Pork Tenderloin with Apple-Blueberry Chutney

After a very stressful last couple of months, my wife and I decided to take a mini-vacation to Pensacola, Florida with weekend to see our son and daughter-in-law. Then this uninvited guest announced he was coming as well. His name hurricane Isaac. Ok maybe we will change our plans.
In the mean time we decided Atlanta would be an alternate vacation spot. We can stay with my little sister and there will certainly be things to do. What Isaac has decided to curve east after coming ashore and Atlanta is going to get up to 8 inches of rain.
Friday after work we go to get in the car and hear a loud popping sound. The car will not start. The car was towed to the dealer. They called Saturday to say that the temperature sensor was bad and it thinks the car was overheating and shuts down.
Well before going on vacation I should update the maps on my GPS. Ok the GPS won't install the new maps. Email Garmin support. After three days they have me send them files from my GPS as I have apparently discovered a glitch in their GPS that won't let certain models be updated. Glad I paid for that lifetime of updates. Actually they are working with it and trying to get it to update without me returning the unit.
Maybe we should stay home and work.

Pork Tenderloin with Apple-Blueberry Chutney
Apple-Blueberry Chutney
1apple, seeded and cored and cut into small pieces
1 pint blueberries
1/4 cup orange juice or lemon juice
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Put everything in a pan over medium heat. Cook until fruit is soft and liquids have almost evaporated. You will have a very thick fruit with a thick sticky sauce. If you serve over mixed greens like I did you can leave some of the liquid and drizzle over the greens like a salad dressing.

Pork Tenderloin
1 pork tenderloin
olive oil, just enough to cove meat
salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat a grill to medium.
Drizzle olive oil on tenderloin. Sprinkle salt and pepper on pork tenderloin. These are the pork tenderloins that come 2 to a pack and are long and skinny. I have mentioned these before and someone always confuses them with a pork loin which is much larger like a roast. Place tenderloin on grill and close the lid. Cook for 8 minutes. Flip the tenderloin over close the lid and cook for 6 minutes. Turn grill off and leave tenderloin on the grill for 6 minutes with lid closed. This will give you slightly pink and very juicy tenderloin. You may have to adjust the cook time a little based on your grill.

I served this on a bed of mixed greens with a few pecans thrown on top of the greens. Then I sliced the tenderloin at an angle to give me long skinny slices. Then topped the pork slices with chutney.

Carmel Apple Quesadilla

This is a recipe that was completely inspired by another blogger or should I say bloggers, Mr. & Mrs. P. In the teaser for their recipe they said Apple Quesadilla and I assumed it was a dessert, it turned out to be a cheese and apple quesadilla. I decided to do a dessert version. Click here and you can check out their recipe for Apple Quesadilla.

For my version I just winged it as I watched the Super Bowl, so taste and adjust to your liking. If I make this again I would consider toasting the tortillas a little longer to add some crunch to the recipe.

Carmel Apple Quesadilla
1 tbs. butter
1 apple but into bite sized pieces, I used Granny Smith
1 1/2 tbs brown sugar
2 tortillas
no stick cooking spray
carmel, melted or carmel sauce
cinnamon sugar

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the apples and cook until they are soft. While the apples are cooking spray both sides of the tortillas with no stick spray and put them one at a time into another skillet heated over medium heat. Cook tortillas until they start to form bubbles and take on some color. Flip over and cook other side until they bubble again. Put the tortilla on a plate.
When the apples are soft add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar melts and forms a glaze. Put 1/2 of apple mixture on half of the tortilla and then fold other half of tortilla over top of it. Drizzle the carmel over the tortilla shell and then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.

Poached Pears

2 Pears and a 1/2 bottle of wine what do you do? Raise the ante and hope to draw a full house? No poach the pears, and you'll have a sure winner.

Poached Pears

2 Pears, peeled but leave the stem in

1 cup wine, I used a Zinfandel Shiraz blend

1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you want it

1 cinnamon stick

4 cloves

Put everything in a saucepan that is small enough that the pears will be submerged. If you don't have a pan that will let the pears be submerged then don't worry, just rotate the pears every few minutes to keep the color uniform as they absorb the wine.

While the wine is heating up peel the pears. You can cut a slice off from the bottom so they will stand up without wobbling. If you want to speed things up a little here take a melon baller and scoop out the core of the pear a little. I did not do this and it took about 45 minutes for them to get soft and then the center was still a little hard. By scooping them I think they will soften faster. If you scoop the insides I would serve the pear standing up on the plate instead of fanned like the one in my pictures. The pears in the pictures are still connected at the stem end.

After the pears are soft remove them from the liquid, but let the liquid keep simmering. Let it simmer until it becomes a syrup. Watch this part closely once it becomes syrup it will burn shortly after that. Drizzle the syrup around the plate and/or over the pears. Simple but very good!