Old Bay - it's not just for seafood!

Hayes-Boh Joint Dinner Production

James: Pam recently found a recipe -- courtesy of our hometown global spice company -- for Old Bay Roasted Pork Tenderloin. The use of Old Bay in the preparation of crabs is Baltimore gospel, and Marylanders such as my brother apply it liberally to chicken. A quick search of this blog shows how we have employed it in various poultry and seafood dishes.

It seems quite natural to use it on pork, but I don't think I had tried that. I had also not combined it with brown sugar, though I do include brown sugar in many of the spicy rubs I make. 

In this case, I followed the recipe as written, except that I used the Big Green Egg and I attempted to adjust the timing to account for the fact that the cut of pork we get from Crescent Ridge is 3 pounds instead of the 1 pound in the recipe. I extended the time to a bit over an hour, and adding the vegetables after the pork had been cooking for about 10 minutes, rather than the reverse.

This turned out very well, though I could have done better with the timing. The vegetables would have been even better with a bit more time, and the pork would have been more succulent with just a bit less time. 

Pam: It turns out that it was also National Cranberry Relish day. 

We had some whole cranberries that we intended to save for Thanksgiving, but in coordinating with our fellow celebrants I discovered that they had an abundance of cranberries (and cranberry sauce) so it wasn't going to be necessary for me to bring any on Thursday. I offered to make two desserts instead and then set about finding a recipe worthy of National Cranberry Relish day. New York Times Cooking page to the rescue. This simple recipe for Spiked Cranberry Relish was quick, and I had all the ingredients I needed already at our beach house (where we usually have our Sunday dinners). I did make two substitutions:  Triple Sec instead of Grand Mariner and chopped walnuts instead of pecans. 

A delicious and visually pleasing meal all around.

Lagniappe

(by James) Although I have not combined sugar and Old Bay before, I have had it as part of a sweet treat. I was at a table overlooking Baltimore's Inner Harbor -- complete with the Domino's Sugar sign -- at the time. After visiting the remarkable Frederick Douglass maritime museum that is located in his former waterfront workplace, I had a quick bite downstairs at the delightful Ampersea restaurant. By "bite" I mean a sip of whiskey that had been distilled nearby and a dessert that one could only imagine being served in such a location: Old Bay crème brûlée. Highly recommend!