Pork Twice Cooked by Maya Corrigan #recipe

Pork tenderloin makes a quick and easy main course. Cooking it in the oven can be tricky because it can go from the perfect temperature to overcooked in a minute or two. This recipe, which I adapted from one by Mark Bittman in the New York Times, solves that problem. You brown the pork in a pan on the stove, give it a rest while you make the sauce, and then finish it in the pan. You then serve it with a sauce made from the pan drippings, cream, and other flavors or your choice. The result is a moist and flavorful dish.  

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin, approximately a pound

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

¼ cup cream

Optional: 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, lemon juice, or apple brandy

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. When your hand held over the pan feels hot, add the oil. Keeping the heat medium high, add the pork to the pan when the oil starts to shimmer. Curve the tenderloin to fit the skillet. Brown it well on all sides, for 4 to 6 minutes total. Turn off the heat, remove the meat from pan, and set it aside. 

Letting the pan cool down, cut the meat into inch-thick slices. Then turn the heat up to medium-high again and add the butter. When the butter no longer foams, add the pork medallions to the pan. Brown each slice on both sides, about 2 or 3 minutes each. Turn the heat to low and remove the meat to a warm platter.

Add ½ cup water to pan, turn the heat to high, and cook, stirring and scraping, for a minute. Lower the to medium, add the cream and cook until slightly thickened. Stir in mustard, lemon juice, or brandy, if you're adding it. Sample the sauce and add salt and pepper to your taste. Either serve the meat with the sauce spooned on top or return the meat to the pan with the sauce briefly before serving.

I chose to add mustard to the cream when I made this recipe. I was a little worried that the sauce would be too mustardy, but it was the opposite--insufficiently flavorful. I'd add more mustard the next time or, better yet, use lemon or brandy for a different flavor. This recipe would pass muster with my sleuth's grandfather, who prefers making dishes with five ingredients or fewer. 

Both the newspapers that are delivered to our door every day have weekly food sections with recipes. Since the editors test recipes before they appear in print, I've found the ones in the newspaper generally quite good. Of course, I seldom follow the recipes exactly, but make changes based on what I have available in the kitchen and the flavors we prefer. 

READERS: Where do you look for new recipes? In cookbooks, in magazines or newspapers, or on online?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

 After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

 

Library Journal: "Thanks to Val’s and her grandfather’s talent for exposing the truth, even a “perfect crime” will be uncovered...a satisfying read and a riveting murder mystery with a sweet ending."

 

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime  

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