Recipes by Zola - Pork Loin Roast with Chunky Mango-Pineapple Chutney

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Pork Loin Roast with Chunky Mango-Pineapple Chutney

Zola Gorgon

Italy and Beyond

The cruise itinerary took us beyond the western coast of Italy. Our first stop farther south was Malta. Now, Malta has never hit my list of vacation destinations. After being there for just a day I have set a goal to go back. I was that impressed. I now consider it a "must see". Malta is stunning. Maybe it was the weather. Perfectly sunny and about 70 degrees. Maybe it had a bit to do with our tour guide who was a Maltese man with quite the personality.

Malta is referred to as the "honey country". Over the centuries they have produced a lot of honey there and one of the things I was taken with was the honey-colored buildings. Everything is built out of a beige, particularly sturdy, form of sandstone. It makes all of the buildings 'coordinate' like a well-chosen outfit. The skinny alley ways filled with shops look fascinating. I didn't get to explore a lot of them but the ones I did had varied goods from all over the Mediterranean.

Malta is strategically located in the Mediterranean Sea, north of Africa, and not far south of Sicily (Italy). Because of the location as a port and protector of the Mediterranean, it was conquered over and over again. Ruling parties included the Sicilians, Romans, Phoenicians, Byzantines.... These influences carry over into the architecture, cuisines, religion and more.

While in Malta we toured a beautiful section called the Barrakka Gardens and a magnificent cathedral. If there's one thing I got plenty of on this trip it was cathedrals.

Because of my previous back surgery, it was ideal to take a cruise. That way we didn't have to move luggage very often. I was also able to go on tours off of the ship that were half-day excursions and then come back to the ship to rest before dinner. The tour guides in each city did a good job of passing along information on the history, culture, food and more.

The only "bad" experience we had on this vacation really wasn't all that bad. The one place we decided not to go on the tour was in Sicily. We thought it looked pretty easy to just get off the ship there, walk up the hill, tour the town of Catania a bit and find a pizza. My husband had a serious hankering for a REAL Italian pizza and he was determined that day he was going to find one. Eating pizza on the cruise ship was one thing. He wanted to see the pizza oven, the red-checked tablecloths, hear the Italian cooks and waiters, and drink some good, local, red wine. It was not to be.

We got off the ship late morning. We started our march up a not too steep hill (Sicily is very hilly; even mountainous). We walked for almost 4 hours and never found a pizza. We found one restaurant that was grilling goat out on the street. We found just about every car fix-it shop and plumbing supply store in town. We found one beautiful restaurant that surely had pizza but it didn't open until dinner. We were shut out of pizza, had a few too many blisters on our feet and were ready to surrender to any kind of food by the time we got back to the ship around 3PM. We could almost categorize it as an ordeal, but how can anything be bad when you are out walking in a friendly foreign land on a sunny day.

I have not lost sight of the fact that I am one lucky woman.

Important note to those of you that like to email Zola directly: The internet/computer geeks have not been able to recover my Zola email from my two computer crashes. So, I did the next best thing and got myself a new email address for you to write me at. Send me your messages at zolacooks@gmail.com

If you have sent me a message to the old address (dinnerwithzola@hotmail.com) in the last 5 weeks, I did not get it; which explains why I was rude and did not respond. Sorry. You can cut and paste those messages over to the new address and I will respond or you can just write a new one. I'd love to hear from you.

Today's recipe is just in time for warm weather. I hope you enjoy it soon.

Pork Loin Roast with Chunky Mango-Pineapple Chutney

Serves 4 - 6
Preheat oven to 375 degrees or light your grill
Eating fruit with meat just feels like summer. You can bake or grill this pork loin. You can serve the chutney warm, room temp or cold. You can even change the fruits. Other options besides mango and pineapple are: Rhubarb (just double the sugar), strawberries, papaya and even bananas.

1/2 lb pork loin roast or two 1 lb pork tenderloins Olive oil spray
Italian spice blend
Black pepper

For the chutney:
1 Tbl of olive oil
1 medium chopped sweet onion
1 tsp of minced garlic
1 lb. of cubed mango (or see fruits above). Fresh or frozen will work
1 lb. of cubed pineapple (or see fruits above). Fresh or frozen will work
2 Tbl of light brown sugar
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
1 tsp of ground coriander
2 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
1 tsp of ground mustard
3/4 cup of raisins or dried cranberries (your color choice)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
Pinch cayenne (optional)

For the pork:

In a small roasting pan, spray the bottom with olive oil spray. Set roast, fat side up in the pan and spray the top. Sprinkle with Italian mix to your taste and grate fresh black pepper on top. Set in oven pre-heated at 375 degrees. Roast for 40 minutes, with a meat thermometer poked into the middle, and then check the temperature. You want to remove the pork when the thermometer reaches 160 degrees. Then let rest 10 minutes outside of the oven before cutting. This will allow for juicy pork but no pink in the middle. If you are doing pork tenderloins they will take less time to cook. Check the temperature on them at 20 to 25 minutes. If you are able to control the temperature on your grill they should take about the same amount of time to cook.

Slice the pork on the plate and spoon the chutney over the top or to the side.

For the chutney:

While the pork is in the oven you can make the chutney. This is very easy.

Put the olive oil, onion and garlic in a medium saucepan. Saute on medium high for about 5 minutes to loosen up the onion. Then add the rest of the ingredients and continue to cook on medium low for up to 15 minutes. Stir often. Unless the fruit was frozen when it went into the pan, I often don't cook this for the full 15 minutes. It's really up to you. You get to decide how chunky you want your chutney to be. The longer you cook it the mushier it will get. If you like your chutney to be more like a sauce you can puree the final product in your blender. I like mine chunky. When it's warm outside and you serve the hot meat with the cold chutney it's nice to have larger pieces of cold, juicy fruit. If you are making this in cooler months, the warm chutney with the ginger and cinnamon infused in it gives your cheeks a nice glow and a wonderful smell in your kitchen.

Other options include serving this with chicken, fish or even pancakes and waffles.

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola

Send email to Zola at zolacooks@gmail.com.

This news arrived on: 05/23/2008

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