On those occasions when I bake or rotisserie a roast, often I don’t know what to do with the leftovers. Well, sometimes anyway. With a beef roast, I suppose you could make hash or sandwiches or open faced sandwiches. A roast chicken is another thing altogether – I don’t have any difficulty finding options for that. I’m talking about a lamb roast or pork roast. Often the meat isn’t all that moist anymore, so unless I’ve made some kind of sauce for the meat the first go-around, I’m left with a hunk of meat and big question marks in my head about what to do with it. We’re certainly not going to waste it, but serving just slices of cold roast pork or lamb doesn’t work around my house. Maybe once, but that’s it. My DH doesn’t complain – he’s SO good about eating whatever I put in front of him, generally, but dry, sliced, cold meat isn’t something that ranks high in his book of good meals. Or mine either, for that matter.

So, I have two recipes to share with you today about this leftover meat problem. The first one, the Marchand de Vin, comes from a favorite little book I own that’s eons old. I bought it used, years and years ago for $2.88. It’s called Sumptuous Sauces in the Microwave, by Patricia Tennison. If you click on the link above, you’ll get to a Google search results page with dozens of listings for her book. It’s out of print, but you can buy it used – cheap – if you’re interested. I love this little book which contains recipes for stocks, white sauces, veloutes, brown sauces, hollandaise, butter sauces, wine and beer sauces (that’s the chapter this recipe came from), gravies, pasta sauces even, a few barbecue sauces, even some veggie and salad dressings and condiments. And, last but not least, some dessert sauces (which I’ve made many times). And every single one of them is cooked (in part or full) in the microwave. What I like about them is that they’re quick and easy. When I’m preparing a leftover meal, I’m usually into QUICK things. Knowing I have leftovers makes me lazy – often I don’t start preparing dinner until 15 minutes before I want to eat. So these sauces work for me.

This particular recipe, the Marchand de Vin, in French, means Wine Merchant’s Sauce. It’s simple – shallot, butter, red wine, stock, cognac, lemon juice and thickened with cornstarch. Ideal for any grilled or roasted meat, really. You’ll find lots of different versions of this sauce if you search on the internet – some contain ham, and mushrooms (they are a nice addition to this, actually, if you have them). You can heat up the meat in the microwave, then pour the sauce over it. In and of itself this sauce isn’t something from a gourmet restaurant, but it’s tasty enough – will give meat some moisture. Be careful and don’t add too much lemon juice. If it’s too thick when you’re done, just stir in some hot water until it’s the right consistency for pouring.

The rosemary-garlic stuffed pork loin roast leftover slices heating in a skillet. I made this along with our favorite garlic green beans.

The Leftover Sauce (now, isn’t that a glamorous title? – I should give it some high-fallutin’ new name instead) is a tomato juice-based sauce, but has onion and celery in it, and a bit of chili powder and a little plop of vinegar to give it some zing. My only caution – tomato juice (or sauce if you use that instead) often contains lots of salt. Try to choose one with no or little salt in it to begin with, then you can season it however you’d like to. This one is made in a frying pan and once it’s simmered for 25 minutes or so, you add the meat slices to the pan just to heat through. If you have leftover mashed potatoes too, make more sauce so you can spoon it over those as well. This recipe came from a friend of my mother’s, Mary W., from about 1971. Tried and true, that’s what it is.
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Needing to clean out my freezer in preparation for receiving a quarter of a 4-H pig in a month, I’ve been working diligently to discard old stuff that I’ll never use and cook up things that have been hiding in corners. I had this nice 2-pound boneless pork loin roast, but what to do with it? I turned to my newest favorite grilling book: The Barbecue Bible by Steven Raichlen. Sure enough, he had several pork loin recipes. This one fit the bill since it didn’t require me to run to the grocery store. All I needed was garlic (yup), rosemary (yup, out of the garden, in abundance), salt, pepper and olive oil. How cinchy is that?

Ideally you’ll want to marinate this roast for a few hours with the herb-garlic mixture all over it, but I didn’t have the time. I’d forgotten to defrost the roast until about noon the other day, so soaked it in cold water (all sealed up) for several hours. Some parts of the middle were still a bit on the frosty side, so I opened up the roast (which is a procedure in the recipe anyway) and let it sit at room temp for about 20 minutes.

photo, from Raichlen’s The Barbecue Bible, showing how to butterfly a pork tenderloin. I used the same technique for a pork roast.

