Danielle wrote and said, “I make this great stuffed pork tenderloin and I am looking for a sauce to go with it. It is stuffed with, spinach, pine nuts, goat cheese, garlic and sundried tomatoes.”

When I asked Chef Terrell about a sauce, he immediately wanted to know if the tenderloin was marinated. Why? Because if Danielle used a marinade, it could be incorporated as the base for her sauce. Chef would need to know what she used so the sauce won’t be in conflict taste-wise.

But since Danielle does not marinate the tenderloin but seasons it with salt and pepper, Chef Terrell came up with this simple but excellent base sauce for any pork tenderloin recipe that hasn’t been marinated.

Ingredients

1/4 cup minced shallot
1-tablespoon butter or margarine
1/2-cup Port, Marsala or red wine.
Drippings from baking pan
2 tablespoons balsamic or apple cider vinegar
1-cup good beef stock
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

How to Make at Home

1. In the pot or skillet in which the tenderloin was seared, melt butter and scrape up any fond left after searing using a wooden spoon, then sweat (to cook slowly over low heat in butter, usually covered, without browning) shallots and deglaze the pot with wine, pouring in any drippings left after baking the roast.

2. Add vinegar and stock and bring to a boil.  Turn heat down to a simmer and reduce by half.

Last night my wife was out with some friends so I asked my daughters what they wanted for dinner. “Pasta Daddy, Pasta”.

I asked them if they wanted me to make a sauce but they just wanted butter and grated Parmesan cheese. I gave them what they wanted with some carrots and they were happy.

I wanted a sauce with my pasta but something extremely quick, easy and delicious. There was some sweet Italian sausage and sweet grape tomatoes in the refrigerator so I had the basis for a good sauce.  I was going to make my Quick Pasta with Tomato Sausage Sauce for the family but since the kids only wanted butter, I only needed sauce for one.

I remember a chef once telling me about making fast, delicious sauces, “Keep it stupid simple,” he said or maybe it was “Keep it simple, stupid.”   Not sure now. But I do remember him telling me that sometimes the simplest dishes he makes for his customers are his most popular.

This sauce is extremely simple but I was surprised how incredibly delectable a little sausage, a dozen or so grape tomatoes, some high quality extra virgin olive oil, some grated Parmesan cheese and a little salt & pepper can be.

The trick to this dish is the olive oil. You can purchase various qualities of extra virgin olive oil; I purchase a big jug of it at Costco that I use in lots of various ways but for this sauce, I wanted to use an extra special high-end extra virgin olive oil.

For this sauce I used some Tuscan style olive oil by Georgio Zampa that I found at ClubSauce.com. It is not cheap but I only use it sparingly as a dipping sauce or for sautés like this. You can find plenty of great olive oils at your own favorite market and one of these days I’ll work on an article about the differences between olive oils.

Penne Pasta with Simple

Ingredients

Pasta – amount to be determined by your appetite and if you are feeding some to your kids with butter

2 sweet Italian sausages
10 – 12 sweet grape tomatoes cut in half
3 – 4 tablespoons good quality extra virgin olive oil
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt & pepper to taste

How To Prepare This Simple Sauce

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add a pinch of salt to the water and then your pasta. See my tips on cooking pasta.  When the water comes to a boil, add your pasta, stir immediately and cook to al dente. Be sure to stir frequently to prevent the pasta from sticking.

While the pasta is cooking, heat a saucepan over medium-high heat and squeeze the sausage meat out of the sausage skin into the saucepan. Break it up with a wooden spoon into bite size pieces. Brown the sausage meat until cooked through.

Add the tomatoes and cook with sausage meat for a few minutes. Add the olive oil and stir to coat the meat and tomatoes. Season with a little salt & pepper. Cook for an additional minute or two.

Drain the pasta and add some of it to the saucepan. It is easier to add more pasta if you have enough sauce than take it away if you don’t have enough sauce. It really doesn’t matter because the sausage and tomatoes are going to give the olive oil a lot of flavor and the oil should coat a decent amount of pasta.

Serve the pasta topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

You are going to be surprised just how good this simple pasta dish tastes. Your going to wish you made more for leftovers.

