Pork Tenderloin Stuffed with Apple, Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese

It’s snowing here in Vancouver and it’s gotten to the point where the city is almost about to shut down! Businesses are suffering due to the lack of traffic and I suppose people are just holing themselves up at home, afraid to leave the house! It’s a little atrocious how unprepared the city is with snow… most of the roads were unsalted and not ploughed… there was a bus stuck on the slightest hill on my way home from work today, and honestly… that probably screwed up a lot of people’s commute! I was thinking, if this were Toronto… there would be an army of salting trucks and ploughs methodically working its way through the city, cleaning up any debris and making life much easier on the residents…but I suppose I should give the City of Vancouver a break, as it’s not even supposed to snow in Vancouver anyway!

So like I said, it’s super duper cold and snowy and all I can think of eating lately is hearty, soul warming comfort food. What’s better than meat and gravy??? Mmmm…. you can make this the same way with chicken breast or beef tenderloin too. Or… I suppose you could stuff tofu! I made it twice. Once I had it with salad, and the next time I made a gravy out of the pan drippings and served it with rice. I really liked it with the gravy, so I think I’ll do it like that from now on.

Ingredients:

• 2 Pork Tenderloin
• 1 Tart Firm Apple, in match sticks (such as Macintosh, Pink Lady, Honey Crisp, etc)
• 2 Mushrooms (optional)
• 1/2 Onion, sliced thin (I didn’t have any yellow cooking onions, so I used red)
• Handful of Parsley, chopped
• 1/2 cup Goat Cheese (I used herbed goat cheese)
• 2 Tbsp of Butter
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

For Gravy:

• Pan drippings
• A few Tablespoons of Flour
• 1/2 cup Red Wine
• 1 cup (or less) Vegetable Stock or water
• 1 tsp each Sage, and Thyme
• Salt and Pepper

Special Equipment: Kitchen Twine, Patience

1. Slice 1/2 and onion, or more if you prefer… and caramelize it in olive oil or butter. Or at least sauté until golden. Salt and pepper it (a pinch of each). Set aside.
 
2. Slice up an apple to be as big as matchsticks and sauté that in a tab of butter until a little browned and slightly tender.

3. Chop up a mushroom and do the same except in olive oil. Add some thyme to the mushrooms.

4. Chop the parsley and set aside.

5. I guess the trickiest part is slicing the pork tenderloin so that it’s an even thickness all around. This is called roll cutting. I cut the tenderloin either in half or in thirds and the run my knife around the outside of the tenderloin, turning the meat as I go and kind of cut in a spiral to get the tenderloin to be an even thickness and lie flat. (Hopefully the pictures describe it better than I just did…) Season the inside with salt and pepper. (See YouTube Video)
 
6. Fill it with the apple, onion, mushroom, parsley and goat cheese. Not too much or else it won’t close, but not too little either…

7. Okay now for the closing. Get a long piece of kitchen string, as long as from your wrist to the top of your arm. Start by holding the meat closed, and tying a knot at one end. (Okay, how do I describe this?) As you work your way down, you leave a lead of string, wrap it around, loop it then pull it taught, then keep going until you get to the end. Ta da! (See this other YouTube video on tying, I do it a different way, but I think her way is good too)
  
8. Season the outside of the meat with salt and pepper, heat up a pan and sear the outside of the meat. There are two ways you can do this. You can keep searing on the stove top, constantly rotating for about 20 minutes, or sear the outside then stick it in the oven for 20 minutes. Either way, the meat should be cooked through but not over done or else it will turn out kind of tough. I would choose the sear then oven method, because otherwise you have to stand by the stove babysitting the pork tenderloins, whereas if you just stick them in the oven… they just do their own thing. Once cooked, put them aside, then make the gravy.
 
9. Oops, I forgot to take pictures of the making gravy part. Here are just the written instructions on how to do it. After you’ve removed the cooked bundles of joy, scrape the bottom of the pan to lift up all the stuck on bits. Add a tab of butter (yeah, I know… gravy’s fatty and kind of bad for you but it just tastes so good!) and when the butter’s melted. Add enough flour to soak up all the oil in the pan. (this is called a roux) Add red wine (a good splash should do it) and whisk like mad until the flour/butter mixture is dissolving into a paste. Then add the vegetable stock (or chicken stock or beef stock or just water) and keep whisking until the mixture is thick but gets to a runny stage like gravy should. Add a teaspoon each of ground thyme and sage. Simmer for a little bit until you get the right consistency. There you go! Gravy!

10. Unwrap the pork tenderloins of the string, and cut in 1-2 inch portions. Arrange on a plate with rice, or salad or what have you… and drizzle the gravy over top or pool it then place them on top.