Thursday 14 August 2014

The Invention Test

Sometimes when I'm cooking a meal I don't really decide exactly what I'm making till the very last minute - and even then I sometimes make adjustments "on the fly".

Last Saturday was an occasion like that. We went shopping in the morning and bought (amongst other things) a nice Pork Tenderloin at a very reasonable price, so I decided to make "something" with that as its basis. Eventually I settled on a vaguely (very vaguely) Eastern European dish involving medallions of the tenderloin beaten out flat:


To get the meat like this you cut the tenderloin into slices about an inch thick and then flatten them with a meat-mallet, or the blunt side of a cleaver. Before beating out the meat I sprinkled it with a mixture of crushed coriander seeds, black peppercorns and (home-made) paprika. The flattening process works the spices into the meat.

I left the meat to marinate in the fridge for about four hours, and eventually cooked it very briefly on a searingly-hot griddle pan. I had so many pieces of meat that I had to cook them in batches and keep the first ones warm while I cooked the others.


I had originally intended to serve the pork with a mushroom sauce made separately for pouring on at the last minute, along with sautéed potatoes and baby carrots with green beans. I had cooked the potatoes (home-grown "Nicola") in advance, and I was planning to sauté them simply in some butter, with loads of chopped fresh herbs. I had some onions for the sauce cooking very slowly in another pan. However, when I went to light the gas under the griddle-pan I realised that I didn't have enough cooker space and I had to do one of my "on the fly" adjustments. The potatoes had to go in together with the onions, herbs and mushrooms:


The herbs I used were Rosemary and Thyme. I think Thyme goes particularly well with mushrooms. I made a point of chopping the Rosemary very finely, because if the leaves are left whole they can be unpleasantly tough. A couple of minutes before serving-time, I added about 200ml of Elmlea, a staple ingredient in our house (you could use cream, of course), and stirred it in to make a sort of creamy sauce.


By this time the carrots, green beans and all the pork medallions had been cooked:


So it was just a case of dishing-up.

Now, at this point I should really show you a couple of photos of the finished dish, but unfortunately on this occasion I am unable to do so - for the simple reason that the photos accidentally got deleted from my camera before I had uploaded them! Grrrrrrr!

So you'll just have to imagine it. Soft, quickly-cooked meat with the citrusy tang of coriander and the warmth of paprika and black pepper. Super-tasty, super-fresh, vibrantly-coloured carrots and beans. The earthy flavour of soft chestnut mushrooms. The comforting waxiness of firm new potatoes. And all brought together in a smothering of that creamy, herby sauce.

I was pretty pleased with the result. In retrospect, a squeeze of lemon juice just before serving would probably have been an improvement.... but I didn't think of that at the time.

10 comments:

  1. That looks delicious. I sometimes have trouble with not enough space too, but most days I'm fine. Even with the big pot of water for my corn every night. That takes up a lot of space.

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  2. Sounds satisfying indeed! Looks like you had plenty of left-overs too.

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  3. Looks delicious - was it just for the two of you?

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    1. Sue, Yes it was. Does it make us sound greedy? Pork loin is a very cheap meat these days. That one was £2.25, and I could have made it feed four if I'd had to.

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  4. Sounds like a tasty meal. I'll have to try your method of pounding the spices into the meat, it seems like a very effective method for seasoning it.

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  5. Hi Mark Great blog i am now following you. One thing i am vegetarian .....xx

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  6. Hi Linda; Welcome aboard! Thanks for introducing yourself. As you will already have gathered, I'm NOT a vegetarian, but I definitely like veggies!

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  7. That recipe sounds lovely Mark. I love anything cooked "on the fly" since I am always doing that. Then the boys say, hey mom can you cook that so and so dish you made last week, and because I didn't write down the "on the fly" substitutes the next variation comes along...and so it goes on.

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  8. The creamy mushroom and potato is my type of dish!

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  9. Gosh, that was making me hungry just looking at your photos, Mark! That is definitely a meal I would have enjoyed immensely! Yum!

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