Week 25: Stone Fruits - Pork Tenderloin with Cherry-Port Sauce and Peach Sangria [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: According to Wikipedia, a stone fruit, or a "drupe", is usually a member of the Prunus genus, subfamilyAmygdawhatever, blah blah blah. Bascially, it's a fruit with a single pit and a fleshy exterior. Avocados apparently aren't drupes, and I tried to look up why but the words made my head hurt. What does qualify are: plums, nectarines, peaches, apricots, cherries, and all those crazy hybrids thereof. Even almonds, mangoes, coffee, and olives, while not part of those Latin words from before, technically qualify as drupes. This gives you a pretty decent sandbox that lends well to either sweet or savory applications. You can definitely go savory with something like coffee-braised short rib with mango salsa. If mole-inspired dishes are too ludicrously complicated for you, you can go with a simple plum sauce that goes with pretty much anything. If you feel like blowing 50 bucks on an ice cream machine you'll use once, you can try making my favorite dessert, peach sorbet. Otherwise, you can go with a classic cherry pie. Just keep in mind that if you do that, you are hereby honor-bound to play this song on repeat the entire time.

This is a fantastic comfort dish, and comes out very moist as long as you don't overcook it. The cherry-port sauce pairs great with pork, however you want to prepare it. Recipes for the pork and the sauce were adapted from here and here, respectively.

The peach sangria brings a really great summer vibe to this typically cold-weather meal. This is a family summer staple that my mom usually whips up. But be warned - it is VERY alcoholic. The peaches are soaked in tons of liquor and pack a surprising punch!

I tried something fun and different this time, making a step-by-step album of the whole cooking process.  I didn't want to overwhelm the blog by putting all the pictures in this post, but you can view the Imgur album here.