Pork Tenderloin Challenge!

My friend (and fellow Army Wife) Steve and his wife are doing a 30 day food creativity challenge (check out his blog HERE!!). While I do not wish to go to the store every day for a new ingredient, he helped out by giving me a main ingredient on Monday that I had to come up with a creative way to use on Tuesday (when I do go to the store).  He was making a pork tenderloin Tuesday, so that's what he gave me to use as well.

I knew it wouldn't be creative enough to just throw some spices or sauces on it and bake, broil or grill it, so I started thinking outside the oven-box.  Pulled pork BBQ sandwiches was also too easy.  So I thought perhaps I could combine the pulled pork aspect of BBQ with a taco.  And then another recipe I made a while ago popped into my head....it was a pork tenderloin with an onion and cranberry sauce on top.  My idea was created!  A pulled pork taco, with some kind of onion mixture and a cranberry sauce or chutney on corn tortillas.  And tacos need cheese, right?  Mmmm....goat cheese would be perfect!  So here is my creation yesterday.  I've decided to call it:

Pulled Pork Tacos with a Cranberry-Apple Chutney 

Pulled Pork Ingredients:

• 1 pork tenderloin
• 2 bottles beer of choice (I used Samuel Adams Blackberry Witbier)
• 1 vidalia onion
• 1 cup chicken broth
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 50/50 corn/flour tortillas

Directions:

1. Salt and pepper the pork tenderloin to taste. 
2. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat.  Sear all sides of the pork tenderloin in the skillet.  Place in the bottom of a crock pot.  Cover pork with the beer.  Cover and cook on low 4-6 hours, or until pork will shred easily.

3. Roughly 45 minutes prior to pork being done, begin the last of the prep.  Slice the onion into long pieces.  Heat the cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.  Add about 2 tsp olive oil and add onions.  Salt and pepper to taste, cover and stir occasionally, cooking about 10 minutes or until onions are a nice golden brown.  Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat; let simmer 30 minutes.

4. While the onions simmer, prepare the Cranberry-Apple Chutney (recipe below).  The chutney is nice served warm with this dish, however it can be cooled and kept for up to a month in the fridge.
5. While chutney is simmering, remove pork from crock pot and shred with forks.  Discard liquid.  Add onion mixture to the shredded pork and mix well in a large bowl. 
6. To prepare the tacos, spread desired amount of goat cheese on a corn tortilla, along with the chutney and pork on top.  Voila!  A pulled pork taco with cranberry-apple chutney. :-)

Cranberry-Apple Chutney Ingredients:

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 red onion, finely diced
• 1 apple, peeled and diced small
• 1 Tbsp minced fresh peeled ginger
• 10 whole cloves, crushed with the side of a knife
• 2 whole cinnamon sticks
• About 3 1/2 cups fresh or thawed cranberries **(I could not find either this time of year, so I used a bag of Ocean Spray dried cranberries instead.  I soaked them in water for about an hour, then rinsed them and let them dry to try to remove some of the extra sugar.  I'm sure this is even better with whole cranberries!)**

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, onion, apple, ginger, cloves and cinnamon sticks.  Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.  Cook, stirring until sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the cranberries and reduce heat.  Simmer gently until most of the liquid is gone.  (If using whole cranberries, simmer until the cranberries are tender and start to burst.)  Using a potato masher, gently mash the chutney together to create more of a paste consistency.  Serve warm with this dish, but again, can be cooled and kept for up to a month in the fridge.

Reflections:  I was a little concerned this would turn out just awful.  Weird ingredients, flavored beer, corn tortillas and goat cheese?!?  Come on, doesn't sound like something you might normally think of.  But that was the point with this!  My first thought when coming up with this was something along the lines of "pulled pork BBQ meets Mexican tacos meets Thanksgiving cranberries." LOL  But I think it worked!!  The chutney was very sweet, and I think it is in part because I couldn't find whole cranberries.  If you have to use the dried, maybe decrease the amount of brown sugar to 3/4 cups or so to help reduce the sweetness a little.  (I can't wait to make this again in season with whole cranberries and Honeycrisp apples!!)  The pork cooked in Blackberry Witbier was kind of odd by itself....but it worked pretty well with this. 

Overall, I liked the recipe.  Chris agreed with me and gave it 5 out of 5 stars for creativity, and 4 out of 5 stars for taste.  And I agree with him on his reasoning for the lower taste score.  As it is presented above, it may be too sweet for some people.  The goat cheese helps balance it out a little bit, but he suggested adding some kind of spice to further balance out the sweetness.  But not another sauce...the pork needs to be cooked differently to add the spice, and I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet (suggestions welcomed!).  I think once we master the pork, it will become a family favorite! :-)

I enjoyed the challenge of coming up with something different for a pork tenderloin.  And since I like to cook and come up with new things, this really was a fun challenge!  And Steve has graciously agreed to give me further ingredients each week to work with as well.  Hopefully everything else turns out just as well as this did! :-)