Braised Pork and Red Cabbage

This is a great, one-pot dish that takes very little effort to prepare and comes out tasting delicious!

Ingredients:

2-lb. pork tenderloin
7-8 cloves of garlic, peeled
Salt & pepper to taste

6 strips of bacon, chopped
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 tart apple, cored and thinly sliced
1 cup chopped celery
1-2 lb. head of red cabbage, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 T. sugar or Splenda
1 t. marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cut 7-8 slits, about an inch apart, into the pork tenderloin.  Place the garlic cloves in these slits.  Salt and pepper the pork and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large Dutch oven, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until the fat begins to render out and the bacon is browning.

Move aside the bacon and brown the tenderloin.  Brown on all sides and remove from the pan.

You can take this opportunity to chop up your other ingredients.

Add in the onion and cook until they begin to caramelize.

Once done, throw in the other ingredients and stir around.  Cook until the cabbage starts to wilt.  Place the pork on top of the cabbage mixture and put the lid on the Dutch oven.

I took the opportunity to deglaze the pan with the vinegar.

Put this in the preheated oven and bake for an hour, or until the cabbage is tender and the pork is cooked through.

You may have a bit too much liquid still in the pan.  If so, place it on a burner over high heat until it boils off.

Remember to taste your cabbage and adjust any flavors to your taste.

Slice up your pork and serve!

Sour-Cream Apple Coffee Cake with Oat Crumble

Sometimes you need a really good, dense coffee cake to satisfy those winter-driven sugar cravings.

And I wanted streusel/crumble on top, so I combined two recipes.

Both are from Carol Fenster's 1000 Gluten-Free Recipes, which I highly recommend, if only for the baked goods recipes.  The rest are kind of blah and can be found readily on blogs throughout the internet.

Ingredients:

Cake:

1/2 cup melted butter/canola oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. lemon extract (optional)
1 cup sour cream (this can also be swapped out for plain Greek yogurt)
2 cups Carol's sorghum blend (35% sorghum flour, 35% potato starch, 30% tapioca starch)
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. ginger (I used fresh)
2 cups diced Granny Smith apples

Crumble:

1 cup gluten-free rolled oats
1/2 cup Carol's sorghum blend
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (I used pecans, but walnuts or almonds can be used as well)
2-3 T. maple syrup
2 T. brown sugar
3-4 T. melted butter
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Butter and (gf) flour a springform pan for the cake (this makes cake-removal easier and looks really nice--if you want to use a normal cake pan, just make sure it will all fit).

In a large bowl, mix your oil/butter, eggs, and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth.

Add in your sour cream and extracts.  Mix until smooth.

In a separate smaller bowl, mix together all your dry ingredients.  Add them in batches to the wet mixture and mix until combined.

Stir in your diced apples and freshly grated ginger.

Pour into prepared cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While your cake has begun baking, mix together all the topping ingredients until there are chunks of crumble-topping.  If it's not sticky enough, add more syrup.  If it's too dry, add more butter.  

When your cake has 15 minutes left of bake-time, crumble the topping over the cake and lightly press down.   Don't burn yourself! 

Bake until finished, and allow to cool a bit before popping the sides off of the pan.  

Enjoy!  This is also amazing with a little scoop of ice cream.