I’ve made pork tenderloin before many times, but it was always hard to tell when it got done, and whether it would be juicy or a log of shoe leather by the end. I also could never seem to get a nice crust on the outside. So finally I decided to get down to learning how to do it right. The recipe I used tonight came from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, which is a sizable compendium of classic French recipes generously annotated by both Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. The recipe is simply called Sautéed Pork Filet or Tenderloin. It was pretty standard, following your classic “sear, bake, and make sauce” procedure. However this time around I made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. And when I deviated, I noted what went differently, why, and how I fixed it. As a result I think tonight’s pork tenderloin was the best I’ve ever made.

I learned a bunch of things in the process, so I shall write them down here in case you too might find them useful. What follows is my version of the recipe, adopted from and even more thoroughly annotated than J&J’s version (if such a thing were possible).

Tina’s Julia & Jacques’ Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients
1 small pork tenderloin (about 1 lb.)
10 apricots
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tbsp minced shallots
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/3 cup beef broth
1/2 tbsp jam (such as black currant, plum, or, in my case, lingonberry)
1/2 tbsp ketchup
fresh parsley or basil for garnish

Method

1. Cut the pork tenderloin into 4 equal-sized chunks and salt/pepper it.
   Jacques says to angle the knife differently each time so you end up more with a series of tetrahedral hunks about 2″ thick at the center, than with round discs. At first I did not know what difference this made, but I realized that this helps you actually brown the entire exterior of the meat, instead of ending up with just the top and bottom browned (as would be the case for a disc-shaped piece).
2. Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Heat vegetable oil in pan on high heat.
   Here is where I began to deviate from the original recipe. First, J&J say to set the oven to 200˚. The oven is for gently roasting the pork after you sear it quickly in the pan, so the inside cooks up all juicy and tender. I found that 200˚ was too low, but this may also be my oven being an old batty apartment oven. Let’s just say you, too, have an old batty apartment oven. Go with 350, otherwise your pork will never be cooked to an edible state in time and you will end up with cold sauce in the pan waiting for it. Secondly, I accidentally used olive oil (reflex…), which was dumb. Olive oil has a low smoke point and it isn’t suitable for high-heat activities like searing… let’s just say our kitchen had an interesting haze for much of the evening. You should definitely use a vegetable oil such as canola. Thirdly, medium-high heat to me is a 7 out of 10 on my electric coil-style stove on the largest burner (8″ diameter). The different burner sizes vary significantly in heat output, so I would say, be sure to save the big burner for this step. Finally, use a non-nonstick pan because I find that nonstick pans just don’t heat up well enough. Also, you’ll never be able to deglaze it without also ripping off all the nonstick coating. I used my 9″ Cuisinart stainless steel frying pan for this.
3. Sear the meat for 5 minutes total, turning throughout.
   First step to happy searing is to really heat the oil up real hot. Heat it until it gets that ripply look on the surface. This is where I often trip up because I’m impatient and the electric coils heat up super slow (I’m a gas stove kind of Tina, alas.) Then when the oil is hot, put the meat in the pan. It should hiss mightily at you. If not take the meat out and keep heating the oil, then try again. When searing, make sure your pan is big enough for at least 1″ of clearance around each chunk or else you will get steaming action and not frying. If there isn’t enough clearance, do 2 batches. One area which I personally have a lot of trouble with is knowing when to flip. I discovered that 2 minutes on aforementioned 7/10 heat is enough to get a perfect golden brown crust on the first side, but the first side only. And no peeking. Afterwards, I begin to turn the chunks every 1 minute or it starts to burn. After 5 minutes and 3 or 4 turns you should have all sides cooked to a crusty, even, golden hue. If not, you will know next time whether you should adjust the heat on your stove up or down.
4. Lower heat to medium. Put the meat in an oven-proof dish and pop it in the hot oven.
   This is to finish cooking the insides, which right now is straight-up raw. At this point, set the mental timer for 10 minutes exactly. At 10 minutes, open the oven and poke the meat. If it feels completely squishy still, give it another 5. Meat should still yield a bit to the poke when you take it out. This will result in medium to medium-rare meat. (I did extensive research, a.k.a. reading the first 10 links in Google, on whether rare pork is OK. The consensus is that nowadays, it is just as OK as rare beef, as food safety standards have improved drastically since the 60s when everyone was scared of trichanosis poisoning.) In any case, 10-15 minutes will result in meat that is still a little pink in the center, but really juicy and nothing like the awful leathery stuff you get when cooked to FDA specs of 155˚ internal temperature. Totally worth the sliver of a risk of dying, if you ask me.
5. Make the sauce: in the pan where you cooked the meat, add shallots and sauté for 30 sec. Add red-wine vinegar, stock, and port. Deglaze pan. Add apricots and reduce for 5 minutes on a gentle boil. Stir in jam and ketchup.
   This step is pretty self-explanatory. The jam essentially thickens the sauce into a beautiful glossy sheen, as Jacques explains in the sidebar. It’s a great trick. Look ma, no flour. Anyway, if you have everything already measured out, making the sauce will beat the roasting meat to the finish line. In which case you can turn off the heat, cover the sauce to keep it warm, and wait for the meat to finish. Use your newly emancipated attention to check up on the meat assiduously so it doesn’t get over-cooked.
6. Take meat out of the oven, arrange on plates, and pour the yummy leftover pork juices into the sauce. Stir, pour sauce over meat, and serve!
   

That’s it. It’s really quite easy once you figure out what your own oven/stove’s equivilant of high and medium heat are. So I guess it really comes down to practice. I’m happy to say next time I make this I’ll have this extremely verbose guide to refer to, and it just might come out as awesome as this time.

