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Pork Loin & Cherry Serendipity

Lambic beers! Their brewing takes years. They are spontaneous fermented by wild yeasts that live upon the timbers of the old brouwerijs of Brussels and the Flemish Brabant, and can be made nowhere else. The hops are aged and dried, without the familiar fresh, bitter hoppiness. Instead, the brewers add fruit  – creating raspberry framboises, grape druifs, strawberry aardbeis – and then there are two fermentations. Much like champagne, the beer is first fermented in old wine casks, then bottled with fruit and there fermented once again. When they make it with the juice of sour morello cherries they name it kriek. It’s a fine drink*.

It’s said never to cook with any beer or wine you wouldn’t drink. Conversely, I’d maintain that anything you like to drink you can cook with. So I bought some Lindemans Kriek and a pork loin and set about marinating…

…and what in blazes will go with cherry lambic and pork? Cherries are sweet and tart, I reasoned, so let’s balance the flavors with some saltiness, some herbiness, some spiciness! Why not? Let’s bring together the old earthy timbers and sweet acid cherries of Belgium with the bold smoky chilis of the New World. Cuisine just means “kitchen”. Let’s cook.

Ingredients

• 2 pork tenderloins
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp ground black peppercorns
• 2 tsp crushed dried thyme
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2 dried pasilla peppers
• 4 chipotle peppers canned in adobo
• 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
• 2 – 12oz. bottle Lindemans kriek lambic

Place the pork tenderloins in a pan that can be tightly covered. Combine the sugar, salt, black pepper, thyme, and cayenne. Rub the pork deeply with the spice mixture. Place chipotles, pasillas, and onion in the pan with the pork. Pour one bottle of kriek over the pork and vegetables. Cover the pan and set in the refrigerator for 48 hours. Yes, two whole days. It’s worth it, dude. When it’s ripe, grill it like you normally would. Rest it, slice it, eat it, and drink that other bottle of kriek with it.

Peace and long life.

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*Beer exacerbates gout. Sour cherries reduce gout. Sour cherry beer, by my theory, is therefore gout-neutral. Worth a try for my friends who suffer from the devil’s toebone.