Apricot and Pecan Stuffed Pork with Honey Glazed Carrots and Green Mash
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Told by Lord Auberon Cindrake
One does not expect to find a dragon in a kitchen with no coals in it. I have been asked about this more than once — usually by guests who assume my hoard begins and ends with charcoal and old oak, and that anything roasted behind a closed metal door is beneath my notice. They are wrong, and I forgive them, because it is an understandable mistake.
I first encountered this particular dish at a country house whose owners had, through several generations of careless housekeeping, bricked over their outdoor hearth entirely to make room for a rose garden. I was appalled, naturally. But their cook — a formidable woman named Agnes, who feared nothing, myself included — pointed out that her oven held its heat every bit as faithfully as any grill I had ever presided over, and dared me to prove otherwise.
I did not prove otherwise. I ate four helpings and admitted, with what I hope was reasonable grace, that a belly-full Flame is a belly-full Flame whether it lives behind a grate of iron bars or inside a box in someone's scullery. Two hundred degrees is two hundred degrees. The pork does not know, or care, which kingdom its heat was born in.
What Agnes served me was a pork loin, opened like a book and filled with sausage, pecan, and dried apricot — an arrangement I regarded with suspicion at first (fruit, in meat?) and then, embarrassingly quickly, with enthusiasm. She glazed her carrots with honey until they went the colour of old amber, and mashed her potato and broccoli together with a violence I found almost admirable.
I have eaten at four hundred royal banquets. I still think about Agnes's scullery more often than I probably should.
I first encountered this particular dish at a country house whose owners had, through several generations of careless housekeeping, bricked over their outdoor hearth entirely to make room for a rose garden. I was appalled, naturally. But their cook — a formidable woman named Agnes, who feared nothing, myself included — pointed out that her oven held its heat every bit as faithfully as any grill I had ever presided over, and dared me to prove otherwise.
I did not prove otherwise. I ate four helpings and admitted, with what I hope was reasonable grace, that a belly-full Flame is a belly-full Flame whether it lives behind a grate of iron bars or inside a box in someone's scullery. Two hundred degrees is two hundred degrees. The pork does not know, or care, which kingdom its heat was born in.
What Agnes served me was a pork loin, opened like a book and filled with sausage, pecan, and dried apricot — an arrangement I regarded with suspicion at first (fruit, in meat?) and then, embarrassingly quickly, with enthusiasm. She glazed her carrots with honey until they went the colour of old amber, and mashed her potato and broccoli together with a violence I found almost admirable.
I have eaten at four hundred royal banquets. I still think about Agnes's scullery more often than I probably should.
One does not simply stuff a pork loin and call it dinner. One builds an argument for it, and then one wins that argument with fire — even fire borrowed from a box with a dial on the front.
Bring your Flame to a belly-full heat: two hundred degrees, no less, and no drama required to reach it. This is domestic fire, not siege fire, and it will behave itself if you let it.
While the Flame settles, chop your potato into rough two-centimetre chunks — no need to peel it, we are not running a formal kitchen — and separate your broccoli into florets, peeling and chopping the stalk to the same size as the potato. Halve your white and purple carrots lengthways, and quarter the thicker orange ones. Roughly chop your pecans and cut each dried apricot into small pieces. Set all of this aside, and bring a well-salted pot of water to the boil; it has its own part to play shortly.
Now, the stuffing. Slit the sausage skin and squeeze the meat free into a bowl — the skin has done its work and may be discarded without ceremony. Add your chopped pecans, your apricot, a good pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper, and work it together with your hands. Do not be delicate about this. A little sausagey mess is the correct texture of confidence.
Take your pork loin fillet and open it like a book — slice along its length, but do not go all the way through; you are building a hinge, not two pieces of pork. Lay your stuffing down one half, leaving a two-centimetre border clear at the ends and along the outer edge, then fold the other half back over. Hold the seam closed with cocktail sticks, seam-side down, the way one seals a letter one intends to keep private.
If stuffing remains — and it often does — roll the excess into small balls, roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. Nothing here is wasted.
Set the honoured cut onto a lightly greased tray and give it to the Flame's top shelf for twenty-five minutes, adding your stuffing balls after the first ten. When it emerges, allow it to settle for five minutes before any knife approaches it. The pork and its stuffing are done when no pink remains at the centre, and settling gives the juices time to remember where they belong.
Toss your carrots with a little oil and honey, season with salt and pepper, and give them the Flame's middle shelf for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until they take on real colour at the edges.
