Kristin's
Pork Loin with Plum Sauce
This
is one I invented based on the memory of a dish I'd seen a colleague
order at a lunch once plus a chicken dish I had on a Delta first
class flight. It's evolved over time into a recipe I use for formal
dinner parties. You stuff the pork loin with cranberries and apples
so that when you slice it thin and lay it on the plate it looks
very showy. I usually make a triple recipe of the plum sauce and
freeze it in separate small containers for use throughout the year.
My husband likes the plum sauce on ice cream. Be sure you use a
decent wine -- as you cook the sauce down, the flavor will intensify.
½
c dried cranberries
½ green apple, diced
3 T sugar
Gamay Beaujolais or Beaujolais Nouveau wine
8 ripe black plums (or red)
¼ c sugar
¼ t salt
1 t lemon juice
pork loin
2 T butter
1. In
saucepan, mix 1/3 c of wine with 2-3 T of sugar until sweet to the
taste. Add dried cranberries and put over low heat. You don't want
to cook them, you just want to reconstitute them. Cut the plums
into a separate sauce pan. You don't have to peel them. I usually
just cut chunks the size of my thumb off until I'm down to the pit.
Add wine to a depth of about 1 inch. Add enough sugar that the wine
is sweet to the taste. Add salt and lemon juice. Cook over a medium
low heat, stirring occasionally, until the plums soften, about 40
minutes. Mixture should be thick like applesauce.
2. In
the meantime, using a sharp knife, cut the pork loin lengthwise
in a spiral fashion so that you can unroll it into a flat sheet
about ½ to ¾ of an inch thick. Run lengths of string
under the pork -- you're going to want to tie it up once you've
put the stuffing in. Add diced apple to the pan with the reconstituted
cranberries and mix. Using a measuring cup or something as a scoop,
mound the fruit in a line in the center of the pork loin, then pull
the edges of the meat together to enclose the fruit. Tie the meat
up about every 1 ½ inch so that you have a center filling
of fruit surrounded by pork loin. You can also spread the filling
across the whole sheet and roll it up to get a pinwheel effect,
but this is tricky to pull off.
Preheat
oven to 325°. Put 1 T of butter in a baking dish and put it
into the oven so it melts. Meanwhile, melt 1 T butter in skillet.
Brown pork on all sides -- I usually use tongs to turn it. Place
in the baking dish and brush with melted butter. Cook at 325°
until done, about 50 min. Set pork on platter to rest. Pour pan
juices into the plum sauce and boil 1 min. Slice pork in ¾
inch slices, making sure to make cuts at the string so you can take
it off prior to serving. Serve with plum sauce over the top.
Variations:
use raisins, cut up plums, and/or dried sour cherries in combination
with or as substitute for cranberries and apple. You can brown shallots
in the skillet before you brown the pork, to get a more savory effect.
You can also use this recipe with chicken breasts (pound flat before
stuffing) or Cornish game hens (stuff with mandarin oranges).
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