve the dish however you like. It’s excellent over mashed potatoes, on its own, or with a salad.
If cooking pork intimidates you at all, do not fear a tenderloin. There are no bones or excessive fat. It’s tender and cooks quickly. The only way you can mess it up is by overcooking it and that won't happen because we are all using our thermometers, right? Checking the internal temperature is extra important here because the size of your pork tenderloins will vary. They range from 1/2 pound to 1.5 pounds. It all depends on the size of the pig. Any tenderloin will work in this recipe but the cooking time will vary.
So everything gets put into a ziplock bag. Olives, dates, a whole Meyer lemon sliced up (yes peel too), garlic, mustard, coriander, a little brown sugar, and vinegar. That’s our marinade and our sauce. In a pinch, you can marinate the pork for 2 hours. I usually prep it in the morning and leave it all day but overnight is great too.
When it is time to cook, the first step is browning the pork in a pan on the stove. Now, the marinade has sugar in it, and that sugar will get dark (uhh burn) quickly. I like to grab the pork in the bag with one hand and use my other hand on the outside of the bag to cuff it and wipe off as much marinade as possible. Tendies directly in the hot pan from there. Don’t stress when things are starting to look too brown. As long as you get a good sear on the first side, you are good to go. If you notice any hot spots maybe place your pork over it when you flip so that area doesn’t totally burn. Move your pork around the pan, that’s allowed and I do it a bunch. The bottom line is after you have a good sear of the first side and you get nervous, move on to the next step. All will be okay. Pull the pan from the heat, pour a bit of water in the pan, followed by all the contents left in the Ziploc bag.
Make sure you get every last olive, date, and drop of marinade out of that bag. From here the pork goes in the oven and will be done in no time. When it cooks down something truly magical happens. The lemon peel softens almost completely, the dates will melt and add sticky caramel flavor to our sauce, and the olives and vinegar balance it out. While the pork rests, butter and fresh herbs get added to finish our sauce. The tenderloin gets sliced into little medallions that get nestled back in the pan and coated in the sauce.
As long as you don’t overcook the pork, you’ll have a really juicy and flavorful dinner in 45 minutes. Enjoy!