Pork tenderloin, baked potato, pineapple

The marinade is a highly exotic mixture concocted in the moment by impulse as a witch develops a brew by cell memory, and it is inimitable. So just forget it.

Here's how to make it.

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup sugar 

heated in 1 pint of water to dissolve

Then, Asian flavor ingredients, but not all of them. Mixed with western flavor elements.

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon vermouth 

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seed oil

1/2 tablespoon fish sauce (anchovy)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

3 tablespoons soy sauce

Then get lazy and let it sit for hours. 

Then give up the idea for that day and put it away in the refrigerator.

Then next day take it out again to allow it come up to room temperature.

Then keep putting it off cooking it because you're busy with other things.

Then go, "Fine. I'll cook that instead of ordering out which is what I really want to do because I'm tired." 

These pork tenderloins are total fake outs. They look like a nice solid tenderloin such as beef but when you open the package it's actually two small ones. 

GAWL!

Better to cook it as one tenderloin, not two thin ones. 

Rinse the tenderloins and dry them with kitchen towel or paper towels.

Tie them back into shape of one tenderloin. It will fall apart again when it's sliced, but that's okay, at least it gets cooked as one reasonably sized tenderloin. Otherwise they would have to be cooked much more quickly, rather like hotdogs. 

The cardinal sin is to overcook them. They dry out terribly fast. All this marinade and fast cooking is designed to minimize that. 

Preheat the oven to moderate heat.

Preheat a cast iron pan to high heat. 

Sear all around as if it has four sides.  

Stand there and sear it.

Imagine it's your own hand being seared and scream as if being tortured.

That's how fast you sear it.

When it's turned to the fourth side then shut off the top burner and put the pan with the tenderloin in the oven. Set the timer for ten minutes.

It's not cooked very long. 

Gone are the days when pork was overcooked. Now it is cooked as if it were beef. Tender medium-rare is fine. 

Bring the pan out of the oven and go do a crossword. That should take about ten minutes. 

The overly-long marinade is excellent. Part of that is it being so diluted. Usually it is not marinated this long. The flavors come bursting through. Sweetness matched with salt. Balanced with a cacophony of other flavors spanning continents. 

After all that I must say my favorite part is the pineapple.

And I can have that just by reaching into the refrigerator. 

A fresh pineapple was trimmed and chopped up and put into a quart-size mason jar.

Two pineapples, actually. 

Two jars with fresh pineapples from two different fresh pineapples. 

It's like making a few jars of pickles except easier.