Junot Diaz Night

If you know me, you know I love to read books, real books. So much so that I only started reading books on my iPad a few months ago! If you know me really well, you know that I went kicking and screaming into the ebooks mostly because I like to hold the real books. I like to smell them. Alright, so maybe I’m creepy….I prefer to use the term “old school”. If you know that my favorite book of all time is To Kill A Mockingbird, you are of the select few. And if you are of these select few, you may or may not know that my beloved copy is one I stole from one of my High School English teachers, has her notes in the margins and that I’ve read it close to a trillion times. I’ve got a lot of “stuff”, but this book is my most prized possession. That said, a close second on my list of favorite books is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Because you presumably read my blog for food, I will not get into the details of why I love this book so much. What I will tell you is that the biggest reason I love it is because of Junot Diaz’s use of Spanish to paint a picture that cannot be adequately described with English words.

So you can only imagine my excitement to find out Junot Diaz would be at my local book store IN THE FLESH! Which is where I parked my happy a$$ for 3 ½ hours last night. I’d love to get into how amazing he was, but you read my blog for food. So what I’m leading you up to is that I didn’t cook last night due to my temporary residence at Porter Square Books. It was Josh’s night to cook! If you know Josh, you know he doesn’t come up with recipes, but he can execute pretty well. So I gave him a Real Simple recipe and he nailed it! And it was yummy enough to share with ya’ll.

Here’s the breakdown:

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 pork tenderloin

Borsari

¼ medium head red cabbage, thinkly sliced

½ Tbsp red wine vinegar

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 cup applesauce

salt

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Heat the oil in a large cast iron skillet (or whatever pan ya got) over medium-high heat. Season the pork with Borsari and cook, turning occasionally, until browned. 8-10 minutes. Add the cabbage and ½ tsp of salt to the pan with the pork and toss to coat. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake until the pork is cooked through. 10-12 minutes. Remove the pork and let rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Add the vinegar and parsley to the cabbage and toss to combine. Serve with the pork and applesauce.

The meal was terrific and I was on cloud nine! Winning evening!

Salud Junot!