This is one of those “good-as-it-gets” recipes if you like fennel as much as I do. In my opinion, fennel and leeks are two of the most underrated vegetables available to home cooks and when you discover the flavor they add to a recipe, you’ll be searching for more ways to use them.

I’m even more surprised my 7-year-old daughter loves slices of raw fennel as her side dish vegetable. On the other hand, if I tried to serve her fennel cooked to bring out the sweetness of the root, she would have nothing to do with it. Strange?

You may also be asking yourself just what the heck is Pernod and where do I find it. I happened to find some in the way, way back of my liquor cabinet next to some ancient Tia Maria that hasn’t seen the light of day since we last moved.

Pernod (pear’-no) is an aniseed-flavored liquor whose taste comes from the star anise spice, similar in flavor to fennel making them a great one-two combo. Although made by the same company that once made the infamous, hallucinogenic Absinthe, a popular drink with poets, writers and artists at the turn of the 19th century, today’s Pernod does not contain the dangerous toxic oil from wormwood and is great as an aperitif or cooking.

Not only is Pernod fantastic for adding flavor to any braised fennel, cabbage, onion or carrot dishes, you can use it for deglazing or add some to a salad dressing to boost the flavor. Just remember, it is has an alcoholic content of 40% so be careful when cooking with it around children.

You should be able to find it in most liquor stores but you may want to call before you go shopping for it. And since you most likely won’t be cooking with it all that much, a small bottle should last you a long time.

This recipe was in my May 2007 Fine Cooking and was next to a few other shrimp recipes that I can’t wait to try. I adapted it some when I made it because I didn’t have the full 3 cups of sliced fennel the recipes calls for, my daughter must have been snacking on it. The recipe came out great and I can only imagine it would have been better yet if I used the full 3 cups.

This recipe doesn’t take long at all to prepare so it’s a great midweek kind of dish. I didn’t have any fresh thyme or parsley when I prepared this and didn’t feel like going out to shop but even so, the outcome was incredible. It could only get better with fresh herbs.

I served it over my oldest daughter’s favorite food, Near East Rice Pilaf.

Shrimp with Fennel, Tomato & Pernod Sauce

Ingredients

1 pound shrimp
Salt and pepper
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 small to medium sized bulb of fennel
3 cloves garlic
¼ cup Pernod
1 – 14.5 oz can of dice tomatoes
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Prep the Ingredients

I like to buy my frozen shrimp unpeeled, with tails. You can find them already peeled and deveined but if they are not, you need to peel, devein, rinse and pat them dry.

Slice the fennel into very thin slices, much thinner than you’ll notice I did in my photograph. What was I thinking?

Smash your garlic or chop it finely as well as your fresh herbs.

How to Prepare at Home

Pat the shrimp dry with a paper towel. If you don’t, they will steam instead of sauté and we don’t want that.  Season them with some salt and pepper.

Heat up your sauté pan or frying pan over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons of the oil. You want to get the oil hot, but not smoking. Add the shrimp in a single layer. Sauté for about 2 minutes and then flip and cook for another minute or two. You want the shrimp brown but not completely cooked through. You will finish cooking them in the sauce.

Remove the shrimp from the pan and lower the heat to medium. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan along with the fennel and garlic. Season with a little salt and sauté until the fennel is golden brown. This should take about 8 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and carefully add the Pernod. The recipe said the Pernod might flame up so I decided to show my oldest daughter what that looked like. I tilted the pan a little over the flame so the Pernod would ignite and we were all a little surprised by the size of the flame. Luckily I had the pan cover out and quickly covered the pan and put the flame out. I’m saying this to let you know, you need to be careful whenever you deglaze a pan with alcohol.

Once you add the Pernod, put the pan back on the burner and cook until most of the Pernod is evaporated. Add the tomatoes with juice, thyme and half of the parsley. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for about 3 minutes.

Add the previously cooked shrimp, stir to coat with sauce and cook for another minute or two until the shrimp are opaque throughout.

Let it sit for a minute or two before tasting and then adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve over rice, pasta or by itself, as my wife likes it, sprinkled with the reserved parsley.

This is a good one that just may become a regular in you cooking repertoire. I would have no problem serving this to guest at a dinner party.