A recipe for meat and two pork tenderloin

With a sauce you will love.

I said most of what I need to say about pork loin in depth the last time I made it for this esteemed publication, so if you want a deep dive, refresh your memory with that. As I’d mentioned then, while writing about a recipe that called for apples and onions, there was another recipe in the cookbook I used to make much more frequently—in my memory, in college? or maybe post-college more realistically—but that I hadn’t whipped out in a long time. But there’s nothing like winter to make you want a little meat and potatoes, and so we return to the days of yore. Planning this meal again after such a long break made me realize how many of thmyose meals were protein/starch/vegetable, separately—a meat and two, versus a Southern classic meat and three—and how much they’re all those things, but mixed up, more frequently now.

Since it had been a minute since I’d made this, I had to really refresh my memory. First off, there’s no cook time on this (classic), so I had to compare to some other pork (tender)loin—yes, we were going tenderloin again instead of loin because of size and ease of access—recipes, which suggested 20 minutes to get to a 140-145 degree internal temp after resting. (As established in the last missive about pork, a little lower to take out is fine.) That seemed short to me, but we’d address when we got there.

Back in the day, I definitely made this with just one pork tenderloin, but as was the case with the last pork recipe, the package I bought came with two. This meant that I did end up tying them together, with rosemary in between, something I hadn’t done previously. It’s also not clear what “insert slivers of garlic… between the loins” means; I did as I usually do and tucked the sliced garlic—I did a few cloves—into small cuts in the meat.

As the loins seared (note that “cast iron skillet” is listed as an ingredient), I prepped the sauce. Again, there were no measurements, so I used a medium shallot and 4 oz of regular button mushrooms, because that’s what the store had. Once the pork was in the oven, I realized that it rightfully was going to be more like 40 minutes of cook time. When it did finally come out after some checks, it was nicely cooked—not dry.

I served this with a baked potato with sour cream, butter and salt and pepper, which I had been thinking about for ages and seemed classic, and—what else?—some cooked kale. While we ended up eating later than I would have liked, it was refreshing to have a real three-item meal on a weeknight. This would have easily served two more people, if not more, but instead, we had leftovers for a few days—a nice problem to have. My only note is that I would have at least doubled the amount of shallots, mushrooms, etc. The sauce, as I remembered vividly, was always my favorite part, and there was simply not enough of it.

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