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Effortless Entertaining With Only Six Ingredients

If you love to entertain but hate the hassle, get ready to have your menu-planning world rocked to its core. This crowd-pleasing six-ingredient dinner (made in honor of FBG’s sixth birthday!) can be prepped in less time than it takes to fix your hair, and all for the price of a cheap (but still decent!) bottle of wine! (That’s around $15 in my book.) And it serves four.
The original recipe from Cooking Light calls for figs and blue cheese, but I’ve lightened it up for spring with dried pomegranates and Gorgonzola. Serve with wild rice and roasted green beans for the ultimate dinner party dish. Your guests will be raving.

pork and green beens

Credit: green beans, OliBac, Flickr.

Pomegranate and Gorgonzola Stuffed Pork Tenderloin Recipe

Served with green beans and wild rice
Ingredients:
1-pound lean pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat
½ cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
½ cup dried pomegranates or pomegranate-infused Craisins, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon apple, apricot or fig jelly, melted
green beans
wild or brown rice
Directions:
Butterfly the pork tenderloin by carefully slicing it in half lengthwise, making sure not to cut through to the other side. Open the pork loin flat, like a book.
sliced tenderloin
Place the pork between two sheets of plastic wrap. Starting from the inside, pound to ½ inch thickness using a meat mallet.
pounded tenderloin
Sprinkle pork with the Gorgonzola cheese and dried pomegranates, leaving a ½ inch margin around the outside edges.
cheese and fruit pork
Roll up the pork loin, jellyroll style, starting with the long side and secure at 2-inch intervals with butcher’s twine.
rolled pork tenderloin

butcher twine

If your grocer doesn’t carry butcher’s twine, check the nearest hardware store.


trussed tenderloin

You can also use toothpicks.


Season with salt and pepper and place pork seam side down on a foil-lined sheet pan coated with cooking spray.
Bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. Brush jelly over the pork and bake an additional 5 minutes or until the pork registers 160 degrees on a meat thermometer.
glazed tenderloin
Let stand for 10 minutes. Discard twine; cut pork into 12 slices.
roasted tenderloin dinner
Notes: the pork can be stuffed and rolled ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before roasting.
If you are not a fan of the sides, you can substitute roasted potatoes or asparagus. Whatever you do just keep it simple. Six ingredients, inexpensive and good enough to serve company — it just doesn’t get any better than this.
What’s on your easy-but-sure-to-impress entertaining menu? —Karen

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