The recipe indicates using a mortar for grinding up the herb mixture, but I had frozen little cubes of garlic to use (pureed) and it took no time at all to mince the fresh rosemary. I just minced and minced and minced with my long santoku knife, then mashed in the garlic, salt, pepper, and finally the oil. It took no time at all to make. I’m including a photo of a page in the cookbook about butterflying the meat. The meat I had was from Costco, and it was already rolled. I opened it up (it was already butterflied), but then you cut shorter pockets in each side (in the fat side of the loins) – not all the way through, and leaving ½ inch at each end. So it’s a kind of slot. To stuff the herbs into. You slather half of the mixture on the inside edges, reform the roast, tie it up (I used those nifty reusable baking rubber bands), then slather the remaining herbs on the outside.

We decided to rotisserie the roast. My DH warmed the grill to high, and between us we positioned the rotisserie prongs in the meat and started it up. You can also do this over indirect heat on the grill itself (positioning a drip pan under the grill, however). It took about 70 minutes for our roast to reach 160 degrees F. We removed it, let it rest for about 5 minutes while I quick-like arranged the artichoke half I’d just pressure-cooked, and a nice green salad. I had meat from the inside of the roast – it was delicious – absolutely mouth-filling with the garlic and rosemary. Loved it. DH had a slice from the outside, and he thought it was a bit overdone. Next time I’d remove the roast at 155 degrees F. and let it sit. And I’d push the pocket to almost the end, so only the very outside slice would be without some of the herb mixture in it. I might also make a sauce to serve with this – a pan sauce would be easy enough to do. Maybe just chicken broth, rosemary and garlic, perhaps some chopped up dried apricots. Boiled and thickened, then with some added butter just at the end. Just a thought. I’ll be making this again, in any case.
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I know, the name is odd, isn’t it? I suppose I could just change the name and claim the recipe as my own, but that’s not fair to the originator of this sauce, so I’ve always referred to it by her title. It’s not just any old spaghetti sauce, as we’d be likely to call it, and surely Camille Stagg meant for us to take notice. This isn’t your ordinary red – either the wine OR the sauce. Camille Stagg is a well-known journalist, travel writer, and must live in Chicago, as she’s written a book about gourmet haunts in that town. She consults with some wineries and wine distributors (clubs), as I found other recipes listed by her in a couple of places on the internet.

Many years ago we used to have two bottles of wine delivered to us each month by a small company up in Emeryville, California. And each month the wine purveyor included a write-up about the wines in the box, AND a recipe suitable for that wine. Likely this recipe came in with a box of zin, since it calls for the wine in the recipe. It sounded so intriguing, I had to try it. We were going to have a wine tasting at our home a week or so later, and I asked each guest couple to bring a bottle of wine and food to serve with it. Specifically, they were to bring something that would complement their wine type. We stood around our kitchen island with 4 (small) glasses of wine in front of us, and sampled food with each wine. It was fun, and we really liked this sauce.

Having not made this for several years, I had to refresh my memory about what was different about it (it uses nearly a whole bottle of zin for 5 pounds of sausage). Once you combine the sausage, onions, mushrooms, garlic and seasonings, you can either simmer it on the range, or put it in a crockpot for long, slow simmering. I did the latter and kept it at high for about 4 hours to help boil off the wine. The sauce is thin to start, and must be simmered down to reduce it. Obviously, it’s a heavy sauce, redolent with the winy taste, and complemented with a large quantity of mushrooms. It’s an extremely dark-colored sauce – zin wine certainly stains nearly anything it touches anyway, so the meat takes on the dark red color as well. You can use your own combination of sausage – the recipe calls for half hot and half sweet. It’s zesty, I’ll give you that! Zinfandel is a zesty wine in and of itself – most people describe it as spicy. And the hot/spicy sausage ups the ante. If you don’t like spicy sausage, use all sweet Italian. This freezes well. Over the years I’ve increased the recipe volume – you can certainly halve it easily enough. I like to have leftovers to freeze. Linguine is my pasta of choice for this. I also increased the amount of wine in the recipe, but not by much.
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Seems like I’m really into pork lately. Particularly that lean one, the tenderloin. I’m so glad I have a stable of recipes I can turn to, to make this lean piece of meat tasty and delicious. This one is no exception.

Now some people think a tenderloin will serve just two people. I think it will serve closer to three people as long as you have other side dishes. Each tenderloin should weigh about a pound. If it’s smaller than that, obviously, it will serve fewer people. For this recipe, you’ll get about 9 slices (3/4 of an inch thick) from each tenderloin. The tapered end slices will be smaller, of course. So gauge the servings appropriately.

