Cook the Book: Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Rhubarb Sauce
Rhubarb season generally runs from late spring to early summer, but this year it seems to have lasted a bit longer: the bright red stalks are still available at my weekend farmers market, and I've spotted them at high-end grocery stores such as Whole Foods as recently as a few days ago. As a lover of rhubarb's snappy, tart flavor, I can only hope its recent proliferation is a sign of increasing popularity. If there is enough demand, maybe someday rhubarb will be available year-round. Sure, it won't taste as good in January as it does in June, but baked into a pie, I doubt anyone will complain.
Today’s Cook the Book recipe, excerpted from Summer on a Plate by Anna Pump, pairs a chunky rhubarb-honey sauce with a spicy grilled pork tenderloin rubbed with ground sage, fennel, cayenne, and Dijon mustard. If you have time, prepare the rhubarb sauce one day ahead to give the flavors a chance to blend.
Win 'Summer on a Plate'
We're giving away five (5) copies of Anna's book. Enter for a chance to win here.
This recipe turned out nothing like I imagined it, which is completely my fault because I didn't bother to read it through to the end. "Press the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve," it advised, which quashed my idea that this was going to be a chunky, rustic dish that highlighted in-season rhubarb. I thought I was was going to have a meat-and-vegetable all-in-one dish that could stand on its own and make a satisfying meal. What I ended up with was the pork tenderloin with some ugly-looking cooked-down brown mush that, good thing, the recipe told me to strain.
