Pork Cutlets with Cranberry Wine Sauce

I feel as I have not only neglected this blog but my friends who pop in just to see what's been cooking at The House of Murray. Don't panic we are not giving up or stopping this blog, in fact it's for purely work and family related reasons that the posts lately have been few and far between.

Firstly I have just returned from a work road trip which has seen me travelling around Northern Victoria last Tuesday through to Thursday. Needless to say, I have been eating at motel restaurants and not cooking for myself. Noel and the kids have been at home but he didn't have time to contribute.

No sooner had I unpacked from the work trip Thursday evening than it was time to repack on Friday evening as we had a family holiday as it's the Labour Day long weekend. We left for Halls Gap, in the Grampians, early Saturday morning and returned Tuesday night. We did have a fantastic weekend break and enjoyed spending quality time together.

During our trip I was given "time off" from cooking dinners so we did eat out every night and had some wonderful meals. The first night we ate at The Kookaburra Restaurant in Halls Gap where I had a magnificent meal, Kangaroo Fillet with a Caramelized Port, Cream and Seeded Mustard Sauce and Noel had the Duo of Pork, Chargrilled pork fillet with slow-baked spare rib served with an apple, lime and ginger sauce. Both of us really enjoyed these meals, and the kids enjoyed their meals also which made it very tempting to return there for the next two nights but we didn't!!

We also ate at Mings Oriental at the National Hotel in Stawell which was a Chinese and Australian Restaurant within a wonderful old hotel. It was the type of place you wouldn't expect to find, if you know what I mean? An Aussie Pub, where you walk through the lounge area to see a couple of regulars propped up at the bar drinking their pots of beer. Through the door to the dining room you entered an old style dining room with a little servery and this massive chalk written menu half filled with Chinese style dishes and the other classic Aussie dishes such as steak and chips, parma and chips, etc. We had the Chinese banquet and everyone enjoyed that. All the individual meals were good including the Mongolian Combination, Sizzling Garlic Prawns but Noel and I really enjoyed the Beef with Lemongrass and Chilli (we even got a choice of the temperature scale 1 - 14! We chose 10 and that was quite hot!) As you can tell we would recommend both these restaurants if you are ever in the area!

As you can all imagine that I have so many new dishes that I want to try and replicate after reading all the lovely restaurant menus for the last week. Of course they will need to be Weight Watcher friendly so the next few weeks could be very interesting indeed for the family with experiments in the House of Murray kitchen!

So now we are back and settled we finally sat down to a home cooked meal - one which I enjoyed but must be honest and say that Noel found the sauce quite sweet. I had found this recipe some time ago and wasn't quite sure about serving cranberry with pork. In my mind cranberry goes hand in hand with turkey while apple sauce is the choice condiment for pork! However since trying I have to say that the cranberry mixed with the sage and thyme was quite suited for the pork and it's one of those recipes that you just cannot believe that it's actually low fat.

Pork Cutlets with Cranberry Wine Sauce

(recipe source delicious magazine - December 2005)

Serves: 4

Points per serve: 7

4 pork cutlets, trimmed of fat

salt

freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 cup (250ml) dry white wine
1 cup whole-berry cranberry sauce
1 tablespoon thinly sliced sage leaves
1 tablespoon chopped thyme leaves

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Season the pork cutlets with salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat and fry the cutlets for 2 - 3 minutes on each side or until golden. Transfer the cutlets to a baking tray and cook in the oven for 5 minutes or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, add the garlic to the frying pan and cook for a few seconds over medium heat. Add the white wine and cranberry sauce and stir to melt the sauce. Allow to simmer for 2 minutes, then stir in the sage and thyme. Return the pork cutlets to the pan and coat in the cranberry wine sauce.

(click here for a printable version of this recipe)