Melissa Makes Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches

The fennel's been in the ice water.

I just want you to hear how crunchy this is.

Hey everyone, it's Melissa Miranda

and I'm here in Seattle Washington.

Today we're making a pork tenderloin sandwich

with a fish sauce salsa Verde on a Hawaiian roll.

I'm really excited to make the sandwich today

because I spent a lot of time in Florence

and this is my version of their Porchetta sandwich.

We're using pork tenderloin

and I know a lot of people can be really afraid of that cut,

but don't be.

It's one of the fastest cooking cuts

and it comes out moist and tender

as long as you don't over cook it

and you can find it on the back of the spine on the pork.

I'm going to add a little bit of this garlic salt,

if I can get it open.

You want to coat it nice and evenly,

same with the Johnny's.

If you don't have Johnny's seasoning,

it has paprika, garlic, black pepper and salt

and then half a teaspoon of coriander.

We don't want it to overpower

cause this has a really strong and distinct taste.

And then I'm going to go ahead

and sprinkle just regular salt as well.

You can see it's nice and evenly coated.

I'm going to flip it over and then do the same thing.

And then at this point

I'm going to actually add some olive oil on both of them.

And this is the part where you can get a little bit messy

but I'm going to take the tenderloin

and just really rub all those seasonings and spices in.

So you just want to marinade it either right beforehand

or up to 30 minutes before.

The cast iron pan for me

is one of my favorite tools in the kitchen,

is because the more you use it,

also the more it gets seasoned and adds more flavor to it.

The care of a cast iron is very important as well

as you season it, the best way to wash it

and to clean it is to just clean it with water.

And you can season it by putting salt

in the cast iron and leaving it in the oven to dry.

And then just wiping it out

with a paper towel and a little bit of oil.

Cast iron is hot, medium high heat.

I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil to the pot.

The way you can tell that the oil is hot

is there's little ripples in the pot.

It means that it's ready to go.

Alright, so I'm going to take my pork tenderloin,

place it in.

And that's the sound that you want to hear

and the place the other one in.

By browning it,

you're able to put all the juice to remain inside

so that when you cut into the tenderloin later

it's going to be so juicy and so amazing.

I'm going to do two minutes per side.

So I'm going to flip it over right now

and as you can tell, there's this incredible brown crust

on the pork, same as the other one.

And we're just going to kind of rotate it into three.

So all the sides are nice and golden brown.

There's a market stall in Florence where I lived

and there's this place called Nerrone

and they're famous for their pork sandwiches

and they put it in a wrapper.

And you just like stick your bread in there

and it's one of the most amazing things.

And so I can't wait

for this to be our version for you to try

So the pork you can see is nice and brown on all sides.

I'm turning the heat off

and then we're putting it in the oven

that's been preheated at 400 degrees.

I'm going to start it at 15 minutes.

I'm going to check it.

We want the temperature to be 145 degrees inside.

Alright, so we have fennel.

The reason why we're using it today in this sandwich

is cause it's going to provide a nice crunch to the sweet

and like tender pork and the sweetness of the Hawaiian roll

as well.

We don't use the fennel tops.

If you have a fish stock or chicken stock

or any kind of stock,

this is something that you can put in.

These things are called fennel fronds.

These are great for garnish,

making your dishes look really beautiful.

You can add them in salads and they taste really good too.

The way I like to fennel, or I like to fennel.

No wait, I like to cut fennel is to actually cut it in half

and you can just cut it really thinly in a radial sense.

So it's like, I'm going to go like a clock

and you can see that I'm cutting the funnel super thin.

It's really nicely shaved.

And then I'm just going to put it here

into the ice water bath.

Ice just helps kind of, it's like, it shocks the vegetables

and it kind of wakes everything up.

But if there's no ice, just use really, really cold water.

I'm going to cut half of a lemon.

I'm going to catch catch any seeds that fall out

and that's going to help keep the color of the fennel,

nice and bright.

And then it's also going to help season the fennel as well.

Next step salsa verde.

The salsa verde is normally made with parsley, garlic,

lemon and olive oil.

But today we're adding a Filipino twist

by adding fish sauce, cilantro, and a little bit of heat.

I have garlic here.

I'm going to add two cloves.

You can see these cloves are pretty large.

I'm going to smash it

and kind of give it a rough chop

to kind of help the immersion blender out.

If you're not a huge fan of garlic,

I'd probably just add like one clove,

but garlic is good for you so,

don't be afraid.

Plus it keeps vampires away, just kidding.

I've got my leftover lemon.

Make sure you catch all the seeds.

If you don't have lemon, you can also use vinegar.

I'm going to add our fish sauce now.

And about a teaspoon adds another layer of umami

a little bit of funkiness.

And then I'm also going to add a pinch of salt.

That's gonna kind of help add a little bit of

just salinity to the dish.

