Tidings Magazine

I love this cut of meat. It’s nutrient-dense with a high level of B vitamins plus phosphorous, zinc, magnesium and selenium. Because pork tenderloin is lean, it’s best prepared with a marinade or sauce. Experts now say you can cook pork just until the center is pink, but I prefer to give it a full 40 minutes in the oven or until it reaches 170˚F on a meat thermometer. This recipe includes the twenty-first-century champion of the culinary world — the ubiquitous chipotle. It remains to be seen what hot new darling will replace chipotle in ’08, but let’s hope pork tenderloin holds its own well into the next millennium.

As always, recipes are often a case of personal taste. And while this recipe may not exactly match the classic, it more or less matches many that produce this always-comforting meal. I sometimes make this with scratch pastry, but not always. You’ll be excused if you purchase puff pastry from the supermarket.

A Portuguese-inspired dish from Goa, Vindaloo is one of my favourite curries. Not only is it flexible, versatile and easy to prepare but it delivers precisely the sort of soul-searing heat I crave. Though traditionally hotter than the ninth ring of hell, feel free to accommodate or challenge your own personal threshold. This is an adaptation of Madhur Jaffrey’s Pork Vindaloo (ironically from a book called Quick and Easy Indian Cuisine). Her trick of using grainy mustard rather than mustard seeds and vinegar saves both time and fuss. Like the mulligatawny, this is the sort of recipe wherein once you’ve got it going, you can walk away and do as you please for an hour or so. I’ve used pork shoulder or lamb and both have been delicious. This would, however, work equally well with duck, chicken, beef, venison … anything you can kill really. So long as you’ve got two pounds of it. You’ll definitely want to serve this with mountains of rice so if you don’t have a rice cooker, I’m afraid you’ll just have to make some the old-fashioned way.