Pork Wasabi Tacos

Let me let you in on a little secret: I cook all sorts of delicious things that I don't share with you.

It's nothing personal. Really. While I do love my blog and love to share the wonderful things we cook, there are some days when I just don't feel like snapping photos of every step, trying to make my kitchen look pretty in the background (this usually fails - there's no hiding the ugly green counter top). Other days, I plan to blog about a recipe, get all excited for it, and the photos are blurry or the recipe turns out badly. Finally, on a few rare occasions, I have made a delicious recipe, taken lovely pictures, loaded them into blogger and left them there to rot. Some day, I promise, you will hear about the amazing pork schnitzel Jeff made back in the fall. Pinky swear. This recipe is one of the latter. I have made the effort to drag it up out of the archives, dust it off and present it to you now, with plenty of summer grilling season left for you to try it out.

This is one of those dishes where everything comes together in blissful harmony: hot pork meets cool cucumber, crunchy cabbage butts up against a soft flour tortilla, sinus-clearing wasabi washes over the sweet hoisin glaze. The biggest bonus? It takes no time at all to pull together. Put the super-thin strips of pork on the grill, whisk together the five-ingredient sauce, slice a few veggies, remove the pork, assemble the tacos, done. That leaves you more time to get back to the important things, like enjoying the summer evening. There's nothing wrong with being a little lazy in the summer.

Pork Wasabi Tacos
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens summer 2010.

1-1 1/2 lb pork tenderloin, cut into thin strips
1/3 c hoisin sauce
6 flour tortillas
2 tsp wasabi paste
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 head Napa cabbage, chopped
2 carrots, shredded
1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced

Marinate pork in hoisin sauce.

Thread onto skewers and cook on grill over medium heat for 2-3 minutes a side, turning once. 

Meanwhile, combine wasabi, water, oil, vinegar and sugar in a small bowl and whisk well to combine. Serve pork on tortillas with cabbage, shredded carrot, cucumber slices and a drizzle of wasabi dressing.

Pork Stir Fry with Peppers and Snow Peas

Stir fries are great. They're quick, flavorful and generally healthy. This one certainly has all those characteristics, and manages to meet all my new dietary requirements.

I found out recently that I have high cholesterol - scary, considering the considerable family history of heart issues that has popped up in the past year. I knew I needed to lose weight, and have been working on it gradually for a year or so, but now I've had to step things up a bit. To be honest, my diet hasn't changed very drastically. The first week after the doctor gave me this weight-loss ultimatum, all of the meals I had planned were suitable for my new low-fat, low-cholesterol program. The snacks and desserts are killing me, though. While I had been steadily improving my eating habits for quite some time, I was still eating a lot of baked goods, and chocolate was a common snack. I've had to cut that out almost entirely, since I can't really eat butter (and refuse to use something as engineered as margarine). It's been painful. If I'm really, really good during the day, I can have a controlled slice of cake or a cookie. I will definitely have to cut back on all the baking I love so much. 

With this diet in place, I was a bit leery of trying a pork recipe - the first "red" meat I've had in weeks - but Jeff really wanted it so I succumbed. It turns out that a nice, trimmed pork tenderloin is pretty lean. Since the rest of the recipe is packed with veggies, it's a rather healthy main dish. Half the recipe with 3/4 c rice is just about 500 calories (I only needed a third of the recipe, so I had some calories to spare for dessert!). Low in saturated fat and high in protein, fiber and vitamin C, this is definitely a keeper. That it takes less than half an hour is a great bonus!

Pork Stir Fry with Peppers and Snow Peas
Slightly adapted from Bride and Groom: First and Forever cookbook.


1 c basmati rice
1 1/2 c water
1/2 c light coconut milk

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped into half-moons
1 small red bell pepper, cut into strips
8 oz pork tenderloin, sliced into thin rounds
1.5" piece of ginger, finely chopped
1/4 c sherry vinegar
1/4 c hoisin sauce
1/8 c water
1 c snow peas
1/4 c green onions, sliced (for garnish)

In a medium saucepan, heat the water and coconut milk until it comes to a boil (watch closely so it doesn't boil over!). Add rice, cover and cook 12-15 minutes, until liquid is gone and rice is tender.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large wok over high heat. Add onions and pepper and cook until softened.

