Overnight Crockpot Recipe Lessons Learned

Although I generally loathe crossing into Virginia-Land, unless its on my way to some far flung camping/rafting/biking adventure which takes me by local farm stands, I generally park my bicycle and join the masses on public transportation at least once a week to spend time with a guy who is worth the trek (even when slightly grumpy). Although his kitchen is fairly well stocked for a bachelor, I sometimes like to bring food out for mid-week dinners. This is mostly because I've got some recipe I have been dying to try, and well, it takes too much prep to do it all in one night and still eat before 11 pm. So, I generally do some (if not all) of the prep in the comfort of my own kitchen.

The aftermath of a Malaysian food inspired potluck which exploded into a minor boozefest left about 3 bottles of plum wine in my fridge along with about 4 cups of cooked jasmine rice. Plum wine? Who drinks plum wine? I certainly don't. Its sweet. Its barely wine. But it was a gift, and who am I to turn down plum wine? Who am I to dump it out when there are starving children in China? And so, I found a promising recipe which called for plum wine. And thus, Pork Tenderloin Braised in Ginger Fig Sauce was born. I served this with leftover jasmine rice for the Malaysian food fling, and some asparagus leftover from last week's CSA delivery lightly stirfried with Vidalia onions.

However, the long cooking times and the need to be able to transport this creation to Virginia-land, by metro and then bus and actually have time to eat had me puzzled. My genius idea was to prepare this the night before, set my crockpot to cook for 8 hours right before I went to bed, and then let everything cool to pack into tupperware containers while I showered and got ready for work. This would have been absolutely genius if the delicious aromas of the pork tenderloin braising in all sorts of rendered pork fat and sweet/savory juiciness had not wafted into my bedroom at 5 am and thus, keeping me semi-awake for the next several hours.

But, it worked. The timing and the end result, allowing me to pack everything for easy transport to work, and subsequently, to the hinterlands. Around 10 pm the night before said trek to the-middle-of-nowhere, I seared 2 pounds of pork tenderloin cut into 2 inch chunks in just a little bit of canola oil. I removed the seared pieces of tenderloin and placed in the bottom of the crockpot while I melted 1.5 TBSP butter in the same pan and sweat about 1 medium onion sliced, deglazing the pan as the onions sweat. Into the crockpot the onions went. I then added 1/4 cup of fresh grated ginger, 4 cloves of garlic grated, 3/4 cups finely grated carrot, 15 figs chopped into quarters, about 1.5 cups of plum wine, and salt and pepper.

This was definitely an interesting recipe, mostly because of the interplay between the ginger, plum wine, and figs. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but the ginger almost added the perfect counterbalance. Next time I would add some kind of acid, like maybe apple cider vinegar and add a little more grated ginger.