Food Blog

Yet another pork recipe. I got some chanterelle mushrooms from River Valley Ranch, at the Evanston Farmer’s Market, and really wanted a meal that focused on them. While there are big hunks of flavorful pork loin on the plate, the mushrooms were the stand out. Not as earthy as some shrooms, chanterelles have a slight flowery-fruity fragrance. Paired with a baby leek and chive sauce, and plated with some mizuna, this was a very good, but quick meal.

I cut a 3.5 lb. boneless pork loin in half, seasoned with cracked pepper and coarse sea salt and seared on all sides, tossed 2-3 cleaned and sliced-up baby leeks and green onions into the pan with enough water to just come up to about 1/4 of the sides of the loins. The pan went into a 350°F oven and took about 25-30 minutes for the interior to reach about 160°F. They came out and rested for a few minutes, and the internal tmep got to 170°F.

While the pork cooked I cleaned the chanterelles. These and morels are the only mushrooms I wash, although I hate to do it, they are gritty otherwise. I dried them off as best I could to help them brown properly in a pan coated with butter and olive oil. When they were almost done browning, I threw in 2-3 sliced leeks, and some chopped fresh chives. After the leeks went translucent, everything but the butter came out of the pan, and a T of rice flour, and a T of regular flour got whisked in with some more butter. Then the braising liquid from the pork went in and got reduced to a very nice sauce.

I plated everything with some rice and some mizuna greens and ate it promptly.

Note: while looking for the descriptive link to the chanterelles above, I found I good looking recipe on an author’s site that be worth trying: Pasta With Chanterelles, Cream and Grand Marnier. One of the author’s characters “thinks the sauce from this pasta would taste good even served over her Birkenstocks”