Into your boiling water go the potato and broccoli stalk first, for ten minutes, then the florets for a further eight. When a knife slides through without resistance, drain — but keep a little of that water back, it is not finished working yet — and return the potato and broccoli to the pot with a knob of butter, a splash of milk if you have it, and a proper pinch of salt and pepper. Mash it together with more enthusiasm than delicacy, tasting as you go.
While everything settles, melt your apple and sage jelly gently over a low heat, then loosen it with a spoonful or two per person of your reserved cooking water until it turns from a preserve into a glaze.
Slice the pork into centimetre-wide rounds, arrange it beside your glazed carrots and your green mash, and drizzle the glaze over the whole plate without restraint.
I have eaten this from silver. I have also eaten it standing at a scullery counter with my claws still faintly smelling of woodsmoke from an entirely different fire. It was equally good both times. Fire, it turns out, does not much care what it is wearing.
Bring your Flame to a belly-full heat: two hundred degrees, no less, and no drama required to reach it. This is domestic fire, not siege fire, and it will behave itself if you let it.
While the Flame settles, chop your potato into rough two-centimetre chunks — no need to peel it, we are not running a formal kitchen — and separate your broccoli into florets, peeling and chopping the stalk to the same size as the potato. Halve your white and purple carrots lengthways, and quarter the thicker orange ones. Roughly chop your pecans and cut each dried apricot into small pieces. Set all of this aside, and bring a well-salted pot of water to the boil; it has its own part to play shortly.
Now, the stuffing. Slit the sausage skin and squeeze the meat free into a bowl — the skin has done its work and may be discarded without ceremony. Add your chopped pecans, your apricot, a good pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper, and work it together with your hands. Do not be delicate about this. A little sausagey mess is the correct texture of confidence.
Take your pork loin fillet and open it like a book — slice along its length, but do not go all the way through; you are building a hinge, not two pieces of pork. Lay your stuffing down one half, leaving a two-centimetre border clear at the ends and along the outer edge, then fold the other half back over. Hold the seam closed with cocktail sticks, seam-side down, the way one seals a letter one intends to keep private.
If stuffing remains — and it often does — roll the excess into small balls, roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. Nothing here is wasted.
Set the honoured cut onto a lightly greased tray and give it to the Flame's top shelf for twenty-five minutes, adding your stuffing balls after the first ten. When it emerges, allow it to settle for five minutes before any knife approaches it. The pork and its stuffing are done when no pink remains at the centre, and settling gives the juices time to remember where they belong.
Toss your carrots with a little oil and honey, season with salt and pepper, and give them the Flame's middle shelf for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until they take on real colour at the edges.
Into your boiling water go the potato and broccoli stalk first, for ten minutes, then the florets for a further eight. When a knife slides through without resistance, drain — but keep a little of that water back, it is not finished working yet — and return the potato and broccoli to the pot with a knob of butter, a splash of milk if you have it, and a proper pinch of salt and pepper. Mash it together with more enthusiasm than delicacy, tasting as you go.
While everything settles, melt your apple and sage jelly gently over a low heat, then loosen it with a spoonful or two per person of your reserved cooking water until it turns from a preserve into a glaze.
Slice the pork into centimetre-wide rounds, arrange it beside your glazed carrots and your green mash, and drizzle the glaze over the whole plate without restraint.
I have eaten this from silver. I have also eaten it standing at a scullery counter with my claws still faintly smelling of woodsmoke from an entirely different fire. It was equally good both times. Fire, it turns out, does not much care what it is wearing.
