Guava-Eating Fools
Museums, gardens and attractions are all fine, but when I travel, I like to sight-see in the aisles of local grocery stores or farmer's markets. I like browsing through food, noting regional differences in brands or offerings and examining unfamiliar products. My mom and I went on a grocery-tour through Norway several years ago, and I still have packets of pudding mixes and bags of dried edible flowers. Gone are the reindeer sausages and jars of cloudberries and lingonberry jam (lingonberry jam is now available here).
Every spring when we go to Mexico, I make sure to include a stop to the local grocery store and downtown markets to see what new treasures I can find. The first year, I came back with about a dozen packets of powdered juice mixes in exotic flavors, such as hibiscus, guava, coconut, tamarind and cinnamon. Last year, I brought back several bars of guava paste, a bag of vanilla sugar and a bag of cinnamon sugar. The vanilla sugar is almost gone; I haven't opened the cinnamon sugar yet. I've been hanging on to the guava paste, wondering what the heck to do with it, and finally found a recipe for guava-glazed grilled pork. My recipe yielded 12 servings; sometimes I would make the full recipe to save the copious leftovers for fast weeknight meals. Unsure of how I'd like guava glaze, though, I scaled back the recipe to use just one 1# pork tenderloin. I still had leftovers, but not 10 servings worth, which is a bit of a shame because the pork was fantastic!
It charred a bit on the outside and looked all dried out, but that was just the spice rub. Inside was moist and tender, and once brushed with the glaze, the dry outside soaked in the glaze and was nicely spicy-sweet. The flavor was rather unusual, but pleasing. I'm now regretting a little bit that I don't have a freezer full of leftovers. I do, however, have lots of guava paste leftover; I used only 3 of the 21 ounces. This morning I searched Cooking with Google for more recipes that use guava paste and found recipes for cakes, pastries, bars and savories. GC and I are about to embark on a guavadventure!
Though I got this guava paste in Mexico, it is available in some large grocery stores in the international food aisle, or in smaller international markets.
The original version of this recipe is from Cooking Light. What follows is the scaled-down and tweaked version I used.
Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Guava Glaze1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/3 cup water
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
3 ounces commercial guava paste
1 garlic clove, minced
1/3 jalapeño pepper, minced
Cooking sprayPrepare grill.
Combine first 6 ingredients in a small bowl. Sprinkle pork with 2 teaspoons salt, and rub pork with the garlic powder mixture.
Combine onion and remaining ingredients except cooking spray in a small saucepan over medium heat; bring to a boil. Cook 4 minutes or until guava paste dissolves, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, and simmer 4 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
Place pork on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 20 minutes or until a thermometer registers 160° (slightly pink), turning pork occasionally. Brush guava mixture over pork. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing into 1/2-inch-thick slices.
Yield: 3 servings (serving size: 3 ounces pork)
CALORIES 195(19% from fat); FAT 4.1g (sat 1.4g,mono 1.8g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 24.4g; CHOLESTEROL 74mg; CALCIUM 17mg; SODIUM 467mg; FIBER 0.8g; IRON 1.7mg; CARBOHYDRATE 14.2g
Cooking Light, SEPTEMBER 2006
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