Blood Oranges

Sounds exotic, doesn't it.  I have never used blood oranges in cooking before.  A friend brought me a bagful from her backyard.  I was excited.  I have a recipe from blood oranges in John Besh's beautiful New Orleans cook book (that I can't put my hands on at the moment.)

I got sidetracked when I saw some beautiful pork loins and immediately knew they were destined for a blood orange marinade.

If  you have not seen a blood orange here are what mine looked like.  The juice is a beautiful dark pink.  The oranges themselves seem to be smaller than my  other oranges which are Louisiana Navels rather than the larger Navels.

For the marinade I put the juice of 4 oranges together with 1/2 cup of a nice EVOO and some fresh rosemary.  I bought some fine dried thyme at the Red Stick Spice Shop last month that found its way into the marinade as well.

I did chop up the fresh rosemary.  That marinated overnight.

I also put two more pork loins to marinate in a balsamic/EVOO/rosemary/garlic mix overnight as well.

Baked all 4 loins in the turkey roaster Carrie gave me last year for Christmas (or my birthday - they are so close I lose track of what I get when.)

 I made fresh beets from the Farmer's Market and toasted some onion rolls.  When I served the Blood  Orange Port Loin I made a reduction of juices of two more blood oranges and some sweet red wine then added a little cornstarch to thicken it a bit.

Nice!  The leftovers from the one loin were chopped up and stirred into an incredible baked potato soup --  with bacon and cheddar cheese.  Oh, my!