Roasted Pork Tenderloin & Potatoes - 2 stars

this meal just didn't do a whole lot for me. my goal had been to roast the pork over the vegetables so that the meat juices would drip down onto them and give them a flavor boost. i think the problem was that the pork tenderloin really wasn't fatty enough to give off the juices that i wanted.

to make this, i rubbed a dry chinese 12-spice rub all over the outside of the tenderloin. i tossed together baby red potatoes, whole garlic cloves and hunks of white onion in a little olive oil. i spread that in the bottom of the pan and put the tenderloins over it. here's what it looked like in the oven.



see? it looks good! i was excited for it, and then so disappointed! :)

one of my challenges with cooking larger cuts of meats is figuring out when they're done. i often use a thermometer to help me with this - however, i must not have inserted it properly into the tenderloin here, so the pork registered as being done MUCH too early, and was way undercooked. the onions came out totally soggy, not crisp roasted as i expected (i roasted at 425 degrees F). the potatoes were hard as a rock, and took an additional half hour to finish roasting.

i ended up pan searing my portion of the tenderloin to finish the cooking process, while the potatoes finished cooking. i left the nasty onions in the pan and ate only the potatoes and pork. :) i rounded it out with a salad and steamed green beans - both of which were good.




the best part of the meal was the green apple lambic!!! :-)

1/12 follow up - i read a favorite cookbook of mine over the weekend, and there was a recipe that was similar to what i was attempting with this one. that recipe suggested boiling the baby red potatoes for 15 minutes, then thin slicing them and layering them on the bottom of the baking dish. you can then put your meat (the recipe actually called for salmon steaks - YUM!) over that, and both the potatoes & the meat will be done properly, and the potatoes will absorb the meat juices.