My mother is the reason I cook. When I was eight or nine, she let me experiment (make a huge mess) in the kitchen of our tiny L.A. condo, making pancake, after flat pancake, after burned pancake. I'm fairly certain my first attempts were terrible, but she encouraged me relentlessly and never let me know how bad it really tasted. These days, we cook together. Mom is no longer shy about telling me if a recipe sucks, and I'm not afraid to elbow my way in and change the way she's done things for 50 years. It's a good balance.
A few years ago, we made a pork loin stuffed with boozy fruit that was incredible but time consuming. Dried fruit has to soak overnight in Whiskey, there's lots of complicated rubbing of pork and stuffing and string. Basically, too much kitchen for us on a sunny day.
This weekend, we stuck to the spirit of fruit and booze, but made this deliciousness instead:
Slow Roasted Pork Loin in a Cherry Wine Sauce
1 package frozen dark cherries - $3
2 cups red table wine - $2 (@$6/bottle - you don't need quality for this recipe)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pork Loin $6 (@4.99/lb)
Coarse Salt and Ground Pepper
Total: $11
Preheat Oven to 350. In a roasting pan, rub loin with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Cover with tin foil and bake for 1 hour. The meat will poach itself in its own juices.
In the meantime, prepare your sauce. It's quite difficult to do. You have to open the bag of cherries. Open the wine. Pour yourself a glass. Pour the cherries into a saucepan, Pour two cups of wine over the cherries and let simmer for 1 hour.
At the one hour mark, we poured the cherries and wine over the pork and continued to cook it covered for another half hour, then uncovered for another half hour (Two hours total cooking time for maximum tenderness). This gave us a very broth-y, fragrant, not too sweet sauce, rather than a syrupy sauce. If I had to do it again, I might let it bake uncovered the last hour and see if I could get a thicker sauce without adding sugar or another thickener.
No matter the viscosity of the sauce, the taste and smell was heavenly. We served with mashed potatoes, no room at the inn for green vegetables this time.
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We just made this, and it was awesome!! I have never in my life made a pork loin. But it turned out awesome. We had it with brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes. But... where do you buy your meat? Our pork loin was like $15 (at new seasons. But I got 2 pounds). So yummy though.
ReplyDeleteOh and is that chile relleno in your profile pic? Post a recipe for THAT! It's my favorite favorite mexican thing to eat. Yum.
Pork loin can be very expensive and difficult to find organic unless you go to New Seasons or Whole Foods. I bought mine at Trader Joe's, they don't have an organic version, but for some reason I feel better about getting it there than at Fred Meyer. If you want to go organic at a lower cost, you could buy an organic pork Roast, which just takes longer because it's a bigger cut, or organic pork chops. You could make the sauce then quickly brown the chops in a pan. I think it would be almost as good that way.
ReplyDeleteand YES, that is a Chile Relleno in my profile pic. Those were made with chiles from the farmer's market this summer, but I will happily get the ingredients for that in the next few weeks and post the recipe. The tomato sauce has ingredients you wouldn't expect, like cinnamon and cloves. So delicious, my mouth is watering already.
Thanks for reading and trying the recipes!
I cant wait to try this. But I am going to make it even easier. My neighbor makes cherry wine, and actually just brought a half gallon over. I was looking online for something to use it for. SO thank you. I am sure this is going to be DELICIOUS.
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