Recipes by Zola For You
Monday March 31, 2008 "Russian" Pork Tenderloin Zola Gorgon It Happened After I Left the Kitchen...
It was a normal weekday evening. We ate an Italian dinner while we watched a cable news show. Time to clean up. I went downstairs with a few of the lighter things and headed to the kitchen. I left the heavy pasta bowls for my husband to bring down.
Clean up was pretty fast. I had done most of it while cooking. I finished loading the dishwasher and washing the counters. I put the Pyrex dish in the sink to soak and my husband walked into the kitchen. I let him know that I thought the dish needed a soak and that all he needed to do was put the pasta bowls into the dishwasher and start it.
I headed upstairs with my glass of milk and a couple of vanilla wafer cookies to munch on for dessert.
I was savoring my cookies when I heard a minor "crash". I yelled downstairs to see if he was okay. He said, "Yeah, I'm fine". I didn't get up. I thought he was fooling around in the freezer and had taken the ice maker storage bucket off of the freezer door and maybe spilled it. It sounded like a bunch of ice had hit the floor. Then I heard the clicking of one of the burners on the gas stove. That concerned me.
I yelled down again, (not in a big hurry to leave my comfy TV spot or my milk) and asked him he could make sure that burner was off because it was clicking. I heard nothing. I listened to more clicking and asked again if he could just turn it off. Still clicking.
Disturbed, I got up, left my almost full glass of milk and stood at the top of the stairs. I cannot see the kitchen from there, but I knew my husband could hear me from where I stood. I asked if he needed help turning off the clicking burner and expressed my concern that the burners shouldn't be clicking; that it can damage them (I was trying to use my no-nagging voice). What came back was a rather panicked "I'm trying! I can't get it to stay off!"
That was it. I was on my way down.
When I turned the corner I was aghast! My husband was frantically cleaning up liquid (lots of it) and it looked like crushed ice was all over the floor. I came close to the kitchen and he yelled at me not to come closer; that it was glass all over the floor. He announced that his finger was already bleeding and he didn't want me cut. I stopped dead, assessed the situation and headed directly to the closet. His closet had some tennis shoes that I stepped into and shuffled my way back to the kitchen looking rather like a clown wearing large men's shoes on a medium woman's feet.
I came back and asked what had happened. I couldn't figure it out from the evidence.
My husband volunteered that he had decided to clean the Pyrex pan and he employed a technique he had used several times to get stuck on yuck out of sauce pans (you know like when you make caramel and some of it burns on the sides of the pan?). He had (and don't do this at home!), put more water in the Pyrex pan and set it on the stove to bring it to a boil and heat the crusty tomato mess so he could more easily scrub it off. When his back was turned...BLAM!
And thank goodness his back WAS turned. The Pyrex pan had blown to bits!
It wasn't crushed ice I was seeing on the floor, and the counters, and the stove and the shelf and about 8 feet into the living room. It was Pyrex pieces. And chicken goo and tomato goo and water.
Chris was wiping it up with a rag, so I attended to the stove. Turning the burners on and off I finally got it to quit clicking; at least for a while. My theory is: the water that had seeped under the hobs was causing the ignition to try to keep lighting. Still not sure why, but after about 30 minutes we got it to stop. Meanwhile we got out mops, towels, rags and all types of cleaning solutions to try and hunt down every shred of glass that had blasted all over the room. The force of the explosion was strong enough that some of it had stuck to the kitchen cupboard doors!
My husband kept apologizing and saying how worthless he was feeling. I just told him he was trying to help, that it was an innocent mistake and that I felt pretty sure that from the looks of the "crime scene" that I doubted he'd made the same mistake twice.
It was pretty funny actually. We just weren't in the mood to laugh. 30 minutes later I got back to my, now, slightly warmed milk. I finished my cookie and headed off to brush my teeth.
The End.
"Russian" Pork Tenderloin with sautéed apples, bleu cheese and pecans
Serves 2. Can be easily doubled
For the pork
1 (1.5 lb or so) pork tenderloin
salt and pepper to taste
all purpose flour for dusting
2 Tbl of olive oil
6 oz of Russian dressing (bright red)
1/2 cup of honey
1 (1oz) package of dry onion soup mix or onion dip mix
For the apples
2 large apples (Fuji is a good one). Core the apples and slice thinly.
2 tsp of butter
A light drizzle of honey
1/2 cup of bleu cheese crumbles
1/4 cup of chopped pecans
For the Pork:
Season pork with salt and pepper.
In a large zip lock bag, toss in a handful of flour. Put in the pork tenderloin, close the bag and toss it around until the pork is coated. Remove the pork from the bag and throw away the excess flour.
In a large sauté pan, heat the oil and sauté the pork on medium high just to lightly brown the edges.
In a bowl, mix the dressing, honey and the onion soup mix. Stir well.
In a roasting pan just large enough to hold the pork, (I use a 3 X 8" baking pan) put in the pork and pour the sauce over the top. Toss the pork so it is completely coated.
Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil and roast at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil and insert a meat thermometer. Roast for 15 minutes more and then check the temperature on the meat. If you like your pork with a bit of pink in the middle, roast to 160 degrees. If you want NO pink roast it to 170 degrees or a bit more. This should not take longer than 15 more minutes.
Remove from oven, and let rest while you make your apples.
In a medium sauté pan melt butter and sauté the apple slices for one minute. Drizzle on a tsp or so of honey and continue to sauté the apples until slightly wilted. You can cook them longer if you like them mushy, but now it is popular to sauté them only until there is a bit of a crunch left in them. Take the pan off the heat and add the bleu cheese crumbles and pecans. Let sit for a minute until the bleu cheese melts.
Serve the sliced pork with the apples on the side. Drizzle some sauce over the pork and serve the rest in the gravy boat for those that ask for extra sauce.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola
Send email to Zola at dinnerwithzola@hotmail.com.
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For more information on Zola and to see more of her recipes, visit her Web site at www.dinnerwithzola.com. Send feedback to Zola at this address:
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