Cherry Poppin' Pork

As you may have seen, I frequently roast pork tenderloin and serve it with a cranberry-balsamic sauce.  Pork tenderloin was on sale at Jewel, so I had some of that on hand.  However, I was bored making the same exact preparation, so I decided that I wanted to do something new, but still along the same lines.  For some reason, I had cherries on the mind, so I thought it would be interesting to make a cherry sauce for the pork.

I headed off to Jewel to pick up the necessary ingredients (even though I didn't have a recipe that I was following).  I searched across the produce section repeatedly, but to my dismay, I could not find the cherries.  I asked one of the fruit stockers where the cherries were, and, after a bit of a struggle with the language barrier, found out that cherries were not in season, but they did have frozen cherries.  Generally I won't buy frozen fruit, but I really wanted to give this a whirl, so I bit the bullet and picked up a package of frozen dark cherries.

I got home and I was looking through my refrigerator to figure out exactly how I was going to make this sauce.  I saw that I had a little bit of oaked chardonnay remaining from the wine bar, so I decided that needed to go in.  I also have about 4 tubs of veal stock in my freezer, so I figured that I could use some of that.  After that, I figured that I would just adjust the taste as the sauce came along with various things in my kitchen.

I thought the sauce turned out relatively well, but I was hungry and didn't give it nearly long enough to reduce.  I ended up putting in about 1/4 cup of Pepsi in it while it was reducing because I didn't think it was sweet enough.  However, upon reflecting, I don't think that it was really necessary as long as you let it reduce for long enough.

Ingredients
1 pork tenderloin
1 bag frozen dark cherries
3/4 cup chardonnay
1 cup veal stock
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
kosher salt
pepper
1 tbsp butter
olive oil

1.  Lightly salt and pepper the pork and let it sit to the side.
2.  Put the butter in  a medium sauce pan and heat over medium heat until the butter is melted.  Once it is melted, add the cherries and stir until the cherries render their juice and are thawed.
3.  Pour the white wine, veal stock, and vinegar in the pan.  Return liquid to a boil and then reduce to medium-low.
4.  Cook for about an hour until the liquid is thick and syrupy. 
5.  While sauce is reducing, preheat oven to 450.
6.  Film the bottom of a large saute pan with olive oil and heat over medium heat for a few minutes.  Add the pork to the pan for about 2 minutes on each side to brown.
7.  Put the pan in the oven for about 15 minutes until the internal temperature reaches 150.  Cover the pork with foil and let it rest for about 10 minutes before slicing.
8.  Pour the pan drippings from the pork into the sauce and allow it re-thicken while the pork is resting.
9.  Slice the pork crosswise and serve with the sauce.