A Foiled Dinner Creation

Before I begin my little story on another New York City cooking adventure, I want to apologize for my inattentiveness to my postings. Yes, I have apologized before and have promised to write more, but I am not sure where the time is going? Once again, I will try to make more of an effort in keeping you updated on my culinary creations – I really do love sharing the stories behind them!

I must give credit where credit is due. I made an amazing dinner recently. The meal was a variation of grilled pork shish kabobs – without a grill of course and without skewers. Concededly, you might ask why, despite the lack of shish kabob essentials I continue to call the meal shish kabobs; but saying, “I made little pork cubes” just doesn’t sound as interesting, does it?

While doing a quick breeze-through of the cooking section at Borders, I quickly glanced at an Ina Garten cookbook and got the inspiration for this recipe. Ina’s recipe was a lamb kabob over couscous, but thinking that lamb might be a bit decadent for a dinner without guests, I chose a pork tenderloin as the meat is quite tender and flavorful, but fortunately not as expensive!

A few hours before dinner I cut the tenderloin into cubes and began working on a marinade. The marinade, which was sort of put together randomly with the ingredients I had in store, consisted of a few swirls of extra-virgin olive oil, red wine, garlic, thyme and rosemary. I let the pork marinate in this mixture for about 3 hours.

Using a grill pan, I grilled the tenderloin cubes for about 3 minutes on each side, removed them from the pan when they were still very rare and wrapped them in tin foil and placed them in the oven on a very low heat until the rest of the meal was ready. This technique was very accidental. I removed the pork from the grill plan prematurely because I needed the space and pan for my side dish – grilled red onions and cherry tomatoes that I coated in extra-virgin olive oil, coarse sea salt and pepper.

When my sides were done grilling, I removed the pork from the oven, put a few cubes over couscous and placed my tomatoes and red onions around the plate as a garnish. To my surprise, the meat that was wrapped in the foil and left to finish cooking in the oven was juicy, tender and delicious. Wrapping the meat in foil created the perfect cooking environment. All the flavors and juices were contained within the foil, and because the liquid could not evaporate, the meat did not have an opportunity to dry. This technique did not foil my meal - the pork was so delicious and all the flavors of the marinade were noticeable and complimented the meat so well.

My sides were grilled in the juices and bits of meat left over in the grill pan, rendering the tomatoes and onions with similar flavors to the meat. My couscous was also cooked in rosemary and chicken broth, keeping with the spices in the marinade. It was a great dinner – considering that I made grilled shish kabobs without a grill and without skewers. The best part was stumbling on a new cooking technique for meat!

Until next time…