Despite the lovely sunny day it's still pretty chilly out there. This calls for a warming Saturday supper and I'd furnished myself with a fillet of pork (or is it a tenderloin).
This is just for the two of us so it doesn't need to be huge. Cut the fillet into thick slices, seasoned with black pepper and ground cumin, and sealed them in butter in the casserole dish over a hot flame.
I like to get a bit of browny crust on them and make some nice bits to scrape up, so I don't crowd them into the pan for this bit. Once they're nicely sealed and sitting on plate, add a nugget more butter and throw in 6 peeled and lightly bashed garlic cloves along with a cored, chunkily chopped apple.
Stir these around until they take up the remains of the butter and they start to catch a little.
Add a good slug of cider vinegar and scrape up the crunchy brown bits from the bottom of the pan then leave to boil vigorously for a short while.
Then put the pork back into the pan along with any accumulated juices and finish by putting in a bottle of cider - the drier the better.
Bring back to the boil and then put into the oven, 180c for about half an hour, with the lid off.
It was nearer 3/4 of an hour by the time I got back to the oven and the juice had cooked away to about half its original volume. It was still pretty runny though. I stirred in a generous tablespoon of sour cream, but that didn't make it much thicker and it went a bit blobby. So I hitched the meat out and attacked the sauce with my stick blender. That worked a treat and the sauce was rendered into a lovely thick consistency. The joy of the stick blender is that it turns the apple pieces with their skins and the garlic cloves into a nice smooth sauce with the absolute minimum of effort.
Served it with butter lettuce and a petite buttered baguette. The sauce was plate lickingly good.
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