My carnivore friends have been asking me to post some recipes for meat dishes. I must admit that there are at least two problems with this request.
First, there are not that many meat recipes on my menu. I do eat meat, but I tend to be more impressed with a good vegetable dish. I have probably eaten my share of meat dishes already in my youth and I am now more into experimenting with vegetables, especially those that were not part of my native cuisine.
Even more importantly, and this is something that even best food photographers are saying, it is very difficult to make cooked meat look good. For that reason, as someone who is very new to blogging and food photography, I was hesitant to confront this challenge. There are some good meat dishes in my recipe book, but I am afraid that, even though they taste great, they may look disappointing, as cooked meat almost always looks brown, brownish, or outright grey, which is not the most flattering way for a tasty dish to come out on a picture.
Below I share a recipe for pork with herb stuffing, and I hope that if you try to cook it, the taste will be more satisfying than these pictures may suggest. But I also promise to update this post if in the future I succeed in making a better picture of that dish.
Pork Tenderloin Stuffed with Herbs
Ingredients:
2 lb pork tenderloin; there are usually two pieces in one pack.
Stuffing:
1 bunch of parsley,
4 branches of fresh rosemary,
1 cup of breadcrumbs,
4 cloves garlic,
1 small beaten egg,
salt and pepper.
Marinade:
1 tbsp of coarsely ground mustard,
4 tbsp olive oil,
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce,
salt and pepper.
Preparation:
1. Wash meat, dry with a paper towel, and cut half way alongside making sure that you do not cut through the end; this is just to be able to spread the meat sideways to accommodate the stuffing.
2. Chop garlic, parsley, and the leaves plucked off the rosemary branches.
3. Add breadcrumbs, beaten egg, season with salt and pepper, and mix all the ingredients to make a smooth stuffing.
4. Divide the stuffing between two pieces of meat, spread slightly and close tenderloins with wooden picks.
5. In a small bowl mix mustard, 2 tbsp of olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, salt.
6. Rub this dressing all over the pieces of meat and let it marinate for about half an hour.
7. Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan on high temperature and fry on it the tenderloins on both sides until dark gold or almost brownish.
8. Lower the temperature and add a little bit of water (about 1/4 cup) to prevent the meat from burning, and cook for about 20-30 minutes under cover, depending on how well you like your meat done.
Pork made this way is very nice just with salad, for example a bean one--my next post, or served traditionally with potatoes or rice.
