jammy tomato feta rice with herby pork tenderloin
wait, are you a professional chef?!
It’s been a bit since we’ve added a new addictive rice to our repertoire and today’s jammy tomato, fennel, feta combo might just be your new fave.
We’re roasting tomatoes, shallots, fennel, and feta until everything is collapsing and caramelized and jammy, then adding basmati rice and boiling water to cook rice right in the baking dish. At the same time, we’ll roast an herby marinated pork tenderloin to serve over top. The end product is insanely flavorful and shockingly easy given how restaurant-worthy it is.
We had friends over for dinner on Thursday night and I tested this meal on them. We decided that a sauce — while definitely not mandatory — could be a fun addition. This recipe is so easy but, because it does roast for a while, is already pushing the “I don’t feel like cooking” boundaries, so adding a homemade sauce felt too aggressive. It’s truly delightful without a sauce at all, but if you’re a sauce lover, here are some ideas!
Homemade sauces that would be great here:
Store-bought sauces that would be great here:
Pesto (Costco’s Kirkland brand is my fave)
SideDish Chipotle Ranch
Green goddess dressing (any brand — I love TJ’s and Gotham Greens)
TJ’s Zhoug sauce
Any Bitchin’ Sauce flavor
Romesco sauce (I love Haven’s Kitchen)
Chimichurri (I typically buy Haven’s Kitchen or TJ’s)
Stonewall Kitchen’s Roasted Garlic Aioli
This is an endlessly riff-able recipe. Here are a few:
Instead of pork tenderloin, use chicken sausage! Slice up chicken sausage, place it on the foil over the rice, drizzle with olive oil, and let it roast while the rice cooks.
If tomatoes and/or feta aren’t your thing, you could go a different direction with the rice by bringing in roasted red peppers and cheddar, similar to what we did back in 2020 with our cheesy cajun chicken and rice. Use chopped red bell peppers in place of the tomatoes and roast them along with the other vegetables. Continue with the recipe, but omit the feta and instead stir a cup of shredded/grated Cheddar into the rice at the end.
Spinach artichoke rice with herby chicken! Roast canned artichoke hearts, fennel, and shallots with the feta. Stir in 3 big handfuls of finely chopped spinach at the end. Swap in 2 chicken breasts for the pork tenderloin. Yum.
If you love today’s recipe, here are a few more we think you’ll enjoy!
one-pot cheesy cajun chicken and rice (the one I mentioned above!)
Let’s cook together!! I’m going live on the Substack app on Monday, January 27, at 3 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET) cooking the #1 recipe from 2024: wontons and veggies in curry broth. I’d cook this week’s recipe but there’s too much downtime while the veggies roast — we’d all be twiddling our thumbs!
If you can be in the kitchen then too, grab the ingredients and cook along with me! You can ask questions or chat amongst yourselves in the chat, it’ll be really fun! If you have the app downloaded and notifications enabled (be sure to do both beforehand!), you’ll get a push notification when the live begins. And if you can’t be there, no worries — a recording of the live will be available right after.
I want to start doing these informal cook alongs more often! So I’m curious…
Finally, before we get to the recipe, congrats to Mary Bisenius-Ferguson, who won a free gift subscription in the post-your-bowl-pic giveaway we ran this week over in the What to Cook Substack app chat!
Serves 4-6
Cook time: 1.5 hours (but only about 30 minutes of that is active cook time)
Tools:
9x12-inch baking dish **the Staub Ceramic baking dish set that I used in these pics and use ALL THE TIME is 41% off**
Small pot
Foil (or a baking sheet)
Ingredients:
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