When my lovely husband and I are having a dinner date, I really enjoy having a nice glass of red wine – not too dry, but not too sweet either. 😋

We also love using red wine as an ingredient in cooking. Pretty much any red or brown sauce benefits from a dash of red wine; we even like to use it to enhance lentil soup.

For this, we always choose a red wine that we would also enjoy drinking on its own.

The label of the French red wine of our choice says “sweet” and, indeed, it is a little sweeter than semi-dry but still not too sweet for our taste. It is a relatively inexpensive wine from the supermarket, but so what? We like it.

For the sauce of this hearty dish, we need a little more than only a dash of wine. 😉

By the way, the sauce on its own is also very suitable for the roulade dish of which I shared the recipe a while ago.

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What we need:

For the meat

• 500g pork
• 2 onions
• 2 pinches of salt
• 2 pinches of black pepper
• 1 tsp hot paprika
• 1½ tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp curry powder
• Olive oil
• 350g canned mushroom slices

For the sauce

• 4 shallots
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 250ml red wine
• 450ml beef stock
• 40g cold margarine
• black pepper
• hot paprika

How to do it:

The preparations

• Preparing the meat:
  • Cut the pork into strips.
  • Chop the onions finely.
  • Compose the spices.
  • Put the pork strips, onions, spices and 1 tbsp of olive oil in a suitable container, mix everything well.
  • Leave the meat in the fridge for 60 to 90 minutes.
• Preparing the sauce:
  • Chop the shallots finely.
  • Prepare the beef stock.

The cooking

• Cooking the meat:
  • Heat a little olive oil in a pan, fry the meat until it reaches the desired level of browning.
  • Remove the meat, keep it warm in the oven.
  • Drain the mushrooms, fry them for about 5 minutes, then remove them from the pan.
• Making the sauce:
  • Add a little olive oil to the heated pan and sauté the shallots.
  • Stir in the garlic powder and the tomato purée.
  • Deglaze with the red wine.
  • Reduce to a third over medium heat.
  • Add the beef stock and bring to the boil briefly.
  • Stir in the cold margarine.
  • Season to taste with black pepper and hot paprika.
• Final step:
  • Return the meat and the mushrooms to the pan, mix everything well.

We like it best with fries and peas.