Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

Balsamic pork tenderloin: tasty (but nothing special, at least on my first try) and could work with any cut of pork (tenderloin is honestly an odd choice for slow cooking, but it was available and is fast, which is why I bought it).  All credit goes to addapinch and all blame to me. See her post for beautiful pictures.  

Calorie Estimate (assuming tenderloin): 900

Ingredients

• 1 T cooking oil
• 1.5 lb pork tenderloin
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 T soy sauce
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 1 T honey
• 1/2 t ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (if using the thin, salad dressing stuff) or 1/4 cup of the good ($30 bottle, delicious on vanilla ice cream and strawberries) stuff
• 2 t red pepper flakes
• salt to taste

Preparation

1. In a dutch oven, season the tenderloin with some salt and brown in the oil.
2. Mix the everything else marinade together.  Warm it first if you like.
3. When the meat is browned, add the marinade (well, pre-sauce/cooking liquid, since we didn’t soak first, it’s not really a marinade).
4. Cook low and slow until it hits 160 in the center, the lower the heat and hold it there until you’re ready to break it down and are 10 minutes from putting dinner on the table.  (Original recipe calls for a slow cooker, but I don’t have one.  Alternative is to marinade in the sauce first.)
5. Remove the meat, reduce the sauce.
6. If you’ve been patient enough that it’s falling apart and you want a pulled pork texture, pull it! Or slice it, up to you. Either way, serve with the reduced sauce.

Served with roasted rosemary red potatoes and an arugula salad with simple garlic vinaigrette.

This wasn’t bad, but would be a lot better with a pork shoulder and 5 hours of slow cooking!

Great lunch: chard and sausage over polenta

No one part of this meal was new to me, but the total came together fantastically.  I had one leftover cooked italian sausage, sliced thin, mixed into pan-wilted greens to crisp as the greens cook, served over polenta (minus the parmesan because I need to go cheese shopping, plus a little extra olive oil and Hungarian hot paprika (I’m American, I can get away with paprika in polenta!)), with a drizzle of excellent balsamic vinegar on top.  Healthy, beautiful to look at, and delicious.

Calorie Estimate: 700

That’s all, no prep stuff.  The recipes are in the links.  I just wanted to record the whole package before I forget it.

Wilted greens with balsamic eggs

Taken from Chow.com.  This is a very fast, healthy dish that can make a good breakfast or light dinner.  The richness of loosely cooked eggs goes nicely with the greens, and balsamic vinegar is always tasty.  Serve with a bit of crusty bread, either as a base to the eggs or just to mop up the plate.

Calorie Estimate: 500 (w/o bread)

Ingredients

• 2 T olive oil (or 1 T olive oil and 1 T butter)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 garlic glove minced
• onion, little bit, diced, (or some green onion)
• 6-8 ounces of greens (swiss chard, spinach, arugula, dandelion, etc)
• 3 large eggs
• balsamic vinegar (2T cheap stuff, drizzle of good stuff)

Preparation

1. Remove any large or tough stems from the greens. Slice greens into 1/2 inch ribbons.
2. Over medium heat, warm 1 T olive oil in a skillet until it shimmers. Add onion and garlic, cook for about 30 seconds.
3. Add greens to skillet, season with a little salt and pepper.   Fold them around to coat with the oil.  Cook for about a minute until they wilt.  Remove the greens from the skillet and plate them.
4. Wipe out skillet.  Return it to the heat and add 1 T of oil (or butter).  Fry eggs sunnyside-up until the edges brown, the pan gets pretty dry, and the edges pull away from the pan, about 5 minutes.
5. If you’re using cheap balsamic, add 2 T to the eggs in the pan with about 2 minutes left on the cooking time.  Reduce and pour the remainder over the finished eggs.  If using the good stuff, just drizzle some on the eggs when they’re done.

Honey Balsamic Glaze (Very Good Food)

Prep and Cook time: 20 minutes

To accompany some poor man’s filet mignon (flat iron steak) and blue cheese appetizers for our Superbowl potluck (to which the jrwalsh couple brought calzones and bacon-wrapped dates and nkurz129 brought some homebrew), I made my first balsamic glaze.  Had I known how stupidly easy it is to make, I would not have waited 27 years to try for the first time.

You don’t need to spend money on great balsamic to make this.  Great balsamic should probably be left alone.  But, you should make sure that what you actually buy is balsamic vinegar.  A lot of the cheapest stuff is actually red wine vinegar doctored with brown sugar, and may be labeled “Balsamic vinegar of Modena”.  The real stuff will have one ingredient listed: balsamic vinegar (or aceto balsamico).  Also the authentic stuff made traditionally and DOC-approved is labeled “Tradizionale di Modena” or “Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia”.

Tools:

• small pot
• wooden spoon
• 1 C measuring cup
• 1T measuring spoon

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 C Balsamic vinegar (read the label, make sure it’s not doctored red wine vinegar, or, buy this)
• 3 T honey

Method

1. In a small pot, pour in 1.5 cups of balsamic vinegar and 3 T of honey.
2. Boil on medium-high heat to reduce the mix to about 3/4 cup.  For this volume, this should take about 18 minutes (care of some nice carrots (“goodness”), or here).More important than the volume reduction is the development of caramelization.  When there’s a few minutes left, the mix will thicken noticeably and actually appear to grow in volume as bubbles start to maintain structure.  At this point, cook only for a few more minutes to let the taste develop.  Take it off the heat when the tartness is cut down and some nuttiness from the caramel is noticeable, but before the tartness is gone.
3. Let it cool for a few minutes and put it on everything: steak, fruit, brie, your girlfriend, crackers, and so on.