Pork Tenderloin

There's a show on the Food Network where this really obnoxious woman makes dinner for 4 for under $10.  This is a great concept, it's good to know that you can eat healthy delicious food without spending your whole paycheck, it's really something that more people need to know.  But this woman who does the show really rubs me the wrong way.  Regardless, I was absentmindedly watching this show one day while working or online shopping (same difference) and caught this woman making a pork roast.  She rubbed some spices on it then roasted it with some sort of green mixture on top, which I think included cilantro, which I detest, and when it finally came out of the oven it looked delicious.  So I decided to make pork tenderloin for dinner that night, with my version of this recipe.  It had to be my own version because I wasn't paying close enough attention to know exactly what the horrible woman used, and I certainly wasn't using cilantro, yuck!  And I'm a master of the pork tenderloin and I've never made a roast in my life, so...use what you know!


Preheat the oven to 425.


In a bowl large enough to roll a pork tenderloin around in, mix together the following spices:
(You're going to be rubbing these on the pork, so use as much of each as you would like)
Garlic powder
Onion powder
salt 
black pepper
cinnamon
curry powder
cumin
paprika


Then in a food processor add a bunch of flat leaf parsley without the stems, the juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper and enough olive oil to loosen the mixture.  Grind this into a nice puree.


Heat some olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and rub the spices all over the pork.  Add the pork to the pan and sear both sides.  Transfer the pork to a rack in a roasting pan and spread a thin layer of Dijon mustard over the top of the pork.  Smear the parsley mixture over the top of the pork.  Use all of it, it will create kind of a thick layer of green covering the top of the pork.


Bake for about 30 minutes or until the pork reaches 160.  Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing and eating.  It's delicious!


I made this with some rice pilaf and "roasted" vegetables.  I say "roasted" because I forgot to put the veggies in the oven soon enough, so I cooked them in a pan on low for a long time to achieve the same effect.  I used carrots, parsnips and apples...yum!  Be sure to put the parsnips in the pan first because they take longer to cook, then the carrots, and the apple close to the end.  I recommend adding some cumin, cinnamon, garlic and salt and pepper to the veggies for some nice flavor.


This meal is certainly under $10 and you can easily feed 4 people with it.