Week T-9, part 3: Sage meat seasoning and Meyer lemon rub and sea salt

In a burst of panic-induced energy, I'm on a tear. Tonight, in an hour I made pork two new ways plus set off a Scandinavian experiment.

First, I made a traditional pork tenderloin, seared and baked with sage meat seasoning. It cooked quickly and was fine; I used my cast iron skillet which was perfect for making pan juices.

However, the other pork was a triumph. I tried something new - butterflying the tenderloin. The recipe called for cutting it into effectively four slices (in half, then butterflying each half), but I thought it would be better butterflied once. So I tried it both ways. One side of each slice got coated with the Meyer lemon marinade, and both went into a pan with olive oil. Not surprisingly, the skinnier cut cooked faster (about three minutes a side); the other took five minutes a side. Both were great, though I preferred the fatter of the two. See below:

The best part was that it was the fastest dinner ever - one could have this on the table in about ten minutes. This will appear again in my repertoire.

I have also used the sea salt to (begin to) make gravalax. It takes three days to cure the salmon, so I set up the salmon with the salt/sugar mixture tonight and I'll turn it every day until Saturday. The recipe also called for an obscure ingredient - crushed white peppercorns. One-quarter teaspoon (!!) of crushed white peppercorns. These types of ingredients are a pet peeve (yes, this is ironic given the list of ingredients I started off this blog with); I hate buying a spice for one-quarter teaspoon of anything. You might ask why I used this recipe, then, and I will tell you. First, it won Cooking Light's best-of-the-issue award last month, or the last month that I read of Cooking Light, which might also be from January or last October. Hard to say. Also, and this is the best part - I actually have white peppercorns. Why, or where they came from, I don't know. I don't think they are from Shannon, though they by all rights should be, but there they are. It's a large jar, and will take approximately a million servings of gravalax to use up the jar. I hope it's good.

And in a related irony, I have white peppercorns but forgot to buy a lemon for the recipe. I did get dill, which I didn't need (I needed it the last time I made gravalax and guessed), so I made some modifications. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.