Pecan Pork With Balsamic Onion and Pears

This pork roast is incredibly good. I’ve made it many times, and it not only tastes great, it looks spectacular … so it’s a great winter dinner party dish. Pork is great the moment too … I got the boned and rolled pork loin from the lovely butcher at Peter’s near where I work. Their meat is always great and they’re substantially cheaper than other Peters Butchers, in my experience. Plus there’s the benefit of having traditional butchers – well-trained, happy to cut, trim, score or tie your meat while you wait. And as seems to be equally traditional with good butchers, they’ll put a smile into your day with some flirty chat and bad jokes.

This dish was the main course of the special Birthday Dinner we did for my Dad. Unfortunately I can’t credit the recipe source as I scanned it from a magazine eons ago. Like all the tried-and-proven recipes I find in magazines, I’ve laminated it and keep it in a loose leaf folder for easy reference in future, and now here it is recorded in its digital glory. It  follows after the jump.

• 1 x 100g pkt pecan halves
• 105g (1½ cups) fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/3 cup loosely packed fresh continental parsley
• 2tbs chopped fresh sage
• 1 x 2kg boned rolled loin of pork
• Baby spinach leaves
• 3 (about 200g each) beurre bosc pears, halved leaving stems intact
• 80 g butter, melted
• 4 small (abt 100g each) red onions, halved, each half cut onto three wedges
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) balsamic vinegar
• 70g (1/3 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 220ºC. Place pecans in the bowl of a food processor and process until coarsely chopped. Add breadcrumbs, parsley, sage & garlic, and process until well combined. Season with salt & pepper.
2. Place the pork, rind-side-up, on a clean work surface. Score rind with a knife, crossways, to the fat layer at 2cm intervals. Turn pork over. Cut a vertical slit into the thick end (do not cut all the way through). Open the thick end to sit flat and place pecan mixture down the centre. Beginning at the thicker end, roll up to enclose filling. Use unwaxed white kitchen string to tie at 2cm intervals. Place pork, rind-side up, in a roasting pan.
3. Rub extra salt into rind cuts. Roast in preheated oven for 25 minutes or until rind crackles. Remove from oven and reduce temperature to 190ºC.
4. To make balsamic onions & pears, combine onion, pear, butter, vinegar and sugar in a large bowl and gently toss to combine. Place the pear mixture, in a single layer, around the pork. Roast in oven for a further 1 hr or until rind is golden and crackled. Remove from oven. Transfer the pork to a plate, cover with foil and set aside for 5 minutes to rest.
5. Add the spinach leaves to the pear mixture in the roasting pan, and gently toss until combined and spinach wilts. Arrange pear mixture on a platter. Top with port and drizzle with pan juices. Carve pork into thick slices to serve.

~ by swalloworspit on May 30, 2010.