The Diagram Explains It All

Okay, the diagram isn't precise. The recipe I made last night combines pork and agave nectar, not tequila. But I figured a bottle of tequila (or a box from a bottle of tequila) makes for a more visually compelling element. Am I right, Gentle Reader?

Of course, you might be wondering too, Gentle Reader, just what the hell I made exactly from a frog-loving pig--or if I got a frog-loving pig drunk and had a good time. Perish the thought!

Well, wonder no more. Here's the recipe, which appears in this month's Cooking Light:

Pork Tenderloin With Salty-Sweet Glaze1/4 C amber agave nectar
1 T chopped green onions
1 T reduced-sodium tamari
2 t grated peeled fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
1 1/2 T seasoned rice vinegar, divided
1 1-pound pork tenderloin, trimmed
1 t water
Dash of ground red pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Combine the agave, green onions, tamari, ginger and garlic in a small saucepan, then stir in 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar.
   
3. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook until the sauce is reduced to 1/4 cup (about 3 min). Reserve 2 tablespoons of the sauce, setting it aside. Keep the remaining 2 tablespoons mixture warm in the pan.
   
4. Coat a large ovenproof nonstick skillet with cooking spray and heat it over medium-high heat.
   
5. Add the pork to the skillet, and cook it 5 min., browning on all sides.
   
6. Bake the browned pork for 10 min., then brush it with the reserved 2 tablespoons of sauce. Bake the pork an additional 5 min. or until a thermometer registers 155 degrees (slightly pink). Let the pork then stand for 5 min.
   
7. Add the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons of vinegar along with 1 teaspoon of water and red pepper to the remaining sauce in the saucepan.
   
8. Cut the pork crosswise into 1/2-inch slices, then drizzle the glaze over the pork.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 3 ounces of pork and about 2 teaspoons of glaze)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 208
Fat: 3.9 g
Sat fat: 1.3 g
Protein: 23.9 g
Carbs: 17.9 g
Fiber: 0.1g
Cholesterol: 74 mg
Sodium: 344 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Oh my, where do I start with this one? Well, the beginning's always a good place!

• I substituted five pork chops for the tenderloin. Since this recipe is only my second time with pork and since I already had chops in the freezer, I wasn't about to shell out money for a pork product I had no experience with.
  That said, I wasn't sure if the direction for baking the pork tenderloin applied to the chops, so I kind of followed them. I baked the chops for 5 minutes then checked the internal temperature because I was concerned the rather thin chops might dry out if baked for too long. The thermometer peaked around 125 degrees, so back into the oven they went for another 5 minutes. After that, they did hit that magic number.
  
• My sauce didn't reduce to a quarter of a cup. My sauces never reduce. Oh well. That just meant more sauce for glazing the chops during and after baking!
  
• I substituted low-sodium soy sauce for the reduced-sodium tamari, which is perfectly acceptable per Cooking Light. Plus I checked out the sodium numbers on some reduced-sodium tamari products while I was at Whole Paycheck, and I guess my idea of reduced sodium is a far cry from manufacturers' idea of reduced sodium. The lowest reduced-sodium tamari product had a mere 700 mg of sodium per serving--only 700 mg!
  
• I'm not sure what the recipe's writers meant by seasoned rice vinegar. I guess I could have investigated, but I was lazy and just whipped out my bottle of regular rice wine vinegar. Since I'm not aware that I've ever had seasoned rice vinegar, I have no idea if the substitution impacted the flavor of the sauce.

I have to admit too that I didn't actually eat this dish. I'd stuffed myself stupid a few hours beforehand because, dammit, I find myself hungry for a larger meal around 3:30 or 4 p.m. these days. But I did have a lick or two of the sauce from the spoon, and it was damn tasty!

By the way, if you're an agave nectar lover like me and would like to use it more frequently as a sugar substitute because of it's wonderful low-glycemic-index qualities, here's a tip from the author of Baking With Agave Nectar that I found in last month's issue of Gourmet:

...you can substitute three-quarters of a cup of nectar for every cup of sugar called for in a recipe, lower [the] oven temperature by 25 degrees and reduce other liquid ingredients (oil, water) by a third to avoid shapeless mishaps.

You can read the entire piece on agave nectar from Gourmet's February issue online.

By the way, keep your fingers crossed for me: I might try out the mango-agave sorbet recipe that appears in the March Cooking Light. The alphonso mangos are back, baby!