JULY 15, 2005
HOW I MISSED THE LEFT TURN TO MOJO-VILLE AND ENDED UP SOMEWHERE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A RECIPE FOR GRILLED PORK WITH PEQUIN-MANGO MOJO CRIOLLO
I lived in Miami for over a dozen years in the 1980’s-90’s and developed a real love for Cuban food. One of my favorite Cuban delicacies is a marinade/grilling sauce called Mojo Criollo (just mojo for short). Mojo is a pungent, tangy sauce that is great for grilling or roasting pork, chicken, seafood, beef, just about anything that’ll go on a grill.
So I recently had a taste for mojo-marinated grilled pork and decided I was going to make the mojo from scratch. Well, one thing leads to another and I’m veering off into “let’s try this… and some of this… and maybe some of that”, and I ended up with something a little different. Something very tasty, but not the traditional mojo I thought I was aiming for. This is a marinade/sauce with all the pungent richness of traditional mojo, but has an initial mango sweetness that gives way to naturally smoky heat from the pequin chiles.
GRILLED PORK WITH PEQUIN-MANGO MOJO
Ingredients
Two pork tenderloins, silverskin removed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
12 Firecracker Pequin chiles, finely chopped
2 ripe mangos, diced
2 Tb cumin
1 Tb fresh oregano
1 Tb salt
1 Tsp black pepper
2 cups orange juice
1 cup white wine
¼ cup fresh lime juice
Method
Warm olive oil in a medium saucepan on medium-low heat. Sweat onions for 10-15 minutes until they’re translucent and starting to brown around the edges. Add garlic and stir for 1 minute (this activates the oil in the garlic and brings out the flavor before adding other ingredients). Add cumin, oregano, chiles, salt and pepper and stir around for 2 minutes. Add mango, orange juice, white wine, and lime juice; simmer for 15-20 minutes over medium heat. Puree with a submersion blender and let sauce cool to room temperature. Score the pork diagonally and place in a pyrex or glass dish. Cover pork with marinade, cover dish with Saran wrap, and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours.
Preheat grill on high. Sear tenderloins on four sides, three minutes per side, (reserve marinade) and then continue cooking on indirect heat until internal temperature reaches 145 degrees. Tent the pork with foil and let sit for 5-7 minutes to let the juices settle. While the meat is tented, heat up the reserved marinade in a small sauce pan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Carve the pork diagonally against the grain into thin slices. Sauce with reserved marinade.
I served this with two side dishes: Spanish yellow rice and jicama strips dusted with chile powder.
Questions? Comments? Email scott@urbanchiles.com
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