***

PS: Yang and I have decided I should publish a book called “Difficult, Unhealthy Dinners,” along the lines of this one. Because I champion fat-and-black-bits-laden foods the world over (hey, Julia says it’s totally OK in moderation) and I seem to have a knack for making easy recipes sound hard. But I think maybe we’ve got it backwards. Many recipes that claim to be easy are actually pretty hard to master. They only seem easy because they are written with an economy of words. You can only learn by doing, for instance, that your oven temperature will be way off and the supposedly “quick” recipe will take twice as long and can no longer be relied upon to produce what it claims to be perfect done-ness. So the purpose of this book would be to make easy recipes seem hard by making them super-long, but of course in doing so they will be easy again because you will be totally prepared when your oven is way off from what it’s “supposed’ to be. And of course all of the recipes will feature ample amounts of fats, sugars, and crunchy blackened crusts. Oh yes.

Berry Banana Yogurt Popsicles
Banana, any kind of berry, vanilla yogurt, honey or sugar to sweeten

Mango/Coconut Pineapple Popsicles
Mango chunks and/or pineapple chunks, coconut milk, small bit of lime juice, sugar or agave nectar to sweeten

Strawberry Sour Cream Popsicles
Strawberries and sour cream (roughly 3:1 proportion), lemon juice, and sugar or agave nectar to sweeten

Cherry Almond Vanilla Popsicles
Cherries, vanilla yogurt, apple juice, honey, and a few drops of almond extract

Honeydew Lime Popsicles
Honeydew melon, lime juice, sugar or agave nectar to sweeten

Tea Popsicles (!!)
Any kind of tea that would taste good iced and brewed really strongly, made with extra honey or sugar mixed in. Last year we made matcha tea popsicles that were good, with heavy cream mixed in, except I think I whipped the mixture a bit too hard and the frozen result was kind of… foamy. Ever eaten frozen foam? It’s weird.

Mojito Popsicles
Lime, mint, and sugar. Maybe some strawberries too… oh yeah, that’d be nice. One of my favorite flavor combinations of all time! Too bad I am putting myself on an alcohol diet =( otherwise I imagine you could spike this with some rum, but not too much, or it won’t freeze.

Strawberry Balsamic Popsicles
Strawberries, brown sugar, really high quality balsamic vinegar, apple juice (to hold it all together)

Cheesecake Popsicles
Cream cheese, yogurt, strawberries, sugar

Lavender Lemonade Popsicles
Lavender lemonade… frozen

All of the above are pretty much made by combining all of the ingredients in a blender, blending until smooth, and then pouring into molds, and freezing for ~6 hours, depending on how cold your freezer is. The recipes all ask for extra sugar because stuff tends to taste extra-tart when they are cold (Presumably because the coldness does something to numb the receptors for sweetness? I don’t know.) I’m also told that simmering the ingredients with the sugar beforehand will produce more of a syrupy consistency and, as a result, the pops will be easier to bite into when they’re frozen. We might try this out because every time we made pops before, we ended up with jaw-destroying rocks (of deliciousness nevertheless). The only truly hard part about making popsicles is getting them back out of the mold again, but you can do the hot-water bath trick to melt them a little on the outsides…

Yang is also enamored of the idea of banana pops. You know, where you halve a banana, put a stick in it, dip it in chocolate, and freeze the whole shebang. Actually, we ought to get some bananas tomorrow =) Luckily we are conveniently sandwiched between Stop ’n’ Shop and Trader Joe’s, both ~2 minutes’ walk away. (Did I mention this apartment rocks?)

Oh man, now I wish it weren’t 1:15 AM. I’d go out right now and get me some popsicle fixings. Yeah.

• Springy, Fluffy Marshmallows (via Smitten Kitchen)
• Green Tea Ice Cream (via Epicurious)
• Chocolate Mole Sauce (via DavidLebovitz.com)

(This picture is for you, Jing.)

On a whim tonight, I decided to make fishsticks. This is the kind of thing that would appall my mom if she were here. In my mom’s world, fishsticks fall squarely in the center of the American junkfood category, right next to anything with cheese in, over, or around it (my mom is very much a classic Chinese parent in this way). In an attempt to restore some dignity to this food, I made a version tonight with leftover hollandaise sauce + and panko breadrumbs, oven-fried in olive oil.

If you don’t have hollandaise sauce, you should use mayo + some water or malt vinegar to dilute it. In fact, the original recipe called for this, but I decided to be frugal and use something that needed to be used up. =) I feel such a deep sense of accomplishment whenever I empty another container out of the fridge!

Here is the original recipe:

Crunchy Panko Fishsticks

Ingredients
1 lb firm white fish, cut into strips
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 to 2 tbsp malt vinegar or lemon juice
1 cup panko
some salt and pepper, if you like

Method

1. Preheat oven to 425˚ F.
2. Mix together the mayo, vinegar or lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. If eating some plain mayo disgusts you, you need to enjoy life more. =)
3. Dunk fish one piece at a time in this mixture, then roll around in the panko and press firmly to get the pieces to stick.
4. Grease a cookie sheet with some olive oil or butter, place the fishsticks on it, and bake for about 15 min (longer if your fish is thick). I did not turn halfway because I don’t like it when the crust falls off, and it turned out fine, just slightly more browned on one side than the other.
5. Eat with some homemade cocktail sauce!

Really this is quite an amazing discovery, because cocktail sauce is something I always thought you had to go buy because it had some patented top-secret ingredient to it. Except it turns out that it’s just ketchup and horseradish (or, in this case, wasabi).

What if tonkatsu sauce turned out to be the same way!? Life would never be the same again. There might actually be room on the fridge door!