I do highly recommend using a meat thermometer for this – and remove the pork from the oven at 150°. The recipe indicates 155°, but I prefer it slightly pinker than that. Plus, it continues to cook while it rests the 5-10 minutes before slicing.

The sauce is what makes this dish. The Port wine adds a nice succulence to the taste. And the addition of Mission figs (dried) is just wonderful. Then you throw in the rosemary and cinnamon into it, and it just has this lovely rounded complexity of flavors going on. Rosemary is a very strong, pungent herb, but in this it seems to mellow somehow. Be sure to remove all the leaves from the sauce before blending it.

Although you can use cheap Port for this recipe, it’s not recommended. If, however, that’s all you have, be sure to use a less-sweet one (the recipe calls for Tawny). The other types will make the sauce overly sweet. If you don’t like figs, try dried cranberries instead.
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Last week I attended a cooking class that was all about pork. Five full dishes using pork (4 entrees with chops or tenderloins) and an egg frittata that I posted about already. I may not make these dishes anytime soon, just because I’ve had enough pork to last me for a couple of weeks. The photo was one I took at the class. A very easy, easy recipe, and had delicious flavor.

When you cut up a pork tenderloin into small medallions, if you cook them just until they’re to the pink stage, they’ll be very tender. It’s easy to tell when they’re done because of the texture – as you press on it with a pair of tongs, it will still have some give to it. Past that, it begins to get more firm, and finally it gets to be like shoe leather. Certainly not something I want to eat. It takes no time at all to cook them anyway, and these take a max of about 10 minutes of cooking altogether. The sauce is very tangy. The kind you would really like to get every last drop, so would make great juice to have over mashed potatoes, perhaps. Or rice.

In this particular dish, you want to have browned bits in the bottom of the pan, so don’t use a nonstick pan, but a good, heavy duty skillet where you can get good browning and the fond will contribute to the flavor. If you like ginger, add more. I also thought garlic would be a good addition, but not a lot, since you wouldn’t want it to overpower the other flavors.
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Ever find that someone prepares a dish that combines some flavors you didn’t usually think about for that food? That’s this dish. I wouldn’t have thought of using maple syrup with pork. Often I think of sweet things – like fruit – but not maple syrup. There’s not a lot of it in this dish, 1/3 of a cup to serve 6, but the combination of that with good full-of-character aged balsamic vinegar and whole grain mustard. Ah, a great match.

This came from the pork cooking class I went to recently. I’ll definitely be making this again. And I might even increase the amount of sauce since I liked it that much, since you’ll want to serve it with some kind of carb, like rice or mashed potatoes.

Once you brown the pork tenderloin in a skillet (in the whole form), it roasts further in a hot oven. Meanwhile you use the same pan to make the maple mustard sauce, which is very easy. Just have all the ingredients ready when you start and it comes together in a hurry. I’d recommend you serve this with some kind of carb that will soak up some of the sauce, as much of it will puddle on your plate. It’s too good to leave behind. The onion, which still has some texture, gives the dish some crunch. Not raw crunch, but a bit of tooth.

The instructor talked about trichinosis in this class. I learned something else – I knew that trichinosis is not much of a concern anymore, BUT nevertheless you will want to cook the meat enough. Once pork reaches 137 degrees, you’ve killed the bug. So there’s your chemistry and biology lesson of the day.
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After Easter I must say, I didn’t cook much for several days. I was on overload, but not really because of the cooking I did. If you want to get right to the recipe, skip down to the 5th paragraph.

I bought a new computer for myself. Mine was a 7 year old XP machine, but the motherboard and RAM died. Then, within days I had to buy another computer for my DH too. His laptop was about 10 years old and slow-slow-slow. My new machine, the XPS from Dell, is just gorgeous. I’ve never used Apple, except for my ipod, but others have told me this new machine is much like an Apple. Everything is contained in the monitor, and it happens to be a media center also, so am able to watch TV on it, if I choose to. It even has its own DVR inside (that would make three in our house, and I’m the only one who uses them). No big CPU box to hide, with cables draping from every direction. I have a big (wide) monitor with amazing clarity. It’s sleek, pretty. It worked seamlessly the minute it was out of the box. But my banking software didn’t work. Because of Vista, I thought. Well, maybe not, after a 95 minute phone call to my bank’s customer service folks, then to Microsoft Money people on a conference call (who are in Mexico), which finally got resolved. Then, I bought the 2nd new computer, also a Vista machine (an HP, low level, since my DH doesn’t really spend much time at the computer). But I have to do all the work to get it running correctly, connected, with his Outlook contacts and email moved to the new machine. I managed. Vista actually has a very slick transfer program that walks you through the process. Not difficult, but it was a bit time consuming using my keychain drive and going back and forth from old machine to new machine. But before that, almost right out of the box the computer didn’t run; it was stuck in a loading loop. Only after a 65 minute phone call to HP customer service (those folks were in Argentina) did it work. Two days in a row my ear and arm hurt from holding the darned phone.

