Berkshire Pork Medallions in a Port Wine Reduction

Last night was momentous. 

As some of you know, this past month I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo.  Well, last night at about 10:01 pm, I powered myself across the finish line of 50,000 words, then kept going in order to finish the story.  No, not a story; a novel.  Yes, my dear, loyal readers; I am now able to say, “I finished writing my first novel when I was 26, in just 28 days.” 

A moment like this called for something decadent.  I popped open the bottle of bubbly I’d stashed in my fridge just about a month ago, when I’d started and discovered that “there is a reason why writers tend to be alcoholics, and it’s because I can’t figure out what’s got to happen next! or plot holes so big my house can fit through them.”  It’s been a journey of learning, of growing, of screaming at people who just won’t let me sleep, and a few tears, I’ll admit, a lot of sideways glances at the clock as it grew ever later each night (I refused to work on the novel at work, so it boiled down to working on it late at night, when dinner had been cooked, eaten, cleaned up, and my boyfriend was fast asleep).  I managed to keep my sanity and some creative juices to myself while I worked on my food blog (and let NaBloPoMo fall by the wayside) during the day, and still cooked, ate dinners out, and just tried to keep myself sane instead of locking myself away.  It was all worth it.

But for a dinner worthy… I’d been eyeing the bottles of alcohol in my kitchen, prominently displayed on the cabinet-tops, for weeks now and I kept thinking they were just sitting there doing basically nothing.  It occurred to me that yes, I can probably cook with gin but look! what’s this?  A bottle of port wine, something I can definitely cook with!  So I hatched up a port wine reduction, and checked a few recipes online to make sure I wasn’t completely out of my gourd (though, honestly, generally I do not like checking recipes online lest I stumble across exactly what I’d thought up, then I’d need to credit them even though I’d thought of it on my own! haha!) and off we went. 

You may have realized now that I like to buy my groceries from Fresh Direct.  Even more, I like to buy meat from their weekly “President’s Pick” sale, because it seems cheap, and it’s cuts of meat that I’d never buy on my own because they’re normally so expensive.  And since I’ve never bought them, I usually don’t know what to do with them (hence the successful Weekend Project: BBQ Short Ribs, and an upcoming project since this week’s sale item is: bottom round roast!).  In any case, this week I’d received an order of Berkshire pork medallions- I LOVE Berkshire pork!  It’s so soft, succulent, and delicious! 

I removed these from the fridge and let them rest to room temperature, seasoned with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper on both sides.  Seared them up in a hot pan (a few minutes on each side- these are a little thick, so I lowered the heat and cooked them a bit longer as well), then deglazed the pan with a knob of butter.  Here’s the fun part! 

Added minced onion and garlic to the hot pan, let that soften up a bit.  Then when it was good and hot, I splashed generously from the port wine bottle (Otima? a port aged 10 years, if that means anything to anyone).  Let that cook up a bit, added some kosher salt (which, can I tell you, I am LOVING the way it tastes and makes things taste???), when the alcohol had boiled off a bit, I added about a half container of veal stock (on sale last week, another President’s Pick from Fresh Direct, $2.99 for the container), then added a cornstarch slurry and let it cook off until the whole thing was somewhat thick. 

I drizzled the sauce over my pork chop, but when I tasted it, it was so damn good that I dunked the whole thing (hence the picture it looks more like a glaze than a sauce).  It was that good. 

From perusing recipes online, I noticed you could also go the sweet route, adding sugar and maybe even some fruit pieces instead of garlic/onion (or shallots), but I am perfectly happy with my choice to go salty.  Mm, I have to think of something to dip in the rest of the sauce. 

(The rice pictured was made just by taking some leftover rice I had when I stuffed peppers last week- it was rice mixed with a bit of ground beef and seasoned lightly- fried it up in some olive oil, added frozen mixed veggies, and when that was done, shot it with some soy sauce, stirred again, and voila, fried rice.  I wiped out my pan and used it to make the pork chops/sauce, so this is technically a one pot meal.)

Mm, baby!  The taste of success with the smell of delicious, I could not be happier!!! 

(And I start going to the gym again… on Monday.  Boo.)