Spicy Chili-Coconut Tomato Salad with Pork Tenderloin

I had a leftover pork tenderloin in the fridge and wanted to do something "different" with it. Well, I found just the thing. When I first looked at this recipe from the Food Network online it sounded rather weird to me. I was intrigued and even somewhat perplexed by the suggested flavors. It is Thai-inspired so you have that whole hot and sweet thing going on, but tomatoes and coconut? I made a few tweaks to meet our needs and it worked out just great.

First make the sauce and then get the ingredients ready for the salad. I served the salad over brown rice so we got the full flavor from the sauce (which is a little thin).

1 cooked pork tenderloin, sliced and cut in half moons (you could sub chicken or tofu here)

Ingredients for Chili-Coconut Sauce:
olive oil
1 (1-inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeno, cut into rounds
1 t coconut sugar
1 lime, juiced
14 oz. unsweetened coconut milk
1 T fish sauce
salt and pepper
Stems from 1/4 bunch of cilantro (odd, but true)

Ingredients for Tomato Salad:
3/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1 pound tomatoes-I used firm medium brown/red heirlooms
1/4 red onion, cut in slivers
1/2 a jalapeno, seeded and cut in slivers
leaves from 1/4 bunch of cilantro
Handful of fresh mint leaves
salt and pepper
2 scallions, trimmed and chopped

Directions

Sauce:

Heat olive oil in deep saucepan and over medium heat cook, garlic, ginger and jalapeno pepper for 3 minutes. Add the coconut milk, sugar and simmer until thickened about 5 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and fish sauce and season with salt and pepper. Cool to room temperature. Add cilantro stems and puree with immersion blender. Set aside

Tomato Salad:

Preheat oven 375
Spread coconut out in thin layer on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake shaking now and then for about 8 minutes--check at 4 and shake or stir.

Cut the tomatoes into bite size chunks--drain a bit if they are really watery. Put the tomatoes in large shallow bowl. When ready to serve, to the tomatoes add the red onion, the jalapeno, the mint, the cilantro leaves and salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil. Fold in the coconut and the scallions and the pork tenderloin.

Serve over rice and ladle the sauce over all.