spice-crusted pork tenderloin

You all know of my deep and abiding love of all things pork, but I have been keeping a dirty little secret from you: I am not a fan of pork tenderloin. I love the texture of it, but similar to beef tenderloin, it has very little flavor in and of itself, and to a card-carrying meat lover, that's kind of sad-making. That, along with the fact that tenderloin is super lean and easy to over-cook have led me to just basically avoid buying it for many years.

Until this past weekend.

Sexy meat.

I found a recipe for spice-crusted pork tenderloin in a Cooks Illustrated collection of "skillet dinners". They showed medallions of rosy moist pork heavily crusted with spice and served with a sexy golden-brown potato roesti (which, for the unintiated, is basically a giant pan-fried hash brown and is one of the best things you can make with potatoes. Which is saying a lot, in my book, because I love me some potatoes). I was sold. I needed to try it. I tried to talk myself out of it, but it just wasn't working. The hook was firmly set and I surrendered to the pull.

The recipe calls for rolling the tenderloins in a mixture of spices (caraway seeds, ground coriander, nutmeg, allspice, salt and black pepper), then searing the meat off on all sides in a hot pan with a bit of melted butter. The meat then goes in a baking dish in a 425 degree oven for 12-15 minutes until it hits 140 degrees. You take the meat out at that point, tent it with foil, and let it rest until it hits 150. I ended up having to leave mine in the oven for about 22 minutes to get it to 140 degrees, but that was entirely my own fault because I didn't pull the meat out of the fridge until like 20 minutes before I wanted to cook, which is a rookie move.

Even with the added cooking time, the meat stayed super juicy and tender, though. And when I say tender, I mean like...you could cut it with the side of your fork. No knives necessary. Redonkulous. I think next time I make this, I'm going to pre-rub the meat (hurrrr) with the spice mixture and let it sit for a while before I cook it, just to see if the flavors sink in more. I suppose you could brine the tenderloin ahead of time if you were feeling really fucking ambitious about it, but a) I'm never that ambitious and b) I'd be a little worried that brining might turn the meat mushy rather than impart more flavor. I don't know. If you try it, tell me what you think.

The roesti was a little more work - I opted to shred my potatoes by hand rather than using my small and finicky food processor, so I got a good triceps workout holding the box grater at a weird angle in the bowl. You then have to rinse the excess starch off the shredded potato, then scoop it into a clean dish towel and wring as much water as you can out of it. You season the potato with salt and pepper, add a little corn starch to help bind the potato together better (there was a reason for this given in the write-up about the recipe but I was skimming so...yeah. No science today, sorry!), then plunk it all into a hot pan with some melted butter and keep squishing it down until it's a nice compact disc. It gets all GBD (golden brown delicious) on one side, then you flip it (which is a delicate operation, I tell you what), and let it get GBD on the other side. BOOM. Giant hash brown heaven. I will say, with regard to the roesti, that I should have had my heat turned up higher when I started, so it ended up kind of greasy. EVEN SO. Giant hash brown. So crunchy, much nom.



I steamed up some green beans with almonds to complete the plate. In retrospect, I could have made them more fancy with like some orange zest and cranberries, but...eh. I'm the weirdo who likes green beans even raw, so they don't need much fancying up for me to shove them in my nom-hole.

God, nom-hole sounds dirty. I'm keeping it. I love it. Heeeeee.

Anyway - this dinner is gloriously gluten-free (assuming you're doing your own due diligence on your spices). If you're going the Paleo or Primal route, you'd want to omit the corn starch and white potatoes, depending on how strict you're being.

fridge-emptying Paleo breakfast bake

I am not a morning person. That's not to say that I don't LIKE mornings, because they're actually my favorite time of day - but I do not like being expected to function in any sort of productive manner before about 10am. Trying to feed myself and my husband a decent breakfast tends to be at odds with my desire to maintain a sloth-like morning agenda.

Most mornings lately, I've been having a pumpkin smoothie for breakfast because a) it's fast and b) it fills me up. There's also some nutrition in there somewhere I'm sure - but the simple fact is, dumping things in the food processor doesn't take a whole lot of mental fortitude. That's key in the blurry pre-10am hours around here, trust me.

However, this coming week we're going to be traveling, which means two things (well, more than two, but for the purpose of this blog post, I'm saying two) :

 1. I need to use up some leftover food in the fridge, and

 2. I want to create as few dirty dishes as possible, because the less dishes I have to wash the night before going on holiday, the better.

To be fair, the less dishes I have to wash EVER, the better...but you know what I mean, I'm sure.

This breakfast bake checks both those boxes. Not only did it use up all the leftover bits in my fridge, but since I did the washing up directly after making it, it becomes very un-dish-intensive. Also, it gets bonus points for me not having to do anything TO it in the morning except put it on a plate and warm it up. BREAKFAST LAZINESS GOLD MEDAL! Literally the only thing lazier would be, like, cracking raw eggs into my mouth, which...no.

