Thanksgiving Idea #3: Roasted Pork with Dried Plum Sauce, anyone?

What You'll Need

Pots/Pans:

• 2-quart sauce pot for creating your plum sauce
• Skillet big enough to accommodate your pork, and one that can also go into a 400 degree oven
• Tongs for rotating pork tenderloin to brown on all sides evenly
• Kitchen/Butcher's twine to tie-off pork

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PORK:

• 1 (or 2) pork tenderloin(s), about 1 pound per, which you will butterfly cut and roll up with sage leaves and Fontina cheese inside, tying off with Butcher's twine
  
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt/black pepper
• 4 - 5 fresh Sage leaves
• Fontina cheese, cut into long batons

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SAUCE:

• 1 bottle red wine, preferably a Pinot Noir, with a fruity balance
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Dash or two of red wine vinegar
• 1 cup pitted organic prunes - Don't stress if they're not already pitted, because you can easily do that yourself (NOTE: prunes are also known as "dried plums") You will chop these prunes/dried plums moderately, just to make them smaller than full-sized as they are when they come out of the bag
• Pinch of Salt

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Method

This will take about an hour from start to finish.
Start here: Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees!

1.  We'll begin by creating our sauce first, allowing it to cook and simmer as the pork is being done.
Put all your sauce ingredients into that sauce pot (bottle of red wine, red wine vinegar, sugar, salt, prunes) and cook it on MEDIUM heat until the prunes simmer down and become really soft. This will take about 20 minutes from start to finish. Reduce heat to LOW if you need to to avoid burning sauce, since the sugar will want to scorch if you're not paying attention. And that would be bad.

2.  Butterfly the pork tenderloin and give it a slight pounding to flatten it out a bit. (Cover pork with plastic wrap and use a small skillet or meat hammer to pound it down a little) Season it with salt/black pepper on the inside. Lay down the sage leaves, lengthwise, and also place your Fontina cheese batons running east-to-west, then roll the loin up and cinch it together with your Butcher's twine. Season it again with salt/black pepper. Put your oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat, drizzle in some olive oil, and let it get HOT, then brown the pork on all sides, going for that tell-tale caramelized brown that indicates awesome flavor

3.  When pork is browned, put it into oven-safe skillet you just used, and slap it into that 400-degree oven for about 12 - 15 minutes. Pay attention to it! You don't want it to burn. Depending on your oven and barometer and alignment of the planets (okay, just kidding about that one), your pork might take only 10 minutes. Just be aware.

4.  When pork is done to your liking, remove it from oven and let it rest, removing kitchen twine. While it's resting, grab your sauce pot and puree it in either a food processor or by using an immersion hand-held blender. I recommend the hand-held immersion blender, but if you do opt for the food processor, keep in mind the sauce will be HOT. The sauce will also be rather thick after you puree it.

5.  Having rested the pork, go ahead and slice it on the bias into manageable portions, shingle them onto a waiting serving platter, and drizzle that dried plum sauce onto the pieces, reserving the rest of the sauce for seconds.

NOTE: When you take that hot skillet out of oven, remember that it is at 400 degrees, and if you forget and go to grab it you will severely burn your hand. I know this because, yes, I have done it on more than one occasion. Here's a tip - when you take skillet out of oven, lay a kitchen towel or oven mitt over the handle of the skillet. This lets you and anyone else in the kitchen know that the pan is HOT.

I will be cooking this recipe, with some minor tweaks, later today (Wednesday) and will take photos as I go along, showing a literal step-by-step method. You're gonna love it.

UPDATE:

So I cooked this recipe this evening, Wednesday 13 November 2013, and I had a family friend take photos as we went along.

Some tweaks I did were:
1.  Instead of Fontina cheese, I used a mix of Taleggio il Carvaggio and shredded parmigiano cheese....it was amazing!

2.  Instead of hand-mixing the dried plum sauce with an immersion blender, I merely mashed it in the pot with a potato masher and then strained it through a basic handled screen. I did not pit the prunes, either, since I knew I was going to strain it eventually.

3.  I used an inexpensive Sherry wine instead of a Pinot Noir. It produced a brilliantly sweet, but not over-bearing or sickeningly so, sauce that complemented that pork beautifully (It was so good that I drank what I had left of it at the end of the meal!)