Pork en Croute with Apple and Onion Stuffing

My sister and I do a "stocking" exchange every year, trading a medium-sized bag of gifts with each other. It is great fun. We have a price limit, which I can't remember, but may have gone over. And we just fill it with little things. She is good about remembering things all year that I talked about and wanted. I am not as good as she is =o( But anyway when I went to Portland to see Barenaked Ladies with her (a band of middle-aged men, by the way), we had some time to window shop in the Old Port before the concert, and we into Stonewall Kitchen. They had these silicone Hot Cooking Bands (http://www.architecproducts.com/) that made me laugh because one time when I had to tie chicken legs together with string, I had none, and used an elastic pony tail holder. I told her about it, and how these would be useful. They are even reusable. However, they come with a warning, "This product NOT intended for consumption." No worries there. They come in red, yellow, white, blue, and green, so not the color of your food at all, so it would be hard to eat them. So I found them in my gift bag, yay. I certainly didn't think I would be using them this soon, less than a week after getting them, but it just so happens I used them today. In my total Julie/Julia moment (have you seen that movie?), I made this recipe, which came from a cookbook Becky gave me for my birthday (see previous post for how I got them). It is from the same book as the previous post, The New Family Cookbook. No picture with this recipe. Maybe they don't want you to be discouraged and therefore not try it. This recipe has a LOT of steps, and took almost all afternoon to prepare, but wasn't technically difficult. And sometimes stuff like this can be fun, if you have the time.

Pork en Croute with Apple and Onion Stuffing

2 1 lb pork tenderloins

16 oz puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

Stuffing:

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped (I didn't do this like Julia did on the movie, although that would have been awesome)

2 medium eating apples, peeled and finely chopped

1 thick slice of bread

pinch dried sage

salt and pepper

Garnish:

watercress sprigs (huh? I left these out...I think the pastry covering the meat should be garnish enough, but you might feel differently)

To prepare the stuffing: Cook the onion in a little water for about 10 minutes. Add the apple and simmer for another 5 minutes. Remove the crusts from the bread and coarsley grate into crumbs (you could just use prepared bread crumbs, too...about 1/4 cup plain bread crumbs). Mix the crumbs into the apple and onion mixture, add the sage, salt and pepper, and stir.

To stuff the pork: Slice the tenderloins halfway through lengthwise, open the meat out and flatten it. Arrange the stuffing along one tenderloin and cover with the other. Tie up the stuffed tenderloin with string (or awesome Hot Cooking Bands) into a good shape (a swan??? ha ha) and lay on a baking tray. Roast for 40 minutes in @ 400, then allow the meat to cool (I let mine cool for about 30 minutes, it cooled off way faster than I expected it to).

Meanwhile, roll out the pastry to a rectangle sufficient to wrap the meat (here's where it gets fun)(about 12x10 inches). Lay the cooled meat, with string (bands) removed on the pastry and paint the edges with the beaten egg. Fold the pastry over and seal the edges. Trim surplus pastry from edges and reserve for making pastry leaves (hmm...). Dampen each end of the parcel (ha ha sounds like you are going to mail it) and seal firmly. Roll out the reserved trimmings and cut into leaf shapes (or whatever shape you want). Paint one side of the leaves with egg and use to decorate the top of the parcel in a herringbone pattern (like this /\/\/\/\). Paint the whole surface of the pastry with egg and pierce 2 or 3 times with a knife.

Bake at 425 for 25 minutes until the pastry is a delicious golden brown (mine only took 17 minutes until it was so brown I didn't dare leave it longer). Turn off the oven and allow another 10-15 minutes cooking time. Serve garnished with watercress sprigs (or don't).

These crazy cookbook people estimate this at prep time 30 minutes and cooking time 1 hour. Maybe they can't add? 40 minutes for the pork, then 25 once it's wrapped up like a UPS package, is 1 hour and 5 minutes, then 10-15 more is at least 1 hour and 15 minutes. Also, how in the world would you only take 30 minutes total doing all these steps? Crazy. I started making the stuffing part at 1:00 pm and took the finished roll out of the oven at 4:50. There was some down time in there, of course, when the meat was in the oven both times and when it was cooling, but still way longer than their estimate. Also I couldn't make leaf shapes or any other shapes with the trimmings; they just wouldn't roll out. So we had an undecorated loaf. I hope Julia Child wouldn't be disappointed with me, ha ha.

This looked fabulous. Smelled good too. I felt very proud of myself, but not in that bad way. This is definitely not the kind of thing you could make very often, but once in a while stuff like this can be so fun. I wasn't sure what the kids would think of it. Steve is hilarious. He told the kids it was like chicken wrapped in a donut. HA! I thought it was more like a fancy pot pie. I have included some pictures so you guys can see how cool I am. Hahaha just kidding. But I did want to show you.