Roast Pork Tenderloin with Green Beans and Pan Gravy

This was the main course following French Onion Soup.  The two worked well together as a satisfying Sunday supper.  My neighbour happened to stop in because her little ones wanted to play with my little ones.  She gave the soup and pork two thumbs up!  (I’m sure if she had more thumbs they would have been up too)

I don’t know if Julia Child would have served the pork loin on a squeaky bed of green beans, but I thought it worked quite well for presentation.

The pork was marinated in a rub of garlic, thyme, salt and pepper for 24 hours in a plastic bag in the fridge.  I used about twice the amounts called for, I was nervous that the pork would be, well like pork.  No flavor.  Dry.  Pork.  I think the reason my pork chops are always tough and dry as the west of Texas, is due to my over cooking them.  It’s also a factor of cut, the tenderloin (as the name so implies) is tender and moist when handled with care.

Roasting will not take very long, so this is a great meal any night of the week.  Just be mindful of the marinade time.  Roast covered loosely, for 30 – 35 minutes.  Uncover the tenderloin and continue to roast until the internal temperature is 145-150ºF.   Let the meat rest as you prepare the pan gravy.

Place the roasting pan on the stove, if it is safe to use on the stove top otherwise transfer to another pot over medium heat.  Add  1 cup or so of stock and scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan.  Dissolve 2 Tbsp of cornstarch in about 3 Tbsp of cool water and stir it in.  Let the gravy bubble for about 30 seconds to activate the starch, then reduce to low for a minute.  The sauce should be fairly thin but holds to the back of a spoon.

As suggested in the photo, serve over a bed of steamed green beans and garnish with fresh chives.

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Onion Soup, the Julia Child way

I’ve had Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking on my kitchen shelf for nearly a year now.  I’ve used one single recipe out of the lot.  This book revolutionized American cuisine at home, along with the PBS cooking show starring its author.  You would think, being enthralled with food, I would be half way through cooking every single recipe.  My obstacle is time, and to a slightly lesser degree, energy.  The willful will prevail.

Cooking from scratch is, or at least was, going by the wayside at an alarming rate.  It’s far too easy to grab food to-go on the way to your destination, while we are busy watching the clock instead of our waistlines and our health.  How many people do you know who bake their own bread, make their own fresh pasta, prepare batches of stock, and bake their own cookies?  Grandma.  Hmmm… anyone else?

Sweet Onions for the soup

In contrast to Julia’s methods, I read through my vintage cook book written in the early 1980’s by a group of church ladies.  I could positively tell you that over half the recipes in their collection contained at least one canned or otherwise pre-packaged ingredient, as well as half a cup of oleo (of which puzzled me, I found out that oleo is short for oleomargarine.  Also, based on when this cook book was written and guessing the participants were probably at least 50 years old, they probably wanted to say that vegetable margarine should be used, not one containing animal fat.  Margarine as we know it today was created in 1950 (when the recipe ladies would have been of “marrying age” and learning the fine art of becoming domestic goddesses) due to newer technology that enabled the extraction of oils from vegetable matter in a cheap enough fashion for commercial production.  It’s just a guess though!).  Not all pre-processed foods are created equal.  Compare a box of cheesy macaroni to a freshly frozen pasta dinner, both are pre-packaged pastas that require minimal cooking on your part, but one is not fluorescent orange (and nasty).  Does it hurt to use a can of cream of mushroom soup now and then?  I don’t think so.  I’m a mom, I take advantage of short cuts.

Back to the recipe at hand today, onion soup.  Not from a can or box, real onion soup.

Soft Onions

Julia Child calls for booze in this soup, which I don’t keep on hand, nor do I see a need for it.  These onions had so much flavour that I didn’t want to mask them with much other than my homemade chicken stock perfumed with fennel.

French Onion Soup

I found these vintage soup bowls at Goodwill for a few dollars, nifty eh?  Do make yourself some croutons and melt Gruyère cheese on them, this is a must for your French Onion Soup experience.  This reminds me of home-ec class because this was one of the few recipes we were tasked to replicate.  My home-ec teacher had to taste everyone’s creation at the end of class in order to receive a passing grade for that day, I’m not sure I would want that job.  I wasn’t the greatest cook at the wide-eyed and bushy-tailed age of thirteen.

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