This here post is the reason I love blogging and I’m sure most of you will agree. Blogging provides friendship and advice, cooking and sometimes otherwise. Blogging provides support; I haven’t come across a nasty person yet (well, I would delete them anyway ;-)). And last but not least, blogging provides inspiration particularly when you are deathly sick of every recipe you’ve past blogged about and can’t for the life of you come up with an idea for tonight’s dinner.
I have my friend John, From the Bartolini Kitchens to thank for tonight’s dinner: Roasted Loin of Pork stuffed with Fig Preserves and Goats Cheese. Of course, John made his own fig preserves (which I will do next year) but I had to use a store bought version. I find these store bought preserves rather sweet and I certainly didn’t want dessert for dinner so I decided to add some goats cheese to my stuffing to help temper the sweetness. It worked. PLUS it made an incredible jus for the Celeriac Potato Mash I made with it. I only made a few minor changes to John’s incredible recipe. This was definitely a dinner for the recipe books. Thanks John, again, I might add.
Pork Loin Stuffed with Fig Preserves and Goats Cheese
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 400 g Pork Tenderloin, butterflied
- 100 g goats cheese
- Fig preserves (home made or store bought)
- 4-6 slices prosciutto
- butcher’s twine
- 2 tbsp high flash point oil, such as canola
- Sherry for deglazing (I used cooking Sherry, but feel free to use the real thing)
Directions:
- Pre heat oven to 350° F.
- Spread a thin layer throughout the butterflied pork tenderloin. Crumble the goats cheese evenly throughout.
- Roll up the pork and wrap tightly with the prosciutto, wrap tightly with the butcher’s twine.
- In an oven proof roasting pan, heat the canola oil until almost smoking. Add the pork and cook the prosciutto until crispy on all sides. Remove pork for a minute and deglaze pan with the Sherry. Return pork and bake in a hot oven for 15-20 minutes or until pork has reached a minimum of 145° F. Allow to rest before cutting into slices.
- If the pan has juices from the fig preserves and bits of goats cheese you will want to heat on the stove and press through a fine sieve for serving. Serve with Celeriac Potato Mash.
John’s dish made me drool too Eva! It’s one I definitely want to try. The goat cheese is a fabulous idea because I will certainly be using the store bought preserves as well. I don’t know why I don’t make pork loin more often. They always look so good (and totally gourmet). I know they’re not difficult to make. Yet I still never think of it. I need to though – especially this one. 🙂
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Thanks Kristy, and it’s totally an economical cut of meat too.
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Hi Eva, do you butterfly the tenderloin yourself or have a butcher do it? The one time I tried to do something like this it ended in disaster. I couldn’t butterfly the tenderloin so it was already set up to end badly, and then my oven broke. That was a couple of years ago (I mentioned my oven dying on my blog) and all is well again now, but I haven’t revisited this kind of dish at all yet, but now you’re making we want to do so.
Glorious looking pork loin – I made a turkey thing last year with fig preserve inside so I know just how well the flavour of it goes with meat – yummy!
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I butterflied the loin myself Charles and it wasn’t too bad. I figured the prosciutto and string would hold it together, which it did very nicely. Yes I remember that with your oven and the time your refrigerator died too. Bad luck with appliances.
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This is a beautiful pork loin – you’ve done John proud. 🙂
I love following blogs – I find a huge difference in food magazines and food bloggers. I prefer the blogs because they have personality. When you tell me that you made a recipe and it was heaven in your mouth – I believe you. I don’t feel the same way with a magazine. No personal connection = little trust.
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I totally agree with you Maureen. I have a cookbook of Indian recipes of which I have made a few and have not enjoyed them at all, but I can certainly estimate my enjoyment of a recipe just by the flavour profile of the writer. I tend to follow blogs whose flavour profile fits mine more or less. I also like to expand my profile as much as possible.
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I’ll definitely put this one on Pinterest.. I’m pinning everywhere these days! If two of my favorite bloggers love this.. I’ve got to try! Plus, it looks fancy for company! xx
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Thanks Barbara, that’s very sweet of you. I’m going to make it for company soon too!
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I want to make that recipe too. It’s a keeper. John always has great stuff and you do too.
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Thanks Greg, your blog is very inspiring too—except for the okra recipes 😉
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And the odd colored turkeys!
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🙂
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I love John. He’s so amazing and talented yet so humble. I keep asking him to get his cookbook published! I saw this recipe and I wanted to try it. You do make it look good, Eva! xx
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You are so sweet Charlie, thank you. John is indeed inspiring and I love the way he is documenting his family food story, such a nice thing to do for generations to come.
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Another restaurant worthy dish, Eva! I love the spiral of the pork…and I just happen to have some fig preserves in the pantry 🙂
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Thanks Liz, your picky eaters might even enjoy this one! Let me know what you think if you get around to making it.
