Pork Medallions Portuguese

Week 100. One hundred weeks since I started writing about this life. One hundred Mondays. One hundred dinners. One hundred versions of the same woman in different stages of becoming. The Sarah of Week 1 wouldn't recognize the Sarah of Week 100. Week 1 Sarah was standing in a dark kitchen in Antioch, waiting for something to break open. Week 100 Sarah is standing in a lit kitchen in Hermitage, holding a salmon filet, and the thing that broke open was her.

The new apartment is settling into home. Earline's skillet is on the wall. The fridge museum is rebuilt — every card, every letter, every certificate, reattached with magnets on the new fridge, which is bigger, which means more surface area for proof. Chloe added a new drawing this week: our family, in the new apartment, with a big kitchen. Everyone is smiling. The cat is not in this one. The cat doesn't know about Hermitage. The cat is an Antioch cat. We've moved on.

Work is becoming routine, and routine is becoming confidence. I see six to eight patients a day. I know their names. Mr. Chen comes every three months and brings me tea from his restaurant. Mrs. DeLuca is afraid of the X-ray machine but lets me do it because "you have gentle hands, Sarah." Derek — the young man who was afraid of the dentist — is my regular now. He comes every six months and he no longer grips the armrest. That's my work. Not just the scaling and the probing and the X-rays. The trust. I build trust one appointment at a time, the way I build everything — slow, steady, with my hands.

I put $200 in the college fund this month. TWO HUNDRED. The fund had $3,200 from years of scraping together $20 here, $40 there. Now it has $3,400. Next month it'll have $3,600. The math is different when the income is different. The math goes from subtraction to addition. I'm adding now. Adding to the fund, adding to the savings, adding to the life. Addition is what happens when you stop surviving and start building.

I made a beef and broccoli stir-fry this week — sliced flank steak (I can afford flank steak now, which still feels surreal), broccoli, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, over rice. It's the kind of meal I used to make with ground beef and whatever vegetables were on sale. Now I make it with the cut of meat I actually want. The recipe is the same. The ingredient quality is different. And that difference — the distance between ground beef and flank steak — is the distance between a Waffle House waitress and a dental hygienist. It's not a big distance on a plate. It's an enormous distance in a life.

The beef and broccoli I made this week was its own kind of milestone — flank steak instead of ground beef, a small swap that felt enormous — and it got me thinking about all the recipes I’ve been holding back on because I was waiting until I could do them right. Pork Medallions Portuguese is one of those recipes. It’s deeply savory, built on garlic and wine and good paprika, and it rewards you for using a real cut of meat instead of whatever was marked down. At Week 100, I’m done waiting. This is the version I always wanted to make.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs pork tenderloin, sliced into 1-inch medallions
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
1/3 cup pitted green olives, halved
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Lemon wedges, for serving

Instructions

Season the pork. Pat medallions dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine smoked paprika, cumin, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Press the spice mixture onto both flat sides of each medallion.
Sear the medallions. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add medallions in a single layer without crowding — work in batches if needed. Sear 3 minutes per side until a deep golden crust forms. Transfer to a plate and tent loosely with foil.
Build the Portuguese sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining 1 tbsp olive oil and the minced garlic to the same skillet. Cook 60 seconds, stirring constantly, until fragrant but not browned. Pour in the white wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Let it reduce by half, about 2 minutes.
Add tomatoes and olives. Stir in the drained diced tomatoes and green olives. Simmer 4–5 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly and the flavors meld.
Finish and serve. Return the pork medallions and any accumulated juices to the skillet. Spoon sauce over the top and cook 2–3 minutes until the pork is heated through and registers 145°F internally. Stir in lemon juice, taste and adjust salt. Plate the medallions, top generously with sauce, and scatter fresh parsley over everything. Serve with lemon wedges alongside crusty bread, rice, or roasted potatoes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pork Medallions Portuguese — When You Can Finally Buy the Good Cut