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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QUICK & HEALTHY CHICKEN AND PASTA SKILLET DINNER #RECIPE BY AUTHOR DENISE SWANSON

From Denise:

Hi everyone! As I mentioned in my debut post, my cooking philosophy is HIT—Healthy, Inexpensive, but above all, Tasty. For today’s recipe, I’m adding Quick. Therefore, I'm offering you a recipe that is healthy (under 500 calories a serving), Inexpensive, (under $3.00 a serving) and Quick (Under 35 minutes to prepare). And I guarantee it is very tasty!

QUICK & HEALTHY CHICKEN AND PASTA SKILLET DINNER

Serves 4

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 cup chopped onion

1 Tablespoon minced garlic (less if you don’t like it too garlicky)

8 cups water

12 ounces uncooked gemelli (or other small pasta)

2  cans of tomatoes and chilies (I use Rotel mild, but if you like Spicer go for it)

6 oz no-salt-added tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 cups baby spinach leaves (I use the whole package)

Parmesan (optional)

Bring 8 cups water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add pasta; cook 8 minutes or until pasta is al dente. Drain in a colander over a bowl, reserving 1/4 cup cooking liquid.

Meanwhile, Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken, onions, and garlic. Sauté 6 minutes (or until no pink remains), turning to brown all sides. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.

Add reserved cooking liquid, tomato/chilies, tomato paste, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and peppers to skillet; cook over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Add chicken, pasta, and spinach leaves, stirring until spinach wilts. Remove from heat; sprinkle with cheese.    

 

          Here's a bit about my upcoming book:  Tart of Darkness.

Right when Dani thinks she's hit a dead-end in her career, she unexpectedly inherits an enormous old house in a quaint college town. This gives her the perfect opportunity to pursue her true passion—cooking! So Dani opens Chef-to-Go, preparing delicious, ready-made meals for hungry students attending the nearby university, as well as providing personal chef services and catering events for the local community. To help support her new business, she opens her home to a few students, renting them rooms and becoming almost like a big sister figure in their lives.

But just as Dani is relishing her sweet new life, the friend of one of her boarders is murdered, and Dani becomes one of the primary suspects! She'll have to scramble to clear her name and save her business before the killer reappears—perhaps to silence the new chef forever.

*

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Exotic Convenience

I know we usually post actual honest-to-gosh recipes here, but my ability to cook has been seriously compromised this week.

Seriously . . . new job, classes starting, deadline for a book.  Normally, I'd pawn the cooking off on the hubs, but he's joined a new band and been working extra hours.  There's a whole lot of tired in our household.



We've plowed through baked potatoes, vegie burgers, and dressed up frozen pizza.  It's all getting a little old already.  So I made an emergency run to the grocery store this afternoon and came home with a tasty, exotic 10 minute meal.

What did I get?  The stuff for a simple but fundamentally yummy and completely satisfying Indian feast:

1. Packaged naan.  Naan is a flat Indian bread, similar to pita but softer with a slightly buttery flavor.  My Kroger now carries a display of packaged naan in the bread section of the store, and you can sometimes find it in the freezer section.  Either way, preheat the oven and throw the naan in to heat up for a couple of minutes.  Not kidding . . . a couple of minutes.  Because the bread is so thin, it heats quickly.  If you cannot find naan, try a soft pita, wrapped in foil and warmed in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes.
2. Ready rice.  Uncle Ben's makes these little pouches of rice that you simply toss in the microwave for 90 seconds.  Ninety seconds!  I picked up basmati, but they also have regular long grain, jasmine, or brown varieties.  It lasts on the shelf for a while, so pick up a few bags, and have a supply on hand for emergency meals.
3. Tasty Bite Indian entrees.  This particular brand of vacuum packed (in a pouch) entrees can be found at Kroger and World Market.  You may have to look in the health food section instead of the international food section.  Tonight we're having Bombay potatoes (which is a little spicy) and Punjab eggplant (which is a little sweet).  All of the flavors I have tried have been delicious, all are vegetarian, and most are vegan.  Toss the bags in boiling water for five minutes, then cut open, pour, and serve.  Again, these last on the shelf, so stock up for last minute dinners when you have nothing else to serve.

I know all about busy, but busy need not be bland.

And I promise a real recipe next week.  Honest.

Frugal and Healthy II: Black Bean Chilaquiles

Many threads of my life are leading me to this particular recipe at this particular moment in time.

First, Julie posted that wonderful idea for using leftover baked chicken yesterday, and that got me thinking "frugal" and "healthy". This recipe definitely fits the bill.

Second, I've been thinking a lot about my dear friend Liz lately. Liz is not much of a cook, so when we get together for TV and dinner, it is often at my house. I made chilaquiles for her a few times and eventually she asked for the recipe (specifically, she asked for the recipe for "nacho casserole," but I knew what she meant). She's not much of a cook, my friend Liz. But this is something she can handle. In fact, she had a big party at her house last summer, and she made chilaquiles for 20!

When I had my surgery last summer, Liz brought a pan--a beautiful celadon ceramic pan--of chilaquiles over for Mr. Wendy and me to have for dinner. Shortly thereafter, she left on a Fulbright scholarship in Ireland. Somehow in the chaos of her packing up to leave, we never got her pan back to her. So, while she's been gone, Liz's celadon ceramic pan has become the official Wat-Hawk Household Chilaquile Pan.

Every time we make them, which is often, I think of her. And when she returns this summer, we may have a fight on our hands ... she'll probably want the pan back, but it's really just perfect.

Anyway, I'm once again laid up with my bum foot, and tonight Mr. Wendy is making--you guessed it--chilaquiles for our dinner. In the celadon ceramic pan.

Healthy, frugal, AND it makes me think of a wonderful friend. What more could you ask for from dinner?

Black Bean Chilaquiles

(Adapted from a recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.)

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2 c. crushed baked tortilla chips*

1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed

1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 1/2 c. frozen corn

1/2 jalepeno, seeded and minced (optional) OR a dash ground chipotle

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. ground coriander

approximately 1 Tbs. fresh lime juice (optional)

8 oz. reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese

2 c. jarred picante or salsa

* I prefer to make my own. I use 14 extra thin corn tortillas for this recipe. Preheat oven to 375. Lay tortillas on the middle rack of the oven and bake, rotating and flipping, for 4-5 minutes, until light brown and crisp. You will have to do this in 2-3 batches.

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix beans, corn, tomatoes, garlic, pepper, spices, and lime juice in a large skillet or saute pan. Cook over medium heat until hot and most of the liquid has evaporated.

Spray a 9 inch square pan with non-stick spray. Crush and sprinkle half of the corn tortillas (or chips) in bottom of pan. Using a slotted spoon (to leave behind the liquid), spoon the bean mixture into the pan. Drizzle with 1/2 the picante or salsa, then sprinkle with half the grated cheese. Top with remaining chips, remaining cheese, and remaining salsa. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until cheese has melted and started to brown.