Finally, both computers are working well enough. There are still a few things left to do, but at least both new machines are functioning. My beloved MasterCook program is not working well under Vista, however, and am still trying to tweak it per instructions I found on the internet. THEN, you throw in the stress of moving my blog to this new site, and the inherent blips and valleys of it working smoothly. It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks.

So, you see why I didn’t do much cooking. My office was in a turmoil (box after box after box piled in vacant spaces on the carpeting, documentation, Styrofoam inserts, cables, plastic bags, twist ties by the bushel, cords all over everywhere), and that makes me crazy. Our son-in-law, Todd, helped me get some of the cables in the right places behind our large office/bookcase unit. He installed all new cabling outside our house a few weeks ago, so we would have better internet connectivity. Our exterior cables were very old and the connectors rusty since they lie inside the rain gutters. So, all this is probably more than you ever wanted to know about what went on in our house in the last week or so. Right?

Finally, it was time to fix a nicer meal (other than leftovers). I brought out a pork tenderloin from the freezer and used a cooking class recipe. It was from 2003, and I suspect it came from Great News in San Diego. I liked the recipe. It wasn’t a wow, but it was good.

However, one never knows when one will learn a lesson. I trusted the instructions on the recipe – to cook the pork to an internal temp of 155 to 160. I forgot to go check my chart. I’m going to write up a separate posting about my meat roasting chart. You’ll be able to print it out, but keep watching – I’ll discuss it in a day or so.

I made the lemon herb pesto and slathered it all over the roast for awhile and let it rest in the refrigerator. I inserted a meat thermometer and set it for 155. (Mistake.) I got the rest of the meal all ready, popped the roast in the oven and set the timer (the recipe said about 20 minutes). I made the sherry sauce (chicken broth and sherry reduced down to a kind of syrup), popped the leftover scalloped potatoes in the microwave. The meat thermometer started beeping early meaning it had reached 155 internal temp. Quick. Toss the dressing on the salad. My DH sliced the meat, after it had rested for about 4-5 minutes. The meat was overdone, but the flavor was good. That’s when I went to my trusty chart and sighed in dismay. Why didn’t I read it first? No wonder the meat was overdone – about medium – rather than medium rare, the way I like it. You’re supposed to cook to 150, not 155. So, I have a few cook’s notes for you this time.
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When I first started watching the TV Food Network, in its infancy, I really enjoyed David Rosegarten. He had a half-hour show every day around noontime, and regularly I tuned in while I had my salad or half a sandwich. He no longer has his own gig, although I guess he’s still a guest on some of the other Food Network shows. He’s moved on to bigger and better things, I suppose. He had a monthly food (mailed) news magazine, but now it’s an e-zine (The Rosegarten Report – available for a fee online). But you can subscribe (free) to his e-newsletter called Tastings, which arrives in your inbox every week. He scours the hills and dales of the world for the best food things, whether it’s caviar, olive oil, or in this case, ham. His endeavors tend toward the very high end, and I’ve reluctantly deleted most of the e-newsletters because of the costs.

But the story behind this ham was different. It hit a strong note with me. I’ve been, just like David Rosengarten, very unhappy with the state of the ham industry in the last 20+ years. Once the processors began injecting hams with water, I knew we, as consumers, were on a downhill spiral toward something that really isn’t ham anymore. I kept looking, but everywhere it was injected with water (with salt, surely, or sometime sugar too). Hams tended to be excessively salty – to me, at least. And yes, I’ve bought Honey Baked Ham multiple times. It’s okay if you like a really sweet ham. Somehow I think the sweet – the sugar and spices – just masks whatever taste there is underneath. And with my DH being a Type 1 diabetic (60+ years and counting), pouring sweet sauces or glazes on a ham make it very undesirable for him.

