Monday, January 18, 2010

Recipe #2: Pork Wellington

My husband and I have long been fans of Alton Brown and Good Eats for his geeky approach to food and cooking. Most of his recipes are too labor-intensive for everyday use in a busy two-career family, but they're fine for a weekend, or even the occasional evening when the cook has a lot of energy and neither of us has to bolt off to an evening activity.

But I am not a fan of Beef Wellington. At least, the one time I had it, at a local English restaurant, I thought it was heavy, too rich, and kinda gross. And really, now that I think about it, I only really love beef when it's grilled or pan-seared rather than roasted.

Roast pork, however, is delicious when done well. It may just be the Southerner in me, but I think pork is the best meat out there. (OK, maybe it's second to venison, but how often can you even get that?) Good bacon and proper Southern pulled pork barbecue with tangy red sauce are pork at its finest, IMHO, but it's all good. So when a recent Good Eats episode featured Pork Wellington, I knew I had to try it despite how dauntingly complex it looked for a pasta, soup, and grilled sandwiches cook like me.

Here are the ingredients, except for the egg for the egg wash:



Not a long list, but as you'll see if you follow the recipe link, it's multi-step and complicated. At least, it's time-consuming and superficially complicated. But if you clear plenty of work space, lay out your ingredients beforehand, and follow the recipe methodically, it's actually kinda easy. Here's what it looked like when I pulled it from the oven:



And here it is sliced on a plate (unfortunately the pastry fell apart on me--I should've cut bigger pieces), alongside mashed sweet potatoes:



It's absolutely delicious. Like, easily in the top ten tastiest things I've ever cooked in all my 39 years on this planet. I'll definitely try it again. Because I am a great big geek, I might even have a Waterloo dinner on June 18 and serve this as the main course and get a Napoleon from Le Fournil for dessert.

Which reminds me, I did throw together a dessert this time around. I had an extra sheet of puff pastry thawed, since I wasn't sure just one would be big enough. So I just laid it on some parchment paper on a baking sheet, sliced some apples onto it, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and baked for 15 minutes:



And it was delicious! If this keeps up, I may have to stop saying I'm a bad cook.

1 comment:

  1. The apple thingie looks yummy.

    I've never heard of Pork Wellington, but it sounds intriguing. I look to the Food Network for five star recipes all the time.

    You can't beat a pork tenderloin for good eating.

    ReplyDelete