pork scaloppine

So moving is involving a lot of things.  First of all, house hunting which seems fun and exciting but turns out to be the most stressful thing ever.  Second of all, boxes.  We keep having to go back and get more.  Third of all, chaos.  It seems like the more boxes we pack, the more it seems like our stuff has exploded all of the apartment.  Fourth of all, clearing out the DVR.  All those oh so important show I recorded six months ago!  And now I’m having to come to the realization that no, in fact, I will not have time to watch them all before we leave.  One thing I will be sure to watch all of, however, are my Food Network shows.  I refuse to let them be erased unwatched.  So slowly but surely through the last several weeks, I have been working through them.

Back last fall, right after we got married and moved to Houston and I realized what I had always known but not fully understood (that I can’t feed my husband peanut butter and jelly every day), I pretty much relied on the Food Network for awhile so that I wasn’t baking plain old chicken every night.  And, not to go off into too much of a tangent here, but those Food Network shows are another reason why I am so excited to be moving.  Because I would watch them, one after another, and constantly think, “I can’t wait until we are living close to our family again and I can have them over and make that for dinner.”

One dinner I made pretty early on for us was Ina Garten’s Chicken Picatta.  And our neighbors were not too happy about that.  About halfway through my pounding out of the chicken, I’m pretty sure someone got a broom and banged the handle on their ceiling so that we would hear it through our floor.

But pork is so much easier to pound out.  It really just flattens under the weight, so I can make this dish and not make my neighbors angry (not that that will be a problem much longer, because, wait, did I mention, we’re moving?)

As is the same with most Americans, I adore Italian food (although I can’t say the same about a lot of other cuisines…most are much too spicy for me).  And this is a good dish, that is really pretty basic to make.  Pound out some pork tenderloin.  Flour it.  Cook it.  Then make a super simple two ingredient sauce that has all that buttery goodness.  It’s amazing how a simple flour breading can seem so much more than just flour when cooked right and paired with a delicious sauce.  It seems buttery and succulent and like you did so much more than just dip your cutlets into some flour.  I think this is one of those dishes that gets back to the basics of the power of cooking: taking really basic ingredients and cooking them in just the right way so that you feel like you are eating so much more.

Pork Scaloppine
adapted from Real Simple Magazine (January 2011)

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes

Serves 4

1 (1 lb.) pork tenderloin
Salt
Pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
2/3 cup dry, white wine
2 tablespoons butter

1. Slice pork tenderloin into 3/4 inch slices.  Place slices between 2 sheets of parchment paper (or plastic wrap) and pound them to 1/4 inch thick.  Season pieces with salt and pepper.
2. On a plate or in a shallow dish combine flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
3. Heat olive oil in a medium sized skillet over medium-high heat.
4. Coat the pork tenderloin pieces in the flour mixture.  Shake off excess flour and place the tenderloin pieces in the hot oil, cooking until browned on each side and cooked through, about 1 to 2 minutes per side.  This can be done in batches.
5. Remove pork and add wine to the skillet, scrapping off the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Add the butter.  Cook the sauce for about 1 minute.
6. Add the pork back into the sauce and toss.  Serve warm with sauce spooned over the pork.