So, when I got David Rosengarten’s epistle recently, about ham, my ears (so to speak) perked up. I read avidly through the article about ham. Got to the bottom line and found that one ham, a half ham at that, was $100.00 plus shipping. Once again, I was ready to delete the message. $100 for a half ham? You’ve got to be kidding? But somehow my fingers just couldn’t press the delete button. I decided to think about it.

David Rosengarten was disappointed in the ham industry too. He kept seeking out hams everywhere he could find them. He read up about the pig farmers around our nation. He called and spoke to some of them. He bought hams everywhere from small farmers, hoping to find that elusive taste he remembers from his childhood. Nothing. But he kept working at it, and finally decided 3 years ago to go into business with a pig/hog farmer in Idaho called Snake River Farms, willing to raise the animals with his specific standards. I don’t now remember all the details, but it’s back to the basics, grass feed, no additives whatsoever, no hormones, butchered differently, smoked differently, but fresh, always fresh. Here’s what David Rosengarten’s e-zine had to say about this Kurobuta pig:

• About Kurobuta Ham: The breed actually arose in England, where it’s called “Berkshire” pork. But the English, in the 19th century, sent off a shipment of Berkshire hogs as a gift to Japanese diplomats—and the Japanese really flipped out. They gave the breed the name “Kurobuta,” meaning “black pig” (its coat is basically black), and developed an international reputation for Kurobuta pork, much as they did for Kobe beef. And Why Are These Porkers Superior? As you might expect, Kurobuta pigs yield meat that is indeed fattier than American supermarket pork. But—here’s the really cool thing—Kurobuta, though richly endowed with intramuscular fat, is not among the fattiest of breeds, which means that you never get a fatty, greasy taste when eating the pork. Instead, the real distinction of Kurobuta pork is a shorter, rounder muscle fiber—which, incredibly, leads to a much higher retention of moisture in the meat.

A week or so went by and I conferred with my DH about splurging on a special ham. He liked the story I conveyed about David Rosengarten’s Kurobuta hams too. So, I did splurge and buy one of these babies. It arrived on Thursday and into the refrigerator it went, where it sat until Easter Sunday.

Included in the box was a brochure with some of David Rosengarten’s favorite holiday recipes (to serve with a ham), and details about how to prepare this ham, this very special ham. My daughter, Dana, made the mustard sauce on Saturday – a very easy preparation, although it does have to be cooked. It thickens some once it cools off, but it’s best served warm. There’s nothing unusual in it at all – dry mustard, sugar, vinegar, cream and egg yolks. It was just delicious. David Rosengarten’s recipe came from his grandmother-in-law, Mrs. Hitchcock, so I continued with the name. Need to give proper credit here, where it’s due. The sauce is succulent with the ham. Exceptional.

The ham, well, what can I say. It was absolutely wonderful. Worth $100? Yes, it was. Certainly more expensive than a whole chicken for Easter Dinner. We paid upwards of this amount for our kosher turkey just before Christmas, so spending $100 for the ham doesn’t seem quite so exorbitant. But yes, it was expensive. Too bad all the pig producers don’t learn a lesson from this, but their greed for more poundage and speed to market, means we’ll never have pigs like this unless someone like David Rosegarten produces them. Will I order it again? A resounding YES. The family is clamoring for leftovers.
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Apologies for the poor picture quality. It’s one thing to take a photo of food when it’s just my DH and myself. He teases me about it, and loves to regale people with examples of when he’s poised over his lovely plate of steaming food and I rush in with my camera and yell “wait!” It’s another when we have a table full of guests and I’m poking around trying to take pictures in front of them. Tacky, tacky. So I snapped this picture on my own plate, as surreptitiously as possible, so it was a bit dark at our candlelit dining table.

As usual, I started my menu plan with the main entree. It needed to be the set of 6 pork chops I had in the freezer from Niman Ranch. I’ve mentioned theis meat producer before – they are a small independent farm that raises livestock the old-fashioned way. No growth hormones. Natural feed, no additives. All that good stuff. I’m on their email notification list, so every time they have a sale, I know about it. Mostly I’ve ordered pork, but also their steaks too. I’m crazy about their bacon, but it’s carried at my local Trader Joe’s at a pretty good price.

Everything I’ve ordered from Niman ranch has been exceptionally good. Worth the price? Well, I guess it’s relative. Compared to grocery chain meat, this is just far and away better. But if you’re on a budget, probably not. I don’t order all my meat from them – just special stuff. If you happen to decide to try them out – do wait for a sale – and make sure they pack in small packages (like 2 pork chops per pkg). That’s why I hadn’t defrosted these before, because I needed to wait for an occasion when I had exactly 6 people.