So, what I had hanging around was:

half a red bell pepper
half an onion
half a box of mushrooms
about 3/4 of a pound of pork sausage
nine eggs
one large Russet potato

Aside from the chopping involved, this could not be easier. I browned the sausage, then scooped it out to drain on paper towels while I sauteed the chopped veg in a little bit of the leftover fat. I washed the potato, poked it with a fork a few times, then stuck it in the microwave for about nine minutes. While the veg was getting soft in the pan, I cracked the eggs into a bowl and whisked them up. When the veg was read, I scooped it and the sausage into my baking dish (which I had swiped with olive oil just to ensure things wouldn't stick). When the potato was almost done, not quite cooked through, I pulled it out of the nuker, chopped it up (HOT POTATO, be careful, learn from my mistakes), tossed it with a little kosher salt and then threw it into the frying pan with the rest of the leftover pork fat. I cranked the heat up and let the potato get kind of brown and crispy in the pan, then scooped that into my veg and sausage mix. The egg got dumped over the top, dish got a little shake, then it went into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

Ta Dahs:

It's like a craggy landscape of nom.

As long as you use a sausage that doesn't have added sugar, gluten or processed weirdness, this is a Paleo- and Whole30-compliant dish. If you don't like sausage, you could use bacon, ham, ground bison, really whatever floats your canoe. There's also no saying that you have to eat it for breakfast - you could stick some in your facehole when ever...I don't judge.

leeky potato salad

We don't eat potatoes that often anymore, but I had a wicked potato salad craving last night (to go with my T-bone steak that was super on sale...score!), so I found a recipe in my latest issue of "Real Food" magazine (it's the little Martha Stewart one) and it was fantastic, semi-healthy, and the (unaltered) recipe is veg-friendly to boot! Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it because a) I was drunk and b) I was hungry. Sorry about that...;)

Anyway, here's the recipe as it was in the magazine:

2lb red potatoes, washed and chunked (bite-sized pieces, or quartered / halved if you're using little potatoes)
1 bunch leeks (about 2lbs, white and light green parts only)
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup or so of roughly chopped parsley

Boil potatoes in salted water for about 15 min or until tender. Trim leeks and split length-wise, cut into 3/4 inch chunks, rinse well. When potatoes are cooked, remove from boiling water with a slotted spoon and drain. Meanwhile, add rinsed leeks to the boiling water and let boil for about 10 min or until tender. When leeks are done, remove with slotted spoon, drain a little, then transfer to a blender. Add mustard, oil, vinegar, and a little of the water. Blend until smooth, adding water to thin if necessary. Pour warm dressing over potatoes, add chopped parsley, and toss to combine. Serve warm or room-temp.

Now...two things happened while I was making this. The first was that I somehow ended up with cilantro rather than parsley, so I skipped that. The second was that, as previously mentioned, I had been drinking wine since I started cooking. In my inebriated state I had a mini-epiphany and decided to crisp up some bacon and crumble that into the salad as well. The result reaffirmed yet again my personal mantra that Bacon Makes Everything Better.

Also, I would point out that unless you drain the ever loving crap out of the leeks once they're cooked, you likely won't need anywhere near the amount of water the recipe calls for. I used 1/4 cup and my dressing was quite thin. Next time I'll start with no additional water and just eyeball whether or not the dressing needs thinning once it's been blended.

And just to prove that it's not just a merlot-induced memory, I'm having the leftover salad for lunch today (sadly not drunk), and it's still REALLY friggin' good. In fact, I warmed it up a little in the microwave and added a packet of tuna packed in olive oil to it, and my mouth is very happy.

another turkey burger variation

One of the things I love most about cooking is being able to open the fridge, pull out some seemingly useless bits of stuff, and make something tasty out of them. Burgers are endlessly versatile, and thus work very well for for me on those use-up-the-random-bits nights.

Tonight I had ground turkey, some mushrooms, onions and a little bit of chopped fresh parsley that I wanted to use up. I sliced up the mushrooms and half of the onion and tossed them into a pan with some olive oil. While those cooked down, I grated the rest of the onion and mixed it into the ground turkey along with the chopped parsley and a dash of cayenne pepper. By the time my onion and mushroom was done cooking down, I had the burgers made. I scooped out the onions and mushrooms, added a little more oil, and put the patties into the hot pan to cook. When they were done, I topped them with a slice of cheese and the hot onions and mushrooms.

The broccoli was just stir-fried with a few cloves of garlic, and the oven fries were my standard Yukon Gold wedges tossed with sea salt, olive oil and some dried chives.

The only thing I'd do differently next time would be to use Swiss cheese instead of American...other than that, I thought they came out great.

turkey burgers, potato wedges, cherry tomato salad

Tonight I made turkey burgers. I put in my usual grated onion, and added some chili powder. I topped them with sharp cheddar cheese. The potato wedges were made from Yukon Gold potatoes tossed in olive oil, a little garlic salt and some dried chives. The potato wedges get a little better every time I make them, which makes me happy. I've figured out that they need about 30 min @ 450 and then another 10-15 min under the broiler to really crisp up the way I like them.

The salad was sort of a riff on guacamole. I chopped up a (very) ripe avocado, some cherry tomatoes, and a little onion. I grated a clove of garlic into it, added just a little salt, and the juice of half a lime. I tossed everything together and let it get nice and cold. It turned out very well, though Mark commented that the raw garlic was a little hot for him. I thought it was a good pain, myself. ;)