Fruit Stuffed Pork Loin Roast
Why I Love This Recipe
This is one of the many things that I made last year for Christmas. It was a big hit and everyone asked for a repeat this year. As with any recipe you can play around with the quantities and types of fruit used in this dish. When I prepared the fruit for this last year I had a surplus and some of us decided it would be good to eat with our fresh baked cinnamon rolls...it was, but a word of warning there is lots of booze in the fruit lol.
Ingredients You'll Need
butterflied.
1/4 Cup dried cranberries
1/4 Cup prunes
1/4 Cup dried apricots
1/4 Cup Sultana raisins
2 Peaches peeled, pitted and diced up(or use canned slices diced up)
2 Granny Smith or other firm apples, peeled, cored and diced up
2 Shallots finely minced
1/4 Cup ground walnuts
2 or 3 Cloves roasted garlic
3 Cups (Approximately) homemade croutons
2 Cups unsweetened apple juice
fresh Italian parsley chopped up
sage
thyme
salt
pepper
Peach Brandy & Apple Schnapps
Directions
-Night before you will be making roast, take all the dried fruit and chop up to the size of raisins.
Put the dried fruit and the diced peaches into a glass bowl and cover generously with the brandy and schnapps so the fruit can re-constitute. Cover bowl with plastic and place in refrigerator overnight.
- Prior to stuffing roast, remove fruit from fridge and drain off the liquid, reserving it for use later.
- In a large bowl add; shallots, apple and roasted garlic.
Give it all a good mix to mush up the garlic...you can add a little of the liquid to help it along.
- Add the ground walnuts to the mix and stir it all together.
It should resemble a liquid like paste...once again add a little of the reserved liquid if necessary to get the consistency.
- Add the sage, thyme and chopped parsley to your liking.
Fresh sage and thyme are best but dried work as well. Give everything a mix again.
- Add the croutons and mix to incorporate everything.
- Add in the re-constituted fruit to the mix and once again give it a good mixing.
You can save some of the fruit to add to the reduction used to de-glaze the pan or to nibble on while roast is in oven.
- The stuffing mix should look and feel moist but not wet.
Adjust the moisture by adding more of the reserved liquid if necessary.
- Take the "butterflied" roast and spread out on work surface.
- Take the stuffing mix and place onto the roast.
You can either spread the mixture evenly over roast to give you a "pinwheel" effect when sliced or make a loaf in centre of roast that will be completely surrounded by meat when sliced.
- Take the roast and roll it up. Use butcher's twine to tie up the roast at 2" intervals.
- In a large frying pan or dutch oven, sear the roast on all sides in hot oil.
Remove and place in a roasting pan once seared.
- Add 2 cups of unsweetened apple juice to pan and cover with foil wrap.
Place roast in preheated oven to roast at 350 degrees.
Remove the foil about 45 minutes into the roasting.
Baste with the juices as needed.
- The roast is done when internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.
Remove roast to platter and tent with foil.
- De-glaze the pan with some of the reserved liquid and transfer this to a saucepan with the remaining unused liquid (and fruit if any was reserved).
Cook down the mixture to your desired thickness. You can add brown sugar to sweeten it up more if you wish.
Pour a little of the reduction over each slice when serving.