Countdown to 40! Food Network December Cooking Challenge

Sundays are relaxing and culinary adventure days.  In my countdown to 40 years old, I have 26 more days.

I'm a big fan of Food Network Canada and every month they have a Cooking Club Challenge.  First they choose three dishes for the first week of the month and you can vote which dish you want to cook for that month.  After the week is over, the votes are tallied and the one with the most votes win.  

This month I voted for Chicken Cordon Blue, however, my choice didn't win.  Instead it was Bacon Pork Roast Tenderloin.  

The recipe looks simple enough so I bought the ingredients, preheated my oven to the highest temperature and put the roast together.  

Firstly when set the oven to the high temperature, it first began to off gas the oven cleaner or something.  That was strange but I have never cooked anything at such high heat.  I shrugged it off as that.  Then I put the dish in the oven, set the timer, and literally watched it cook.

This was the longest 20 minutes ever.  The bacon started to cook and the oils on the tray started to heat up and sputter.  Last night I heard about a cooking mishap where a friend almost burned down her kitchen so I imagined the oil flying up to spark and light a fire in the oven.  Now I don't know if it would have made a difference to use parchment paper instead of tin foil.  Tin foil seems to collect the oils.  So I reduced the heat to 450 degrees and cooked the meat longer.  When I couldn't bear to watch myself boil oil in oven, I took out the roast.  It looked down from the outside.

But when I made the first cut, I was so wrong!  the meat was red inside.  I replaced the tin foil and decided to cook the meat again at 400 degrees.  Within 5 minutes, the oil was spurting again.  Gosh, cooking bacon is cooking a lot of fat.  At this time too, I had my windows open since the smell of bacon was filling the house.  This isn't your morning bacon smell, this is that smell on steroids.   I couldn't stand watching the oil sputter and without the meat getting cooked.

I pulled the meat out and cut it into slices and put it in a glass baking dish.  Then I cooked it again for another 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  In the end after a frustrating evening of uncooked meat and bacon headache, it was finally done!  I had my Bacon Roast Tenderloin but the experience was not as simple as the recipe.

I'm not sure if my flaw is that I don't have a convection oven or that I wrapped too much bacon or that I didn't line with parchment paper.  All I know is that this was truly a challenge that I do not wish to repeat!