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August is when I stop trusting my oven. Forty minutes at 400 degrees makes the whole house unlivable by seven, and the corn and tomatoes that are at their absolute peak right now do not need it anyway.
So this one is entirely stovetop. One skillet, twenty minutes. Pork tenderloin is the cut I reach for when I want a real piece of meat without a long cook, and most people only ever meet it as a roast.
The recipe: Pork Medallions with Corn and Tomatoes
Makes one full pan in about 20 minutes: dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, or one big dinner if that is where your appetite lands today. The whole pan holds roughly 110g of protein.
1 pork tenderloin, about 1 1/4 lb
2 ears of corn, kernels cut off (or 1 1/2 cups frozen)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
A handful of basil
Olive oil, salt, pepper
Slice the tenderloin crosswise into rounds about an inch thick and press each one flat with your palm. Salt them well. Get a large skillet properly hot with olive oil and sear the rounds in a single layer, 3 minutes a side, until they are browned outside and barely pink in the middle. Move them to a plate.
Same pan, medium heat. Corn and tomatoes go in and cook 4 minutes without much stirring, so the corn takes on color and the tomatoes start to slump. Garlic for the last 30 seconds. Then the butter, a big pinch of salt, and the pork back in with every drop of juice off the plate. Tear the basil over the top with the heat off.
Why this works: cutting the tenderloin into rounds before it hits the pan turns one long roast into eight small steaks. Eight times the browned surface, and it is finished in six minutes instead of half an hour in a hot oven.
It keeps 3 days. The corn and tomatoes go soft on a reheat, so eat the leftovers cold over greens rather than warming them back up.
No-cook breakfast: cottage cheese and a real tomato
No recipe, just an order of operations, and only worth doing in August. Spoon a cup of cottage cheese into a shallow bowl. Slice a ripe tomato thick, lay the slices on top, and salt the tomato directly. Olive oil, plenty of cracked pepper, torn basil if you have it.
Salt the tomato, not the cottage cheese. The tomato has water to give up and the salt pulls it down into the curd, which is where the whole thing comes together. Roughly 23g of protein.
Three quick bites
Turkey pepperoni, cubed sharp cheddar and a few olives on a small plate needs no cooking and holds up as an actual lunch on the days nothing else sounds good.
Lentil and chickpea pastas have gotten much better, and the trick is to pull the pot a full minute before the box tells you to. They soften fast, and that minute is the difference between pasta and paste.
In the canned fish aisle, sardines packed in olive oil are worth another look. Drained onto toast with lemon and a lot of black pepper, one tin is lunch, and the oil left in the tin is good enough to pour over whatever you eat alongside it.
The why
Do not strip the fat out of dinner. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble, which means your body needs fat in the same meal to absorb them at all. The olive oil on the tomatoes and the butter in that skillet are doing real work, not just adding flavor. Fat also makes a smaller plate satisfying, and that counts for more when the plate is smaller than it used to be.
The rough-day plate
For the day this week when standing at the stove is not happening: milk, a cup of frozen peaches and a big spoon of almond butter in a blender. Thirty seconds, cold and sweet and easy to get down, and it goes in a glass you can carry around the house with you.
Buy the tomatoes now. In three weeks the good ones are gone and we are all back to the pink ones that taste like the inside of a refrigerator.
If someone you know has been eating the same dinner on repeat since June, forward this to them.
Jan
The New Appetite is a food publication, not medical advice. Always talk to your healthcare provider about your nutrition and medication.