Bacon Wrapped Pork Medallions with a Pepper Cognac Cream Sauce.(Caution: Calorie BOMB!)

Markus, my incredible husband, really enjoys this dish. It's actually not very hard to make, but man, is it loaded with calories! You can adjust it by using milk instead of cream and tossing out the bacon and not using as much butter...but the taste won't be the same. Milk just doesn't compare to cream and creme fraiche.

Ingredients:

Pork tenderloin cut into 1 - 2 inch thick medallions
Bacon
1 Tbsp pepper corns - crushed roughly
1 8oz container cream
1 4 oz container plain creme fraiche
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 water, pork broth or white wine (for deglazing the pan)
Pepper
salt
1/2 onion chopped small
2 cloves garlic minced
** 1 shot congac (whiskey or rum)** totally optional, but gives it an extra kick in taste (the alcohol boils out)

First cut your tenderloin into medallions of equal thickness

Then if you want - marinate - I used a garlic italian mix, again, optional!

Let it marinate for about an hour...then wrap with bacon pieces and secure with toothpicks

Drizzle with the left over marinade and let sit at room temperature. Heat a pan with about 1 Tbsp oil and place 4 pieces of pork in at a time...

...Just sear the two sides without bacon

Then place back into baking dish. Preheat oven to 375°-400° When all the pieces are seared and the oven is heated, pop the pan into the oven.

Now fry your bacon, but in the same pan, you'll want all the flavor.

Once the bacon is nice and crispy remove from the pan and place on paper towels

Now deglaze your pan, use broth, water or white wine. Once the pan is mostly clean, pour the juice from the deglazing into a mug to use again in a few steps.

Put in about 2 Tbsp butter and melt, then add your crushed peppercorns

and then your onions and garlic

saute until soft and then add the juice that you got from deglazing the pan, along with the cream, creme fraiche, a little bit of salt and pepper and if you want a pork boullion cube.

turn down your heat, stir every few minutes and heat it through. Then add your shot (if using) and two pieces of bacon that have been crushed up, the other two are for garnish.

This should all take about 20 minutes or so...let the sauce warm back up after the shot and then pull your meat out of the oven...it will only take about 30 minutes to cook. Let it rest for a few minutes and take out the toothpicks. This dish goes great with rice. Today that's what we had, plus a typical styrian salad.

I also sprinkled some fresh chives cut from our garden

Hope you like it if you try it! :)