Pork Tenderloin with Prunes

I've always liked the combination of meats with fruits and the pork tenderloin is especially nice to serve with fruits or even fill it. For this particular recipe, I used dried prunes which were first soaked for a while in Noilly Prat and then stuffed into the tenderloin.

I like to keep the ingredients simple to not confuse the tastes. This dish stays very simple in preparation and is a guaranteed success in the oven for low temperature cooking. As a side dish, I prepared some noodles as I thought they'd go best with the slightly sweet sauce from the meat.



for 2 people:

for the pork and noodles:
1 pork tenderloin
about 8 dried prunes, pitted and cut in half, soaked in 1/2 cup Noilly Prat for at least 1 hour
1 tablespoons green peppercorns, slightly crushed
1 tablespoons red peppercorns, slightly crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
kitchen string to close the meat
noodles of your choice

the sauce:
1 tablespoons green peppercorns, slightly crushed
1 tablespoons red peppercorns, slightly crushed
about 8 dried prunes, pitted and cut in half, soaked in 1/2 cup Noilly Prat for at least 1 hour
1/4 cup Noilly Prat
1/4 cup dry white wine (a cheap one for cooking)
3-4 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon chicken base (Better-Than-Bouillon)
1 teaspoon butter



Instructions:

We'll start preparing the pork first. Preheat the oven to 80 C. (180 F.).

Cut the tenderloin lengthwise without cutting through. Fold open the meat and add the soaked prunes. Close the meat and tie it tight with the kitchen string. Rub the peppercorns all around the meat.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over high heat and sauté the meat all around until brown, but not longer than a few minutes. The meat should still be red inside.

Wrap the tenderloin in aluminum foil and put into the preheated low temperature oven.

For the sauce, add all ingredients but the butter into the skillet where you've previously grilled the pork. Simmer the sauce until the prunes almost completely lost their original shape and are dissolved in the sauce, about 20 minutes. Add more white wine if the sauce becomes a bit too thick.

In the meantime, bring water to a boil in a large enough pot for the noodles. Add salt. Before adding the noodles, make sure your sauce and the pork are ready to be served. The pork should have been in the oven for about 30 minutes.

The advantage of low temperature cooking in the oven is, that the meat won't dry out and it also doesn't matter much if you leave it for another extra 10 minutes.

If you have the possibility, preheat the plates. The other way would be to increase the heat in the oven to a very high temperature for just 1 minute or so, not longer! That way, the meat will still stay juicy but will be hotter for serving.

Just before serving noodles and meat, add the butter into the sauce and mix very gently.

Remove the meat from the oven, cut into slices and serve with the noodles on the side. Pour the sauce over the noodles and serve immediately.

I found this funny looking swiss wine in the grocery store, a Dôle with the whole Ruetlischwur story written on it! Most likely, you won't find it at Trader Joe's ;-)