Creole Dijon Pork Loin and Grilled Peaches

When we were living in Ontario, my girlfriend had fallen in love with a bottled sauce manufactured by Renee's Gourmet. I don't know if their sauces are available outside of Canada but I do know that the Creole Dijon sauce she was so crazy about is not available in New Brunswick. So two bottles of the stuff followed us back into New Brunswick.

To our utter dissapointment, the sauce tasted nothing like we remembered it. Think sweet but with a dijon tang and a balance of creole spices all getting gooey on a barbecued pork tenderloing - which is a wonderful vehicle for sticky and tasty sauces by the way. This sauce tasted like, well, like it came from a bottle. A bottle that came from some manufactury. Maybe I'm too spoiled now but I don't particularly care. Whether it's massed produced or only made for home, it's got to be good or it's not worth the effort. Sorry Renee. But I'll make it myself next time.

The saving grace of our barbecue were the grilled veggies. This is nothing new. I've made it and written about it before. But I've got some techniques now. The mushrooms go on first, gill side down. They've got to be almost completely dehydrated so that they become chewy and really concentrated in their flavour. The zuchinni, on the other hand, musn't be cooked for too long or it get's all limp and watery. It needs to retain it's crunch so it goes on last.

The really cool thing was that in between the mushrooms and the zuchinni I grilled some fresh halved peaches. My girlfriend, like so many other times, looked at me like I was crazy but the end justified the means...or the madness. Grilled fruit is great. Watermelon. Peaches. Lemons. Pineapple. Whatever. It's all great. And it compensates for the icky junk sauce you might buy to slather on your tenderloin.

Peach Tart

The Ontario peaches were on special (and therefore in season) all over town this week. With a full box, I really had to find something to do with them. So, while going through Alain Rayé's cookbook La Régalade, I found a recipe for an apricot tart. Peaches...apricots...I figured they were interchangeable. Pluse the recipe looked so darn good.

I had to run around to find frozen puff pastry. But the end product was so easy to make and really showcased well the deliciousness of the peach.

For the recipe, you can either cut a sheet of puff pastry or make individual squares as I did above. Once the puff pastry has thawed - if you're using the frozen variety - prick the dough with a fork and place in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, sliced the peaches or apricots in half and remove stone. You then have the option of cutting them into fans as I did above or simply cook the halves as is.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Take out the dough fromt he refrigerator and push the cut fruit lightly into the dough. You then sprinkle with salted butter (about 2 tbsp per half fruit) and sugar (also about 2 tbsp per half fruit). Place in over and bake for about 30 minutes or until the dough is puffy and golden.

Serve warm or cold with vanilla ice cream. Simple and delicious.