Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Mojo Sauce

If you've never heard of mojo sauce, we're in the same boat. And although readers of a certain era will never be able to make or even read about this sauce without a certain Doors song refraining in their minds, it has nothing to do with L.A. women, at least not in the way you're thinking of.

In fact, mojo sauce hails from points south (Canary Islands, Cuba, Puerto Rico) and at base is olive oil, garlic and citrus juice. According to Wikipedia, the most popular use of mojo sauce seems to be pepping up cooked potatoes and other tubers though it appears to be making inroads in BBQ land.

Grilled pork tenderloin is not a tuber, but why not throw these two together--a nice lean grilled meat and some peppy sauce. Sounds like a good idea, right?

I guess the answer is, it depends. Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Mojo Sauce is quick, yes--easy to prepare, yes. Also extremely garlicky, because the body of this sauce is essentially garlic (4 cloves garlic, a little oregano, orange juice and olive oil)

And for me this might not normally be a problem except I was traveling the next day to a day-long karate workshop--and transporting my sensei and two other karate students.

That's right. Sweat, close quarters and guests in an unfamiliar place. Add garlic and you've got fun.

I scraped most of the garlic off my pork--which leads me to my one critique of the recipe. The sauce would have been better pureed in a microblender--chunky bits of raw garlic (no matter how well smooshed) are unpalatable, at least to me. An image search of mojo sauce shows a smooth puree, so I'm not the first one to come up with this idea.

However--had it been a puree, I wouldn't have been able to negotiate around it. So there's that.

The workshop was anything but a social disaster (you'll be happy to hear), and if the car ride was unpleasant my karateka comrades were too polite to mention it.

But when I got home? My husband said, "Wow, you smell like you've been working out!"

Yup, something like that!

P.S. Observant readers will wonder why the mojo sauce in the picture is reddish--the oranges I had in the house were blood oranges, which have beautiful, ruby-colored juice.