Pork Medallions with Cherry Sauce

It is getting to be a little scary how many recipes I’ve bookmarked lately.  For every recipe I set out to find, I find about twenty links to unrelated ones that look good.  That’s how I ended up making yet another pork loin recipe the other day. 

It’s also a little perplexing because this will be the third pork recipe I’ve posted.  Typically I prefer beef over any other meat, so I might have to do some major catching up on recipes once it is warm enough to pull out the grill.  Although pork loins are nice because they are so simple to throw in the oven, I’m not terribly fond of the natural saltiness they have.  I saw this Food Network recipe for Pork Medallions with Cherry Sauce that I thought might cure that problem.

This was a time where I was working with what I already had on hand, so the recipe did get altered a bit.  For starters, I used a regular 2 ¼ pound pork loin, which meant I had to double the recipe.  I also cooked it whole in the oven instead of slicing and cooking it with oil in a skillet.  I realize I lost a little flavor by not having these browned meat drippings in the pan, but I thought it was decent trade off for a healthy preparation and time saved.  For the sauce, I put a tiny bit of olive oil in the skillet to heat up.  I sautéed some leftover diced sweet onion instead of shallots.  After adding the liquids to the pan, I threw in a couple teaspoons of sugar because I wanted the fruit sauce to be sweeter than the recipe appeared to be.  (Ok, so ignore what I said earlier about healthier preparation.) I think that whenever I hear cherries, my mind naturally goes to cherry pie and all the sweetness and deliciousness that entails, so suddenly I’m craving a sweeter flavor for the sauce.  I also wanted the sauce to thicken up a little.  I added more cherries than the recipe called for, and I used canned tart cherries. 

To serve the dish, I sliced the pork and then added the cherries and sauce.  This also made for a lot easier leftover storage and reheating. 

The sauce did manage to cut some of the salty taste of the pork.  It was still a little more watery than I wanted.  I would like to try this with some sweeter cherries.  I think I envision sweeter fruits used with pork.  I noticed some of the reviews under the recipe suggested adding a little honey, so that may be an option.  This is another recipe that will go under my list of ones I’d try again, but add some changes in the process.