This dinner should more accurately be titled "Pork Piccata with Garlicky Spinach" since it is pork and spinach cooked separately in one skillet.
Early in my diet I was looking through recipes online and I was trying to find some new and interesting recipes that might challenge my cooking skills and offer new tastes and flavors. As I narrowed my search I selected "only dinners" followed by "only pork" and there on the screen was a list of over 500 pork dinner recipes.
Over the next hour I clicked on different recipes solely based on the interestingness of their names and printed the ones that sounded good. As I got a little more than halfway through the list I saw an interesting name that I had never heard before - Pork Piccata. When I clicked on it a picture popped up on the screen, a picture of medallions of pork nestled on a plate and covered with a light sauce and dotted with capers. Next to the pork was wilted spinach with minced pieces of garlic.
What had I found, this looked delicious and the instructions seemed easy enough to follow. I clicked print and added it to my growing stack of recipes.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I am going through my stack of recipes, as I flip one more sheet of paper there it its again - pork piccata.
Wow, that staged picture looked delicious and what's that ingredient; capers, I've never had capers. I decided right there that I was going to make this dinner.
The next day I loaded my shopping list in my phone and off to the store I went.
I got pork, spinach, lemon juice, and yes I even found those little caper things.
When I got home I launched right into the recipe, I prepped everything and started cooking. As I went through the instructions everything was going well; there were no real difficult steps, everything looked like the picture, and the smell was becoming intoxicating. The recipe was coming together well so I threw together a salad and baked a loaf of mozzarella bread.
The moment of truth. We sat down to eat and there it was, the pork was tender and moist and the sauce with those little capers, so lemony and delicious.
Next was the spinach with the garlic and a hint of lemon. Eureka! I didn't know exactly what it was but I had found it. This recipe was full of unexpected flavors that the picture just couldn't convey. I was instantly hooked and I still look forward to making this dinner at least once a month.
Piccata is an Italian term that refers to a way of cooking. It means sliced , sauteed, an served in a sauce containing butter, lemon, and spices.
It can be applied to chicken or veal as easily as it's applied to pork here.
Capers are simply the edible flower buds from the caper bush that are picked before they bloom and are pickled in vinegar and salt. If they are allowed to bloom they would become large white to pinkish-white flowers. The idea of cooking the spinach is not to overly fry it but to heat it just to the point that the garlic is Incorporated and the leaves have wilted enough to release their flavor.
With all of that in mind let's take a look at today's dinner.
Pork Piccata
Prep time 10 Min. Cook time 10 Min. Serves 4
Ingredients
3 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt, divided
1/2 tsp black pepper, divided
1 pound lean pork tenderloin, trimmed, cut into 16 thin slices
2-1/2 tsp olive oil, divided
3/4 cup canned chicken broth, reduced sodium
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp butter
1 Tbs. capers, drained
1/2 tsp minced garlic
12 Oz. fresh spinach, baby variety
Instructions
In a small bowl combine flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper; sprinkle over both sides of pork, shaking off excess.
Heat 2 tsp oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork (in 2 batches if necessary) and cook until just cooked through and golden, about 1 1/2 minutes per side; set aside on a serving plate and cover to keep warm.
In a cup whisk together broth, lemon juice, cornstarch, 1/3 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper until blended. Pour into same skillet and whisk to combine with pan drippings; simmer until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Remove skillet from heat; stir in butter until melted. Stir in capers and spoon over pork; cover to keep warm.
Heat remaining 1/2 tsp in same skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic; cook, stirring until fragrent, about 30 seconds. Add spinach to skillet in batches, tossing mixture and adding more spinach as some of it cooks down; cook , tossing, until wilted and tender, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 tsp salt, a pinch of pepper and serve with pork.
This recipe yeilds 4 slices of pork, about 3 Tbs. sauce and 1/2 cup spinach per serving.
This is an amazing dinner and if you only make one of the recipes that I post here, this is the one I would recommend you try. As always, if you try this recipe check back here and let me know how it turned out.
Next week - Baked Honey-Mustard Chicken Bites or Second Times a Charm.
No comments:
Post a Comment