Sweet and Sour Pork

I thought I lost this post, but it turns out I just don't know how to work the software yet!. So here it is:

Last night's dinner and today's lunch was Sweet and Sour Pork. I love pork tenderloin for this recipe because it can be cooked up to be so tender. Sadly, I did not achieve perfection last night because I was using frozen pork and apparently, frozen pork cooks differently.

Mental note: cook frozen meat seperately!

I like to add the pork directly to the stir-fry style wok of vegetables because I can turn the heat to low, cover and let the pork cook, but not overcook. If its frozen, it lets off water. And the water it let off was grey and disgusting. It looked horrible and I ended up draining it and adding my flavourings again (thereby wasting one lemon and depleting my stock).

That's why there are no pictures (I really want to start adding photos. It'll be a fun challenge to start to get them to look right. The light quality in that kitchen is crap. We get lots of daylight, but that, of course is variable and will be almost nonexistant in the winter.)

Mental note: get good lighting for the kitchen.

So my sweet and sour pork ended up tasting ok, but certainly not my best result.

Here's the recipe:

1 onion, thinly sliced
4-8 cloves chopped garlic
1/2 pound mushrooms (I like cremini, but it doesn't really matter, they'll take up the flavour of the sauce. The cremini seems a little more firm and stand up to a longer cooking time)

In a wok, stir fry the onions and garlic on low to medium heat, add mushrooms, turn up the heat.

1-2 Sweet peppers, different colours
2 carrots ( I had purple ones from my **first** organic box, they looked great), sliced
can of mandarins
3 green onions, chopped

Pork tenderloin, cut to medallions

Add carrots a few minutes after the mushrooms. Fry on high, carmelize the carrots slightly. 5 min.

Add the juice from the mandarin can (adds sweetness)
Add fish sauce to taste ( for saltiness)
Add juice of one lemon
Balance tartness by adding white sugar (couple of tablespoons will really round out the flavour)
Add chili flakes to taste (I love it hot!)

Balance Balance Balance. The final sauce should be sweet, sour, salty and hot. If its too salty, add lemon. If its too sweet, add fish sauce. If its too sour, add sugar. If its too hot, you're boned. I guess you can always add more water to try to dilute out the hot.

Cover and let carrots soften (about 5 minutes).

Add pork and peppers at the same time. Keep covered and cook 5-10 minutes until pork is barely done. I think pork gets tough at about 165F, try to keep it at 145F (safe, but not tough--meat thermometers are great!)

Serve over basmati rice (all other rice is inferior! not that I'm opinionated about it or anything), garnish with mandarins and green onions.