Introduction:
This was a random dish cooked for a Baronial Kitchener’s Guild meeting – chosen by the simple expedient of “pick a random cookbook on medievalcookery.com, read until I hit something that sounds tasty”. I chose Enseignements, a French cookbook from the early 1300’s. The second recipe was for roast pork with onions, which I thought would be quite popular. Here’s the text:
Pork: roasted loin, in winter and in summer, with green garlic. And which if wanted in gravy then cut it into pieces; And then cook onions in grease, and ground pepper and other spices and toasted bread, and grind in a mortar; Then temper with the water that the pork cooked in; Then put it to boil and put over the pieces which have been pulled and of salt, and all this put in a bowl with the gravy thereon.
Discussion
- Because I was cooking modern, exceptionally low-fat pork loin, I altered the cooking methods from period techniques in a few places to create a better result:
- The pork was cooked sous vide – sealed in a vacuum bag and submersed in 155° water for 1.5 hours. This is something I often do in day to day cooking, as it results in extremely juicy pork.
- Since I didn’t have pork fat, I cooked the onions to mostly caramelized in a pan without fat, then added butter at the end of cooking. The butter was meant to substitute for the fat that wasn’t in the pork.
Roast Pork with Onion Sauce
8
servingsIngredients
2 lb pork tenderloin
2-3 lbs onions – sweet are best but yellow will work
Salt, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves
1/2 stick butter (4tbs)
1-1.5 slices white bread, crust removed.
1 tbs vinegar (apple cider works well)
Directions
- Roast (or otherwise cook) Pork
- Pat pork tenderloin dry, trim any silver skin or excess fat.
- Season exterior thoroughly with ~2 tsp kosher salt and a tsp or so of mixed spices. I used a rough ratio of 2 parts pepper, 1 part cinnamon and ginger, with a pinch of clove.
- Cook seasoned pork. Options include: Roast in a 400° oven for 15-20 min (internal temperature should be 145), or sous vide at 155 for at least an hour. If sous vide is chosen, broil on high for a few minutes, or use a kitchen torch, to brown the exterior after cooking.
- Slice pork.
- Make Sauce
- Mince onions.
- Caramelize minced onions – I usually start with a dry pan and high heat, then add a bit of water and turn the heat down when they start sticking. Stir often. This will take MUCH longer than you think – for a double batch, the onions took approximately as long to cook as the pork. Don’t forget to salt.
- Add butter to onions and allow to melt. Butter will make the onions easier to scorch, so keep stirring until melted and remove from heat. Add a bit of pepper and cinnamon at this stage.
- Macerate bread in liquid from pork pan/bag. Add onions and vinegar. Blend until smooth, add additional liquid if needed. Adjust seasoning and vinegar to taste.
- Assemble
- Pour 1/2 to 2/3 of sauce onto a platter. Arrange sliced pork on top, then pour additional sauce over without completely covering the pork.