Season pork with salt and pepper, then add to the pan. Add ginger. Cook 1-2 minutes, until pork is no longer pink. Add vinegar, hoisin sauce, and water to the pan. Simmer 1-2 minutes.

Add snow peas. Cook another 1-2 minutes until everything is cooked through and sauce is thick. Garnish with green onions and serve over rice.

Roast Pork Tenderloin with Plum Barbecue Sauce

Jeff here.  Since my better half generally leaves the handling and cooking of meat (on the stovetop, in the oven, or on the grill out back) to me, she's invited me to do a guest post on this delicious roast pork dinner from last week.  To be honest, though, the pork is simply a vehicle for the real star of the show, the plum barbecue sauce.  It makes the pork look really good in the picture above... and it tastes as good as it looks!

Asian cuisine has always been a favorite of mine and Kristin's.  Kristin ate her share of pad thai in college, and I was introduced to the Korean specialty bibimbap when I worked in New York City during my second semester of sophomore year.  (That dish is right up my alley: its name means "mixed meal," and I have a tendency to jumble my food together when I eat.)  We both love a good curry, although our palates can stand different levels of heat, and who can resist a well-prepared General Tso's Chicken?  Raw fish is where Kristin draws the line, so she doesn't share my love of sushi and sashimi, but what can you do?  (You can give me her share.)  But I digress.

We hadn't been waiting too long to make this delicious roast pork in plum sauce.  Kristin found it in this year's July issue of Cooking Light.  Since we enjoy cooking and eating local foods, we were able to get a taste of several New Jersey products, including the locally grown plums (bought at the Village Farms stand on Route 206), the pork tenderloin (from the nearby organic Cherry Grove Farm, just up the road from Village Farms), and ketchup made from 100% New Jersey tomatoes (from First Field).  Despite all the tomatoes we get from our backyard garden and our CSA share, we have not yet made our own ketchup, so we cracked open the jar we bought at another town's Farmer's Market (which just closed down) a few weeks ago; we were not disappointed.

As I said above, the sauce is really the highlight of this recipe.  The natural saltiness of the pork is well-complemented by the sweetness of the plums and the tangy-ness of the rest of the sauce.  The plums will break down most of the way, thickening up the sauce considerably, but the small chunks that remain are a delicious treat, bringing a change of texture to a mouthful of pork. 

Roast Pork Tenderloin with Plum Barbecue Sauce
From Cooking Light, July 2011

Sauce: 
2 tbsp canola oil
1 c onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c rice wine vinegar
1/4 c ketchup (we used First Field Ketchup)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (the sauce didn't pack much heat, so feel free to add more red pepper flakes)
2 cloves
1 1/2 lb black plums, pitted and quartered

Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add canola oil and swirl to coat. Add onion and garlic. Sauté 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the rest of the sauce ingredients.

Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes until plums break down. (I thought the plums would need to be cut smaller, but they really do break down well. Don't worry about any chunks that remain. They're delicious too.) Discard cloves. (We forgot to do that. No one has taken an unlucky bite yet...)

Pork:
2 tbsp canola oil
2 1-lb pork tenderloins (we only used a single tenderloin, but we made all the sauce)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Preheat oven to 450°. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan and swirl to coat. Sprinkle pork evenly with salt and pepper. Add pork to pan and sauté 7 minutes, turning to brown on all sides.

Transfer pork to a foil-lined jelly roll pan and coat with 1/2 cup plum sauce. Roast at 450° for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, turn pork over and coat with an additional 1/2 cup sauce (and breathe it in). Roast for 10 minutes, until internal temperature is 155°. Remove from pan and rest 10 minutes.

Slice crosswise and serve with plum sauce. (Garnish with a couple sprigs of thyme, if you'd like.)