Pork Tenderloin Dinner

I found these lovely pork tenderloins on sale last weekend at the grocery store, threw 'em in my cart and contemplated what to do with them. I found my inspiration a few days later at Trader Joe's. As I was walking through the store I found a tube of polenta. Ok, that sounds nummy but what else? Then I spied prosciutto. Hmmmm .... what if I wrapped a few slices it around the tenderloin after I had seasoned it. I guess I still had prosciutto on my mind from the latest Paper Chef contest and it really sounded good so into the cart it went with the polenta.

I took out my mortar and pestle and ground together some dried rosemary (that I had recently dried myself), a couple of cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. Once it was mixed together, I dumped it on top of the tenderloins and added a little olive oil and tossed things around so the meat was coated. Then I wrapped a few pieces of the prosciutto around each tenderloin and popped it in a 375 degree oven (uncovered). I don't remember how long it took to cook because I used a meat thermometer. I have one that has a probe that you can stick into the meat with a coil that gets attached to a timer. You can set timer to go off after a certain amount of time or when the meat reaches a certain temperature. I absolutely love it and it's never done us wrong.

But back to dinner. While the meat was cooking, I washed and sliced 8 ounces of mushrooms in half. Melted a little butter in a skillet and sauteed some garlic for about 3 minutes, added the mushrooms and cooked about 5 minutes longer, stirring the mushrooms around as needed. Then I added about 1 cup of beef stock, 1 tsp. of balsamic vinegar and 2 tsp. of sugar. I brought it to a boil then turned it down to simmer, partially covered it and let the liquid cook down to about half of what it was. When the meat was done, I took it out of the oven and let it rest. While it was resting, I sliced some polenta, seasoned it with a little salt and pepper, and cooked it in a little olive oil just til it was heated through.

It was pretty tasty but next time I would do a few things differently. I would use low sodium beef stock as the mushrooms were a bit salty. And I would make fresh polenta rather than use the pre-made stuff I got at Trader Joe's. The meat was fine just the way it was. In fact, we're having leftovers tonight. Yummmm. The picture below shows the plated meal before we dug in.

And on another note, my mom is coming to visit this weekend. Last minute cheap flight sorta deal. Biscuit Boy and I talked about where we could take her out to eat and he came up with a brilliant idea. My mom absolutely loves asparagus and right now it's in season and a few restaurants in town are having special Sparglefest menus (aka asparagus fest). Mom rarely gets to eat asparagus because my dad really hates it so whenever she visits this time of year, we load her up with enough to last her a while. Hopefully I'll remember to bring the camera to dinner and take some pics of the meal and write about all the yummy details. Stay tuned.......