Coriander Crusted Pork Tenderloin…It’s What’s for Dinner.
Pork roast that’s been sprinkled with a chile-lime seasoning, slow roasted, shredded and then tossed in a spicy orange tomato sauce. So flavorful, all it needed was a dollop of sour cream and a slice of avocado.
This is a fabulous brown sugar, horseradish glaze for grilled ham steak. Great for breakfast or a quick and easy dinner.
Remember my little baking adventure? The one where I made Jalapeno, cheddar, chive biscuits while following along with Joy the Baker Cookbook challenge? My floured-up kitchen mess and the time it took to restore it back to it’s pristine condition is quite clear in my memory.
Anyway, that recipe made quite a large batch, so the remainder of these muffins have been in the freezer. I decided to thaw them out and turn them into a cheesy, creamy, sausage-y southwestern style strata.
This is a quick, easy, and delicious dish for using leftover pork roast.
We’ve just returned from a trip back to Kansas to move my mom out of her assisted living apartment and into the nursing home. An exhausting whirlwind trip which left us mentally and physically worn down.
Elk Jam. Definition:
— noun
A large number of vehicles stopping alongside a road to view elk, becoming so obstructed that they can scarcely move
Elk-jammed
— adjective
The definition is just in case you read the title and visualized me preparing something really odd using ground elk meat, pectin, sugar and cute little canning jars.
We’ve just returned from a few days in Estes Park, which is 2-1/2 hours northwest of Denver and just a few miles from the East Entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. This time of year the population of rutting elk outnumber the population of tourists…but just barely. This is a photo of an elk jam along a roadway in Rocky Mountain National Park. As you can see, they can stop traffic and draw a crowd. Abandoning vehicles, vying for position, cameras clicking, we are officially the Elk Paparazzi.
As you know, Sunday mornings around our house are reserved for a big hearty breakfast, which 99.99999% of the time involves a sunny-side up egg. Here’s the latest and here’s what I did.
I grew up on a farm in the middle of Kansas where the closest town of any size was Hutchinson. With a population of about 40,000 and known to locals as Hutch, it’s also referred to as the Salt City because it sits on miles of salt mines. It hosts the Kansas State Fair and the Men’s National Junior College Basketball Tournament. When I was growing up there, we bought our groceries and shopped for clothes from stores that were owned by people who lived in Hutchinson and we relied on The Hutchinson News-Herald to keep us connected with neighboring communities of small farming towns.
For longer than I can remember, The Hutchinson News has been faithful about providing some sort of regularly published readership submitted recipe roundup. In recent years it’s been an insert in the newspaper, and in earlier years spiral-bound cookbooks. The recipes were a compilation from ones published each day in the News-Herald ‘s Favorite Recipe column. The daily women’s page feature was started as an experiment in 1948.
Each publication was overseen and recipes were judged by local business women who held titles such as Home Service Director with the local gas company, Home Economist with the County Extension Office, or a Home Editor with the newspaper. I look forward to sharing several of the recipes from these books, recipes from a simpler time, recipes from the heartland where ingredients were few and instructions didn’t include terms like chiffonade, saute or macerate.
I have three of these old cookbooks from my mom’s collection. The recipe I’m going to talk about today is one I found in the book with recipes collected from 1952 – 1955. The oldest edition I have was published in 1949 and as the cover indicates, sold for 60 cents. Inside it states that it’s the 2nd edition in the series.
We like anything pickled, so when I spotted this recipe for pickled pineapple I had to give it a try. Incredibly easy, it simply states “serve with poultry, meat or fish“. Following instructions, a week later I had a tangy sweet and sour topping for my meat course.
I chose pork tenderloin to slice into 1 inch medallions. Using my cast iron skillet, I seared the meat well and then sautéed until just pink inside. While the meat was cooking, I fine chopped and deflamed some onion to sprinkle on the pork before topping with the pickled fruit. I learned the deflaming technique from Rick Bayless. Simply chop onion, place in a colander and then submerge the colander in a bowl of cold water to cover the onion. Let sit for a few minutes and drain. This technique takes that heat out of the onion resulting in a milder flavor. The sweet and sour pineapple was a great topping for the pork and the onion added a dimension and crunch.
Here’s the recipe as printed in the cookbook.
Pickled Pineapple Recipe
Served with a side of sautéed asparagus we had an easy and tasty dinner.
Out of interest I Googled Louise Dick. She was born in 1913 and died in 1967. She is buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery.
Pickled Pineapple on Pork Medallions…It’s What’s For Dinner
First of all, I refuse to have dinner on the table at 3:30 in the afternoon just so I have good light for my blog photos. That’s right, with 14,000 foot Mt. Evans as a back drop in our Western sky, we start losing light at 4:30 during our Winter months.
Why am I like a hundred years old and have never heard of or tasted Chow Chow until this summer?
I saw my first ever mention of Chow-Chow from Chris over at Nibble Me This. Wikipedia tells us that Chow Chow is popular in the south, in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Even my good friend Cauleen, who grew up in Pennsylvania, looked at me like I was from outer space, when she learned I had never had it. Especially since the area around my hometown where I grew up supports large Amish and Mennonite communities. Nope, never heard of it.
I was thrilled to find that my favorite local canning vendor at our Farmer’s Market sold Chow Chow so I grabbed a couple of jars, one regular and one hot. We’ve tried both and think they’re absolutely delicious. We’ll be buying a few jars to get us through an otherwise Chow Chow-less Winter.
Just as Chris suggested, we piled some on top of hot dogs. Oh-my delicious!
I threw a pork roast in the crock pot and let is simmer all day in some Carolina style sauce, topped it with some Chow Chow and it was out of this world.
Let’s talk about Carolina style sauces. We recently had Carolina style pulled pork at a local BBQ joint and really found this vinegar-based sauce to be a wonderful mixture of flavors.
In Googling Carolina Style Sauces so I could make it at home, I found Northern Carolina, Eastern Carolina, Northeastern Carolina, Western Carolina sauce recipes. I didn’t take the time to sift through the ingredients to find out what the difference was in all the variations and just chose a generic crock pot version and tweaked it to accommodate the ingredients I had on hand. My Southern readers will have to fill me in on the difference in what these regionalized Carolina sauces are all about.
We found the recipe to be quite tasty and it’s now in my database.
Spicy Carolina Style Pulled Pork:
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
5 lbs pork shoulder
1/2 cup red wine vinegar, 1/2 cup seasoned rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon powdered cayenne pepper
2 red onions, quartered
2 yellow onions, quartered
Combine the brown sugar, paprika, salt and pepper, and rub the mixture over the roast. Wrap tightly in plastic, and refrigerate a few hours, overnight is best.
In a bowl, combine the vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, red pepper flakes, sugar, mustard, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. Mix well.
Unwrap the roast. I lined my crock pot with banana leaves, and rough cut onions to make a nice flavorful bed. Place roast on top of onions, drizzle most of the vinegar mix over the top, reserving some to add to the shredded meat at the end. Wrap banana leaves around the roast.
Cover and cook on low for 7 to 8 hours, or high for 4 to 5 hours.
Remove the meat and onions to a cutting board. Remove skin and set aside. Using two forks, pull and shred the pork. Chop the onions, and mix into the shredded meat. Using a fork, remove some of the fat from under the skin, mince, and add to the shredded meat and onions as needed for moisture and flavor.
Serve on warm buns or crusty hard rolls, with the remaining vinegar mixture on the side.
Chow Chow Topped Sandwiches,
They’re What’s For Dinner.