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pork tenderloin with spiced mango sauce This is my take on a recipe from epicurious.com that I first tasted at a dinner party hosted by my friend Nicole a few years ago. It's easy to prep and look terrific on a plate, and is one of my favorite ways to do pork tenderloin.

1 large pork tenderloin, 14-16 oz.
1 Tbsp. cooking oil

marinade/sauce
1 tsp. cooking oil
½ a good-sized onion, chopped
½ tsp. ginger, finely minced
2 packed Tbsp. brown sugar
½ cup red wine
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
¼ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. fresh ground pepper
1 ripe mango, diced

serves 2

At least 6 hours and up to a day before
1 Heat up a teaspoon of cooking oil over medium-high heat in a saucepan. Add the onion, ginger and brown sugar, and sauté for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft. Stir in the wine, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, cinnamon and ground pepper and cook until the ingredients begin to steam and gently bubble. Remove from heat and let cool completely.

2 Slide the pork tenderloin into a resealable plastic bag, and pour 1/3 cup of the marinade over the meat. Seal it up, place the bag in a bowl (on the off chance the baggie leaks) and toss the whole thing in the fridge. The pork should marinate at least 6 hours or can sit overnight. Give the pork and sauce a squish and toss through the baggie a few times during the marinating process. Meanwhile, cover and refrigerate the remaining sauce separately.

Just before dinner
3 About an hour before dinnertime, preheat the oven to 400F.

4 Pull out the pork (toss the marinade). Add a swirl of cooking oil (a tablespoon or so) to a skillet, heat on medium-high, and add the pork. Cook the pork, rotating as needed, until browned all over (it should take only a minute or two per side). Transfer the browned pork to a baking dish.

5 Slide the pork into the preheated oven. When a meat thermometer inserted diagonally into the thickest part of the meat registers 145-150F, remove the pork from the oven -- this will take about 20 minutes or so of cooking. (If you're really paranoid about cooking the living daylights out of meat, 155F is considered the really safe temperature, but in my opinion, the pork is way overdone by that point. Use your own judgment.) Cover loosely with foil and let it stand for 10 minutes.

6 While you're waiting, dice up your mango. The easiest way to do this is to slice off both cheeks of the mango around the pit. For each cheek, hold the fruit skin-side down and score a grid in the flesh, all the way through the fruit but not through the skin. Invert the skin, and the grid of fruit you just cut should pop out, presenting you with a bunch of cubes that can then easily be cut away from the skin.

7 Halfway through the standing time, reheat the reserved sauce. Add the diced mangoes and cook for another minute or so, just enough to warm the fruit. Slice the pork into medallions (the pork should look cooked-through, with just a hint of pink in the center… if it looks too rare for your taste, you can either pop the pork back into the oven for a few minutes, or give the medallions a quick cook in a skillet). Top with sauce, serving any extra sauce in a small bowl on the side.

wander along for the accompaniments

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