Pork Two Simple, Family-Pleasing Ways – Day One

Before the snow melted into this random patchiness, we were spending our afternoons outside in the yard sledding and scooping snow. This didn’t leave a lot of time to make dinner so I tried out that theory of “cook once for two day’s meals”. One two meal set, involving pork, was fabulous. The one two-night-gig with salmon was excellent the first night, but no matter how you package it, leftover fish is just sort of, um, nasty.

This recipe was inspired by Health Magazine’s January/February 2010 article, Double Delicious. The magazine proposed Horseradish-Crusted Pork Tenderloin on night one, and Pork & Black Bean Tacos on night two. Because I liked the idea, but didn’t have the ingredients for their recipes on hand (nor the time in the case of night one), here is what I whipped up.

Sweet & Spicy Crusted Pork Tenderloin

As I think I have mentioned before, if you keep a packet of Urban Accents Dry Glazes on hand (sold at Walter Stewart's in town as well as many other markets), you will always be able to whip up a gourmet meal in minutes. The one I happened to have in my pantry was “Bombay Blitz” Dryglaze (which contains: granulated honey, sea salt, sugar, cumin, bell pepper, white peppercorn, coriander, onion, turmeric, Cayenne pepper, green peppercorns, black peppercorns, and vanilla bean powder). It’s a shortcut, but I recognize all the ingredients within, so we’re good to go. I simply rubbed a bit of olive oil on the two 1-pound(ish) pork tenderloins, then sprinkled one bag of dryglaze amongst the two tenderloins (each box of dryglaze comes with two bags), and then went out to sled with the kids. When we came back in, I roasted the pork in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Done!

Then alongside the pork tenderloin, I roasted brussel sprouts (drizzled with olive oil and dusted with a little kosher salt and cumin) and red peppers. The veggies were also roasted at 425 degrees, which made the whole thing very easy. For a starch, I always keep a couple of those Seeds of Change Whole Grain Basmati rice packets in the pantry, which rounded out the meal.

The pork was a little too spicy for my children, so I cut the caramelized crust off, and they basically had plain pork tenderloin and roasted veggies. But everyone was happy. As soon as I pop the kiddos into the tub I can quickly type up what we had on night two with the leftover pork tenderloin, as it was equally delicious (and easy)….