The Pit Boss and I met on the weekend to smoke the Berkshire loins, (that’s another story). Pit Boss leaves me a email Saturday night before  he's thinking that since we have two tenderloins that perhaps we ought to have a throwdown. I'm reading this at 1:30 am after a friendly night of poker with the spouse and friends. Ok, what ever, I'll deal with whatever he throws at me in the morning, I'm going to bed.

Early Sunday morning Mike arrives at the house and we deal with setting up the smoker for a few other projects. We can finally draw our attention to this little contest, It's about 1:00pm and the rules are simple it’s a 3:00pm turn in and anything goes. I plan to do a pork medallions with a black and red pepper rub sautéed in garlic butter. Pit Boss is saying nothing except that he will be using my gas grill. He trims all the silver skin and excess fat off his tenderloin and into his magic rub, no names, no ingredients, it's a work in progress.

     
 
Ok so both loins are sitting in their respective rubs for an hour or so and then out comes some pork confit gelatin. It's the base for a onion red wine reduction sauce for the Pit Boss's dish. 

    

HOLD THE PHONE....

There was not mention of sauces, whoa that's unfair, I'm not set up for that. I have no ingredients for my infamous blue cheese sauce and dam that's just not fair, I've just lost before my pan hit the stove. Being a friendly match, Pit Boss give me a reprieve to 3:30 but it cost me a beer. So I send Barb out to the store for emergency supplies.

 

As usual Pit Boss handles the grill while I use a more traditional approach.

Here are the final results;

I had to concede that the overall dish had to go to the Pit Boss, the meat was mild in taste, just the right hint of spice and cooked to perfection. The sauce provided the right amount of support to the meat without overtaking the dish, overall it was an utopian experience.

With respect to my dish, the taste was exquisite, the sauce was more of a contrast and thus showed better then the reduction sauce but the texture of the pork was not the same as the grill. In pan frying the medallions, a beautiful crust was formed, but could not compare to the buttery texture of Mike’s mini roast.

Result - PIT BOSS WIN