Recipe for Spiced Coffee Rubbed Pork with Cauliflower and Bean Puree-Daring Cooks

Once a month I join a group of adventurous cooks online in cooking up something new.  It might be preparing an unusual or unfamiliar recipe from around the world or trying out a specific cooking technique.


Our April 2012 Daring Cooks hosts were David & Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking. They presented us with a very daring and unique challenge of forming our own recipes by using a set list of ingredients!  The challenge was to cook using 1 ingredient from each list:


List 1: Parsnips, Eggplant (aubergine), Cauliflower
List 2: Balsamic Vinegar, Goat Cheese, Chipotle peppers
List 3: Maple Syrup, Instant Coffee, Bananas

Recipe for Coriander and Paprika Rubbed Pork Tenderloin

Hopefully it is getting close to grilling out weather where you are.  Don't hate me...we are fortunate to be able to grill out year round here and one of our favorites is pork tenderloin on the grill.  I'll often just pull a bunch of herbs or spices out of the fridge or cupboard, mix them up, rub the tenderloin down and then Mr. ELEB works his magic on the grill.  Such is the story for this recipe.

Recipe for Pork and Peanut Stir Fry

I've yet to make a Mark Bittman recipe that I didn't like.  This recipe was adapted from one of his in "The Food Matters Cookbook" which I have and love.  The recipe can also be found on line. 


The flavors in this dish are Asian fusion in my estimation.  Sort of a fried rice, pad Thai, stir fry cousin.  The recipe originally called for chicken but I used pork. The basic recipe can be customized to your preferences and ingredients.  I made the rice in a rice cooker the day before and kept it in the fridge until needed.

Recipe for Char Sui Bao - Daring Cooks

Do you love dim sum?  We do and always try to go to our favorite dim sum restaurant when we get back to San Francisco (Yank Sing-a top 100 SF Restaurant in 2011).  They call it deem sum...they probably know better than I do, but I've always seen it written as dim sum, except on their website.  Anyone know the correct spelling?  Anyway, I digress.  I love the steamed pork buns-Char Sui Bao-but never gave a thought to trying to prepare them at home.


Turns out they are a challenge to make, but not an insurmountable one.  That's why I really enjoy participating in The Daring Kitchen challenges.  The challenges so far have pushed me in to culinary experiences I wouldn't have picked on my own and are presented with very detailed instructions, priming the pathway to success.  Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from BellyRumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

Recipe for Easy Marinated Pork Tenderloin

Aloha everyone,
Here's another recipe (if you can call it that) where I used some of the product that the nice folks at Newman's Own sent me as part of the Foodbuzz Featured Publisher's program.  This time I used the Family Recipe Italian Salad Dressing as a marinade for pork tenderloin. 

Recipe for Asian Marinated Pork

Here’s one of our favorite marinade recipes adapted from “The Weber Big Book of Grilling” (Chronicle Books, 2001, p. 181).  It is versatile, tasty and easy-how could you go wrong?  My intent was to cook pork tenderloin but, as sometimes happens here on Maui, “the shipment didn’t come in”, and so I subbed boneless pork chops which worked fine.  I just sliced them up for serving (and forgot to take a photo of them coming off the grill!).

I have marinated for a few short hours or overnight, both with good results.  The longer the meat marinates the more tender and flavorful.

Makes 6 servings, each approximately 302 calories, 12.4 grams fat, 0 grams carbs, 3.5 grams fiber, 44 grams protein, 7 WW Points+

Recipe for Lemon Parmesan Pork

The herb garden is flourishing! This recipe includes generous amounts of parsley and rosemary which I have in abundance right now.  This would also be great made with chicken.  Next time I make it I will try cooking it on the stove top-I’d like it to be a bit crunchier which I couldn’t get in the oven without overcooking the thin pieces of pork.  It was good, but I think it could be great!

Recipe for Slow Cooker Pork Verde



We had a hankering recently for Mexican but wanted something different than our “go to” of chicken fajitas, and pork shoulder roasts were on sale.  A popular recipe that was floating around during my South Beach days was Chicken Escondido, a delicious chicken cooked on the stove top in salsa verde, tomatoes and black beans.  So I thought I’d use some of the components of that recipe in the slow cooker with the pork.  I’ve never cooked a pork shoulder roast in the slow cooker but have read lots about how tender and flavorful the meat is so I thought I’d give it a try.  Muy bueno!

Recipe for Grilled Asian Peanut Pork Tenderloin

I promised you some more marinade/grill recipes so I hope you’ll enjoy this Grilled Asian Peanut Pork Tenderloin recipe.  The first time I had peanut sauce that I really remember was at a little Asian bistro in the Marina District of San Francisco.  I could have drunk it, it was that good!   Not too long after, I went to a cooking class conducted by James Beard nominated writer Hugh Carpenter of Napa, California.  He is the inspiration behind many of my marinades and wok recipes (which I haven’t shared with you.  Yet.)

Tasty Tenderloin of Pork with Naan and Tangy Sauce

Recently, I made a version of Alton Brown’s Pork Wellington, a fairly easy and very tasty meal.  Our normal way to eat pork tenderloin however, is grilled with various marinades and/or rubs.  This is the first time I’ve actually written the recipe down, I usually wing it!  You can marinade for an hour or all day.  For a new twist, I served the pork on grilled store bought naan with a tangy sauce (I’m looking for a recipe to make naan at home). 

I hope you’ll try this!  I’ll be sharing more marinades and grilling ideas with you soon.  Would love to hear your favorites for the grill.

Posh Pork

My dear hubby is a late afternoon/early evening exerciser.  Me?  If I don't work out in the morning, chances are I won't work out at all.  When he's taking his early evening run, I'm usually watching "Good Eats" on the Food Network.  I love Alton Brown's show!  It's filmed in Atlanta, where I have alot of ties and I enjoy his goofy science spin on things.

Recently, Alton did a show on pork tenderloin, one of our favorite meats to grill (I'll be sharing some marinade recipes with you soon!).  He did a twist on Beef Wellington, making it with pork.  Here's the original recipe.  It looked easy on the show and so off I went to get some puff pastry.

The dried apples were MIA at my local grocery store, so I substituted dried apricots, which I've used with pork before and knew was a good pairing.  Turns out, when I read the recipe online, that many who tried the recipe also used apricots with good results.  I also used 2 tsp of thyme.  I had very fresh young thyme so I didn't worry about getting the leaves off the tender stems.  I omitted the salt (thought the prosciutto would be plenty salty enough).  I also used 2 TBSP mustard and 2 oz of apricots.  Otherwise I followed the recipe as written.  Oh, and I rolled the pastry out on a baking mat.  Next time, I would trim off some of the ends of the pastry and make a pretty decoration for the top.