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Eva, your pork looks excellent! I have been stuffing pork roast with prunes or dried apricots for so many years (especially prunes!) but I have never thought of figs (not to mention goat cheese!). It sounds like a wonderful combination idea and I’m very grateful for your post. I always have dried figs in the kitchen and I think I will experiment with them next time. Very inspiring!
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Hi Sissi, my Aunt Ági made the stuffed pork with prunes for our arrival in Hungary in September and it was extremely tasty. I think you definitely can use the dried figs, but I suggest you cook them down with a little water or stock so that they emulsify, making more of a jam. You likely won’t need to add sugar because I find dried foods sweet enough (and I think we have a similar tolerance for sweets). I am very happy and flattered that you found my post inspiring, thank you!
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Thank you so much, Eva, for the advice. I find dried figs very sweet too. Pork stuffed with prunes seems to be very popular in Central Europe then 😉 Prunes are very popular in general in savoury dishes too. Dried apricots are less popular (maybe in Hungary more because they have excellent apricots!) but I love both.
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Eva, I’d love to stuff a pork loin with our Maui Surfing Goat Dairy Udderly delicious plain chèvre. Thank you for the inspiration. Figs sound sweet and divine together with goat cheese too. Aloha
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Thanks Marilyn and welcome to my blog, so nice of you to drop by and comment. This was a particularly tasty meal, the goats cheese added just the amount of tartness to balance the sweetness of the figs.
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I think the addition of the goat cheese to the figs (great sounding combo by the way) was an inspired idea taking the dish more to the savoury side which I prefer. And I’m guessing it helped keep the lean pork moist. A stuffed loin always looks so elegant too. Heck, with the jus and the mash … just a great dinner all around.
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Thanks Maria, it was surely a keeper, particularly when my nephew comes to visit next time, I think he’ll love it.
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Eva I find that if I want quality, quality ingredients are required. I am talking about the fig preserve. I cannot get fresh figs here, even though figs grow on Vancouver Island and you would think they could bring it over to the mainland. Oh well. But your solution is ingenious and probably made an already good thing even better.
Talking about quality ingredients, I didn’t make raspberry jam this year, so now I have to make a batch from frozen berries and then make some lemon butter for some cookie I want to make. I know it sounds insane but most things premade got worse over the years. Or maybe I am just going nuts. Well one or the other.
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Hi Zsuzsa, Norma in upstate NY has a potted fig tree that she winters in her garage and she get quite a few figs out of it. I have been thinking about trying that myself, but I have very little garage space.
We have a theory about pre-made things losing quality over the years that we noticed with the private labels — they introduce it at a certain quality and then the bean counters get in the way and they find ways to make it cheaper thereby reducing the quality that was initially introduced. Just a thought.
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I have never made stuffed pork loin…but I am sure I will love it if it’s stuffed with goat cheese and fig!
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Thanks Angie, I do hope you try it sometime.
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Yes, so many wonderful reasons to blog. I read John’s pork loin post and I actuallly bought some for this holiday season. Hoping the family will enjoy it!. I’d like to add the goat cheese for the adults perhaps the other half will be prepared without for the kids.
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Thanks Lisa, I’m pretty sure the kids would love this, as it is on the sweet side, and the goats cheese just tempers that sweetness for the adult ‘kids’.
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I love blogging for that reason too! In fact I’ve stopped reading most food magazines as I just don’t get the same from them that I do blogs. Like yours Eva! 😀
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Thanks Lorraine, another thing I love about being inspired by blogs is that the recipes are tried and true. It struck me yesterday because I have this little beautifully photographed Indian cook book, and I’ve made several things from it over the years, but my little notes beside the things I made say that they weren’t as good. Blogging vets those no-good recipes because I can assess the tastes of the blogger and determine if they are similar to my tastes, then I have a sure-thing recipe!
I am flattered that you find inspiration in my blog, thank you kindly.
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That just sounds classy and delicious my friend – gourmet 😀
Cheers
CCU
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Thanks CCU, your comments are so flattering they always make me smile. Have a great week.
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So glad to see that you not only used my recipe, Eva, but you improved it. Adding the goat cheese was a great idea and one that I’m certainly going to try. Just recently I’ve seen 3 chefs on TV use dried fruits to stuff a pork loin. I think we’ve started something. 🙂
Thank you for the kindly mention, Eva. I do appreciate it. Have a great week!
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Thanks John. When we visited my family in Budapest, my Aunt Ági made a stuffed pork tenderloin with prunes and it was quite delicious. I guess pork is one of those meats that lend itself to a sweet filling. We really loved your idea for a number of reasons, it presents beautifully, it’s relatively easy to make and it is quite flavoursome. We’ll definitely make it again. The mention was entirely my pleasure John; you are a creative and talented ‘chef’. Hope you have a great week too.
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