Week 6:

~Prosciutto Wrapped Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Balsamic Sauce
~Apricot Pistachio Wild Rice Salad

I was a little bit on the fence this week if my Sunday dinner would come through. I have been battling a sudden and especially annoying cold since Friday. I wasn't willing to let that stand in my way. Jason came with me to the grocery store Saturday night to help me round up the ingredients. Today, after about 1 1/2 - 2 hours of cooking (interspersed with crazy hand washing to avoid sharing my cold), I'm ready to drop. The results, however were well worth it. Jason declared that this was my best meal to date and he actually used the word "excellent" in describing it. :) This recipe was found by my Aunt Phyllis. The recipe was originally developed by Rania Harris, and it was found on KDKA.

Prosciutto Wrapped Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Balsamic Sauce:

Ingredients-

Marinade:
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- Freshly minced garlic
- Sea salt/freshly ground black pepper to taste

-1 Pork Tenderloin - about 1 pound
-Thinly sliced prosciutto for wrapping pork (I got 10 slices from the deli)

Sauce:
- 2 TB olive oil
- 2 TB minced shallots
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 1 cup fresh cherries - pitted and halved (I used frozen since they're out of season)
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 cup reduced dark chicken stock
- 1 TB chopped sage
- 1 TB unsalted butter (oops...I forgot to add this!)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Combine the ingredients for the marinade in small bowl. Place pork in shallow baking dish and add marinade to coat pork well. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. (I flipped the pork several times while it marinaded.)

3. Remove pork and discard marinade. Wrap pork with the prosciutto and place in a roasting pan. Roast the pork for 15-20 minutes.

4. In a 2 quart pot, heat the olive oil and shallots, cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add garlic and cook for additional 30 seconds.

5. Add cherries to pot and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add balsamic vinegar and cook, stirring, to deglaze the pan.

6. When nearly all vinegar has evaporated, add chicken stock and sage. Cook until reduced by 25% in volume, about 1 1/2 - 2 minutes. Remove the sauce from the heat, add the butter and stir.

Apricot Pistachio Wild Rice Salad:

Ingredients:

- 2/3 cup brown rice
- 2/3 cup wild rice
- 3 cups chicken broth
- 10 large basil leaves, sliced into ribbons
- 1/2 minced red onion (skipped this...no onion fans here)
- 1/2 cup dried apricots - chopped
- 1/2 cup chopped pistachios, lightly toasted
- 1/2 cup dried cherries
- 1 tsp finely grated orange zest

Dressing for Salad:
- 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 TB olive oil
- 2 TB orange juice
- 1 TB freshly grated orange zest
- 2 TB Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp honey
- Pinch of Salt

Directions:
1. Combine brown rice, wild rice, and chicken broth in sauce pan and bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat to a simmer and cook until all water is evaporated and rice is fully cooked.

2. Remove from heat and cool completely.

3. When rice is cool, add basil, red onion, dried apricots, pistachios, dried cherries, and orange zest. Mix well.

4. Combine ingredients for dressing and whisk together. Pour over rice mixture.


My commentary:

First of all, you should start the rice WAY before everything else (except of course for prepping the marinade...my pork marinaded for 3+ hours). After I started cooking the rice about an hour and a half before I planned to serve the meal, and it still wasn't fully cooled in time to serve the salad as a cool dish. (However it was still really good). Get the rice cooking and then start chopping up all of the ingredients for the salad (including time to toast your pistachios).

I also felt that the pork sauce took longer to cook than what it seemed to call for in the recipe. I don't feel that enough of my vinegar evaporated.

Overall, this was a great meal with complex flavors. The pork was juicy and flavorful on its own, and the cherry balsamic sauce added a whole new dimension of flavor. The salad had great depth, with lots of different layers of taste...served cool, it would be ideal as a summer salad.

Kitchen tools I realized I need based on this recipe:

More cutting boards
Hand chopper
Zester

Cooking term I learned with this recipe:

Deglaze: To extract flavor and cooked on food residue from a pan by introducing a cool liquid to the mixture.

And with that, we've wrapped up Week 6. Please feel free to post links to your favorite recipes. I'm constatnly searching for something new to try.

Until next week!