Reveal the mundane truth
1 Potato
1 Broccoli
25 Pecan Nuts
40 Dried Apricots
1 97% Pork Sausages
250 Pork Loin Fillet
4 Cocktail Sticks
1 Honey
1 Tracklements Apple and sage Jelly
225 Tri-coloured Chantenay Carrots
1 Broccoli
25 Pecan Nuts
40 Dried Apricots
1 97% Pork Sausages
250 Pork Loin Fillet
4 Cocktail Sticks
1 Honey
1 Tracklements Apple and sage Jelly
225 Tri-coloured Chantenay Carrots
1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
2. Chop the potato into 2cm chunks (no need to peel!), separate the broccoli into florets.
3. Peel the stalk of the broccoli and chop it into 2cm chunks.
4. Cut the tops off the carrots then slice your white and purple carrots in half lengthways (no need to peel).
5. Slice your orange carrots into four strips if they are a bit thicker.
6. Roughly chop the pecan nuts and chop each dried apricot into little pieces.
7. Bring a pot of water to the boil with a good pinch of salt.
8. Slice the sausage skin lengthways, then squeeze your sausage meat into a bowl (discard the skin).
9. Add your nuts, apricots, and a pinch of salt and pepper.
10. Mix it all together with your hands, don’t be afraid to get your hands sausagey!
11. This is your stuffing!
12. Next you need to butterfly the pork!
13. Slice along it lengthways to open it up like a book.
14. Don’t slice all the way through though!
15. Stuff your pork by spreading your stuffing down one side of your opened pork, then fold over the other half.
16. You need to leave a 2cm border at each end and along the outside length, so it can be sealed.
17. Once folded over, and with the seam face down, hold it together with cocktail sticks.
18. Tip: If you can’t fit all the stuffing inside your pork, just roll the excess into ping pong sized balls!
19. Pop your stuffed pork onto a lightly greased baking tray and place on the top shelf of your oven for 25 mins (add your stuffing balls after 10 mins), then remove from your oven and leave to rest for 5 mins.
20. Tip: The pork and sausage meat are cooked when they are no longer pink in the middle.
21. Put your carrots on another baking tray and drizzle over some oil and the honey.
22. Sprinkle over some salt and pepper and shake well to coat.
23. Pop in your oven on the middle shelf for 25-30 mins.
24. Put your potato and broccoli stalk in the pot of boiling water and cook for 10 mins before adding your broccoli florets and cooking for an additional 8 mins.
25. When cooked (you should be able to slip a knife through), remove
26. from the heat, drain (saving some of the water for step 7) and put your potato and broccoli back in the pot.
27. Add a knob of butter and a splash of milk (if you have some) along with a good pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper. Mash everything together. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
28. Meanwhile, put the apple and sage jelly in a small saucepan on medium-low heat to slowly melt.
29. Once melted, add some of your boiling broccoli/potato water (2 tbsp per person) and stir well.
30. This is your glaze!
31. Cut your pork carefully into 1cm wide slices and serve with your carrots and green mash.
32. Drizzle over your glaze and enjoy!
2. Chop the potato into 2cm chunks (no need to peel!), separate the broccoli into florets.
3. Peel the stalk of the broccoli and chop it into 2cm chunks.
4. Cut the tops off the carrots then slice your white and purple carrots in half lengthways (no need to peel).
5. Slice your orange carrots into four strips if they are a bit thicker.
6. Roughly chop the pecan nuts and chop each dried apricot into little pieces.
7. Bring a pot of water to the boil with a good pinch of salt.
8. Slice the sausage skin lengthways, then squeeze your sausage meat into a bowl (discard the skin).
9. Add your nuts, apricots, and a pinch of salt and pepper.
10. Mix it all together with your hands, don’t be afraid to get your hands sausagey!
11. This is your stuffing!
12. Next you need to butterfly the pork!
13. Slice along it lengthways to open it up like a book.
14. Don’t slice all the way through though!
15. Stuff your pork by spreading your stuffing down one side of your opened pork, then fold over the other half.
16. You need to leave a 2cm border at each end and along the outside length, so it can be sealed.
17. Once folded over, and with the seam face down, hold it together with cocktail sticks.
18. Tip: If you can’t fit all the stuffing inside your pork, just roll the excess into ping pong sized balls!
19. Pop your stuffed pork onto a lightly greased baking tray and place on the top shelf of your oven for 25 mins (add your stuffing balls after 10 mins), then remove from your oven and leave to rest for 5 mins.
20. Tip: The pork and sausage meat are cooked when they are no longer pink in the middle.
21. Put your carrots on another baking tray and drizzle over some oil and the honey.
22. Sprinkle over some salt and pepper and shake well to coat.
23. Pop in your oven on the middle shelf for 25-30 mins.
24. Put your potato and broccoli stalk in the pot of boiling water and cook for 10 mins before adding your broccoli florets and cooking for an additional 8 mins.
25. When cooked (you should be able to slip a knife through), remove
26. from the heat, drain (saving some of the water for step 7) and put your potato and broccoli back in the pot.
27. Add a knob of butter and a splash of milk (if you have some) along with a good pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper. Mash everything together. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
28. Meanwhile, put the apple and sage jelly in a small saucepan on medium-low heat to slowly melt.
29. Once melted, add some of your boiling broccoli/potato water (2 tbsp per person) and stir well.
30. This is your glaze!
31. Cut your pork carefully into 1cm wide slices and serve with your carrots and green mash.
32. Drizzle over your glaze and enjoy!