Because pork is raised so leanly now, there isn’t as much fat to keep the meat moist. So I always brine pork. I’ve tried several recipes, but my current favorite is a mix that I buy at Whole Foods called V Traditional Brining Blend, and V Spicy Brining Blend. They come in 12.7 ounce jars. If you prepare the brine per the instructions you’ll likely use most of a jar. I disregard those instructions and make a much smaller solution. This time I used about 2 tablespoons of brining salt and dissolved it in about a cup of boiling water, then added ice cubes to cool it off quickly. Usually I stick my finger in the brine to taste the saltiness – you want it to be salty, but not overwhelmingly salty, otherwise your meat will become the same. Then I immersed the pork in the brine. If time is of an essence, I’ll put them in my aerator (a plastic container that removes the air by vacuum pump and supposedly increase the marinating ability chop-chop). That I did, and let them rest in the refrigerator for about 6 hours or so. I removed them once and turned them over in the liquid, since the brine didn’t completely cover the chops.

I pan-seared the chops, then used a probe thermometer so I’d know exactly when the meat reached 145 degrees F. Worked like a charm. Result: these chops were just “the best.” And America’s Test Kitchen scored a winner with the sauce recipe. Although, next time I will probably thicken the sauce some with some cornstarch. Even though I reduced it down, it was still a bit thin. But, Niman Ranch scored a touchdown with the meat. One great dinner.
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You know. It’s January. We’re supposed to be trying to make some lower calorie meals. After the excess of the holidays. But, you know how it is – you get tired of chicken breasts, stir-frys, and salads. So you go to the source – the cookbooks or the files – and find something new. Something more interesting. Something different. It wasn’t hard – I have a huge inventory of cookbooks and folders and folders of clipped recipes. I pulled out one of the diet-type files I have – low-fat entrees – and found about 50 recipes in the file. At least half of them were for pork, which appealed to me. A big shopping spree at Costco, and a couple of hours of putting away stuff and re-proportioning the meat I bought, and I was ready to think about dinner.

For Christmas, at my suggestion, my DH gave me a FoodSaver vacuum packaging system (from Costco). I’d been reluctant to get one, even though a few people had recommended it. I went online and read reviews and settled on the FoodSaver 2940, which got better write-ups than others. I finally unpacked it yesterday, watched the DVD with demonstrations of packaging up all kinds of items. So today I bought a big pork roast and 4 tenderloins. I cut up the roast into 3 pieces and pressed the magic button and wh-o-o-o-p it sucks out all the air. It was FUN. (Sometimes I’m easily amused, especially with any new kitchen toy.) I separated the tenderloins and sucked 3 of those into separate packages. The 4th tenderloin became our dinner. The 2940 doesn’t look exactly like this, but close.

So, I digress talking about my new toy. Back to dinner. I really like fennel. I like it raw – just to eat like celery, and I like it cooked – when it renders itself into silkiness, almost. I’d clipped the original recipe from one of Williams-Sonoma’s catalogs. The recipe resided next to the write-up about “infused” balsamic. A mere 6 ounce bottle for $19.00. I didn’t buy it (aren’t you proud of me?). But I thought the recipe was intriguing, so I substituted, as we cooks are wont to do. I couldn’t find nary a fresh sage leaf in two stores yesterday (I know, they’re out of season, but I still thought the grocery store would have them anyway). Wrong. So I used powdered sage. Surely not the same thing, but the closest I could get. And, I didn’t have this infused vinegar. But I DID have some wonderful fruit-infused balsamic that I thought might work. Indeed it did.

First you brown the pork tenderloin, remove it, then saute the fennel and shallots. I sliced the fennel in about 1/4 inch slabs. Maybe not the right configuration for this dish – next time I’d do what the recipe said – in 1/4 inch strips. The slices of fennel would work well in a baked dish, but this fennel needed to be tossed in the frying pan. A tad difficult with this large pieces. Awkward is all I can say. But, my own fault. Once the fennel is nearly cooked through, you add the balsamic. Put the pork tenderloin on top of this vegetable mixture and bake in a very hot oven until the pork is just pink through (145 degrees F), remove the fennel, then the pork to a cutting board and cover with foil briefly while you whisk the remaining sauce over high heat. The pork was perfectly cooked (pink in the middle) and the fennel (W-S calls it a confit) was kind of like a vegetable relish in a way. Not exactly like a side vegetable, but it was that too. Whatever it was, it was delicious.
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