Pork Loin with Port Shallot Sauce

A fantastic and easy pork tenderloin with a rich, deeply colored, a bit tangy sauce with shallots, broth and port. A simple and unique dish with few ingredients.

We're cooking with 5 ingredients or less, not counting salt and pepper.

Pork loin with port shallot sauce, to be exact. A dish I make as often as this Szechuan pork.

I never really care how many ingredients I use in a recipe. I find it more complicated to use few than to go through a grinding set of detailed spices, vegetables or whatever is needed.

So I adapted a very old staple of mine, a recipe I used to feed many on different occasions over the years. As they put at the beginning of many movies, 'this recipe is formatted to fit this theme'.

Port is the real deal here.

It is strong but a bit sweet at the same time. And, when boiled down for a while, it turns into an amazing thick syrup.

The second place goes to the shallots. They're a bit mellower than garlic and sweeter than onion. The perfect choice when the list of five is almost completed.

And finally, broth.

I use vegetable broth to keep it a bit neutral.

It's almost imperative to start with a lightly salted (a lot of emphasis on the word lightly) because the broth is reduced before adding it to the sauce. And then it keeps on reducing with the port and shallots. So the salt content has to be very low at the beginning.

This goes well with red meats of course. And I've also been known to use it as part of mini bruschettas. Toasted bread, a bit of this very reduced shallot port sauce, a piece of brie cheese on top, warm it a bit in the oven and you're in appetizer heaven. No kidding.

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