So it's not all just fish sauce.

In Italy there's a thing called colatura

which is just like the liquid extracted from the anchovies.

It's definitely a lot stronger than this fish sauce.

This sauce is a little bit lightened out

but don't be afraid.

It's really good.

It makes everything really tasty.

My timer for 15 minutes just went on the pork.

I'm going to give it a check really quick

to see how it's doing.

I'm going to just flip it over

so we can cook this other side.

You can see how nice and Brown it is.

And then I'll put the timer on

for about another five minutes.

Cause these are pretty big pork tenderloins.

So we have flat leaf parsley here.

I'm just going to shave off the leaves using my knife.

To help out the immersion blender

and the same thing with the food processor.

I'm going to give it a nice rev chop.

And then I've got cilantro here as well.

And I'm going to do the same amount, which is about a cup.

And then the same thing, give it a nice rough chop.

I think parsley is delicious with the salsa verde,

but it, I don't know.

It's not as exciting until you add cilantro too.

I'm going to add some red pepper flakes,

cause I do like to add a little bit of heat to this dish.

A little bit of water, a little bit of olive oil

and then we're going to start blending.

So right now I'm just blending to breakup the leaves

and then I'm going to start pouring

in olive oil to help emulsify

and make this more of a salsa texture.

All right, it's been five minutes.

I'm going to check on the tenderloin

and then we'll get back to the salsa.

The pork is looking amazing.

This is actually a perfect time to kind of

taste to see where salsa verde is at.

It's so good.

I'm going to add a little bit more fish sauce to it.

The garlic brings a really, really nice heat.

The red chili plagues are in there.

I'm going to add a little bit of pinch of salt

and then a little bit more olive oil.

And then the lemon brings this bright

really nice kind of acidic brightness to it.

Alright.

Salsa ready.

It's okay if it's chunky too

you're just putting this on a sandwich.

I'm going to take the pork, let it rest over here.

The good thing about the cast iron

is that there's a lot of like juice

and drippings in this pan

that shouldn't go to waste

because that's where a lot of the flavor is.

And then I'm actually going to use

a little bit of white wine.

I've got the heat on right now

and you can kind of see it bubbling.

You can see there's some like crispy bits

that are on the bottom of this pan.

The white wine is going to help bring that off

and help de-glaze the pan.

You can use any white wine.

If you have a bottle of white wine open in your fridge

this would be a great time to use it.

I'm using just the house wine Chardonnay.

What's happening right now

is the alcohol is actually cooking off and burning,

burning out but leaving its flavor inside of here.

And when you smell it,

you can smell to see if the wine still lingers.

But right now it smells like the wine is all cooked off.

Alright, so this is a perfect opportunity

to add your chicken stock.

Just a couple of tablespoons.

I'm going to add a knob of butter to this,

to about a tablespoon.

And you can see that it's reducing down

and getting a really thick.

So our gravy's done.

We're going to make our sandwiches

with Hawaiian dinner rolls.

These are perfect because you can eat like three

and not feel guilty.

If you've not had a Hawaiian roll,

you should probably go out to the store

and buy one right now

because it's going to change your life.

There's sweet, fluffy,

and they're going to work really well

with the savoriness and the acidity of everything

that we have working on on our sandwich.

I've got some hot butter working in a pan

so I can toast these guys up.

And then that'll also help because we've got such,

kind of like a juicy sandwich to help.

So it won't fall apart.

Our pork has been resting for the last 10 minutes.

I really like to slice the pork super thinly,

because we had seared the pork earlier.

It's really tender it's really juicy and it's not dry.

And it has so much flavor

because of the dry rub that we put on it earlier.

I'm going to put the sliced meats over here.

So I have my toasted Hawaiian rolls here.

I'm actually going to take this bottom

and just dip it in the gravy.

And then I'm going to put a couple of pieces

of this pork tenderloin on top.

I'm going to add some slices of fennel

for some crunch

and you can see how the ice kind of made it really curly.

It's super crunchy and bright.

And then I'm going to add our salsa verde, on the top.

So this sandwich has so many layers to it, which is awesome.

It has, there's savoriness, juiciness,

tenderness of the pork tenderloin,

the crisp and crunch of the fennel

and then the brightness of the salsa verde on top.

This is our pork tenderloin and fish sauce salsa verde,

with cilantro fennel on a Hawaiian roll.

It's so good I can't even say anything.

The brightness of the cilantro and the lemon.

And there's a tiny bit of a heat from the red pepper flakes.

The pork tenderloin is just so juicy

and the sweetness of the Hawaiian roll

adds just like a nice surprise to this.

Definitely isn't a clean eating sandwich

but it's definitely worth it.

Oh my gosh.

I'm not sweating, it's fine.

Cause these pants are super insulated.

Okay what?