Team Ham

Lean pork is a healthy meat we can enjoy without guilt.  If you are looking for new and different ways to prepare pork, here are some suggestions for your recipe file.  This Pork Tenderloin recipe uses Dijon mustard for a bit of a tang and is served with a Rhubarb Sauce.  This makes for a very tasty main course.  The Tasty Onion Baked Pork Chops are quick and easy for making a meal in a hurry.  Both of these recipes are diabetic friendly.

DIJON PORK TENDERLOIN WITH RHUBARB SAUCE

3 lb pork tenderloin roast

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp rosemary

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

SAUCE:  3 cups sliced rhubarb

1/3 cup orange juice

1/3 cup SPLENDA

1 tbsp cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a roasting pan and rack with non-stick cooking spray.

In a small bowl, combine mustard, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper.  Rub over the pork tenderloin.  Place pork on rack of prepared pan.  Bake, uncovered, 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees.  Let stand 10 minutes before slicing.

Sauce:  In a small saucepan, bring all the sauce ingredients to a boil.  Reduce the heat, cover and simmer 8 -12 minutes until rhubarb is tender. Serve warm, over the pork.

TASTY ONION-BAKED PORK CHOPS

1 envelope dry onion soup mix

1/3 cup plain dry bread crumbs

4 lean pork chops, approximately 1-inch thick each

1/4 cup egg substitute (or 1 egg, beaten)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small mixing bowl, combine soup mix and bread crumbs.  Rinse chops and pat dry.  Pour egg substitute into a shallow bowl and dip chops into it then into the soup/bread mixture until evenly coated.  Lightly spray a 13×9-inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Arrange chops in pan.  Bake, uncovered, 20-30 minutes to desired doneness, turning after the first 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy!

I have written several articles on the empanada. Basically these articles all said the same thing about how it is really a meal in itself and you can add a multitude of filling. Well today the filling we are going to look at is a fairly basic pork recipe that actually is delicious.

So the ingredients we would need would be as follows:

20 g of fresh yeast or 1 teaspoon of easy blend dried (active dry) yeast.

350 g of strong white flour.

125 g of corn meal,, ?masa harina? or finely ground ?polenta?.

½ tbsp salt

Generous 1/3 cup of white wine.

50 g of lard or vegetable fat.

8 tablespoons of olive oil

1 medium egg, lightly beaten

Water to bind the dough

1 medium egg, lightly beaten to seal and glaze the Empanada.

Again the name of the game here is preparation. Take the yeast with about three tablespoons of hand-hot water and mix it all together to a paste. Take the flour and corn meal and pour into a large bowl and add the salt, the wine, the lard the olive oil, the egg and the yeast paste and add enough water to make it all come together into a soft but not too sticky dough.

Still this mixture well and then start to pull it together with your hands. If there is any dried flower left in the bowl and add a touch more to bring it all together. The thing to remember here is if the dough is too dry it would be too difficult to roll out thinly later on.

Take the dough and knead it together for a couple of minutes until it is smooth and well mixed. Then take the dough put it back into a bowl and cover with cling film or plastic wrap. The important bit here is that you should let the dough rise for at least an hour or until it has doubled in size.

Decide upon what filling you want to include within the empanada and bring everything together. Take out half of your dough and roll it out until it’s about approximately 5 mm thick. Oil your baking sheet and lay this dough on top of it.

Now we turn on attention to getting the filling and in this particular case looking to take a fairly basic pork filling. For our purposes here we are going to need the following ingredients:

150 ml of olive oil

450 g pork loin cuts into fine strips

4 onions finely sliced

1 Red Pepper

1 Green Pepper

2 Garlic cloves ? crushed

1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika

½ tsp dried oregano

2 tbsp tomato puree (in paste form)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper.

As with all these recipes thing you do is heat your olive oil and take this and add your pork strips. Now be sensible here and don?t add them all at once and allow them to brown slightly and then when ready take them and remove them from the pan.

In much the same way that you cook the pork strips cook the onion in the same way; that is to say gently until the onion is itself almost transparent or has a slight golden touch to it.

Next up is to add the peppers to the onion and continue cooking until these too are also soft. Re introduce the pork strips and take the paprika and the garlic and add these to the mixture and cook for a while so that the ingredients start to blend in with each other and then add the oregano and the tomato purée.

Finally season with salt and pepper to taste.

Next take your filling and spread the filling evenly leaving about a 2 cm margin around the age of the dough. Brush the edge of the dough with a little beaten egg.

Take the rest of you at the road at approximately the same size as your original piece and lay this on top of your filling. Take the top and the bottom pieces of dough and start to pinch the edges together and then twist the dough over to make a rope like texture around the edge.

Take the remainder of your beaten egg and brush this all over the empanada and then take a fork and pierce the top of the empanada all over with little holes.

Leave the empanada to rest for about 10 minutes and then leak this in a halt often for between 20 to 30 minutes or depending on your oven the crust is really crisp and golden.