Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Grape Sauce

Today is "reveal day" for The Secret Recipe Club (Group B).  

 Once a month, we are assigned a food blog. Our mission is to visit that blog, choose a recipe, cook it (or bake it) and then blog about it.  The "secret" part is that we post our recipe on a specific day, and that is when we find out who got our blog.  It's quite fun to find out which one of my recipes was chosen, and to see their version of it.

My assigned blog was "Eat Laugh Love" and I found a plethora of recipes to choose from.  We share a few things in common-- for one, we are both married to "Craig's" and we are fortunate that our husbands are willing to clean up the kitchen, in exchange for our cooking.  That's very fair!  I had to toss a coin between making the Enchiladas Suizas (I've been on a Mexican food kick as of late) or the Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Grape Sauce.

I was fortunate to find seedless red grapes, so which recipe to choose was finally settled.  I've always meant to roast grapes, and this was my chance to scratch that off my recipe bucket list.

Pork tenderloin is a common protein staple in my kitchen.  I love that it's a lean cut of meat, and my favorite way to prepare it is to sear and roast it.   It's such a fast dinner to make, and it's fun for me to invesnt a pan sauce-- sometimes, from what I can scrounge up from my refrigerator.  With this recipe, except for the grapes, I had everything on hand. Big plus!

  I have plenty of fresh thyme in our herb garden, and I always have shallots on hand.

I tossed the grapes with a little olive oil, salt & pepper, and preheated the oven to 425F

Rather than roasting the grapes, separately, I just tossed them in with the seared tenderloin, then roasted everything for about 20 minutes-- or until about 145F.

Remove the pork, and loosely cover with foil. Set the grapes aside and make a pan sauce...

I liked that the grapes released some of their juices, so I tossed in the shallots and cooked until tender-- 2-3 minutes. Then, I added some Ruby Red Port and reduced that for a few minutes. 

Last, I added chicken broth, the fresh thyme and some Dijon mustard and let that reduce for a few minutes, then adjust with a little bit more salt. Rather than adding a slurry of cornstarch and water, I added a pat of unsalted butter and whisked it.  Done!

Start to finish-- 45 minutes.  I served this with polenta and zucchini.  

TASTING NOTES:  Fruit and pork pair beautifully together.  Roasted grapes are a little bit sweet, and give a lovely texture to this dish.   The perfect combo was one bite of pork, with a nice chunk of grapes-- savory, sweet with just a slight hint of tart.  This is fancy enough to serve at a dinner party, but quick and easy enough for a work night meal.  Overall, it's a healthy meal-- and one small pat of unsalted butter is no biggie.  I'll definitely make roasted grapes again.

You'll find a printable recipe card by scrolling to the bottom of this post.  

My next post will be the Chicken Mole recipe and a Mexican-themed dessert that I made for Cinco de Mayo.   I'm running a little behind, but I'll be catchup up soon!