Pork Loin Baguette ‘w’ Fresh Herbs & Garlic Butter
Another new idea for dinner today. My turn to cook again. Yes, this is absolutely #BillWallaceFriendly but #NotKnibbsyKiddleWagyuFriendly. Mostly from the fridge today. I defrosted some lovely pork loins from our BFF Shaun at Orca. 2 beautiful pork loins, that became one by overlapping the two ‘thinner’ ends to make similar thickness end to end. Perfect. I needed to do that to keep the cooking consistent throughout but also so they’d sit nicely in the baguette and keep the shape of a big thick sandwich.
This was awesome and was gone in the blink of an eye with the 5 of us sat there for dinner tonight. I reckon we might have been able to eat another whole baguette if I had cooked one. If only you could smell this picture – the fresh herb aromas of rosemary & sage were just pungent, intermingled with the garlic & butter. Holy cow. Plus you have textures all over the place with crisp and crunch of the bread outside, then the chewy gooey inside and then the soft moist pork loin. Boom!!! And with all the tying as part of the presentation, it also looks pretty cool when you plate it up. I like a lot.
Here we go;
- Lay down some silver foil and place the pork two loins down – thin side in the middle, and overlap them to make a consistent thickness;
- Drizzle with olive oil all over the loins & sprinkle with sea salt & cracked black pepper;
- Smear all over with garlic butter – I had pre-made, or just soften some salted butter and add finely chopped garlic if making your own;
- Cover the loins with some sprigs of fresh rosemary and fresh sage;
- Wrap the file over to make a little sealed ‘oven’ and pop that in the oven for 2-3 hours at 140 degrees to roast off and become super-tender;
- In parallel cut off the ends of a French stick baguette, cut it in half lengthways, and with your hands scoop out the soft doughy part – discard;
- Drizzle the bread with olive oil on both sides;
- When the pork loin is cooked, take it out of the foil lay it on the baguette, making sure to remove any stalky bits of rosemary;
- Spoon over the melted butter/oil left in the foil and pop the top half of the baguette on and spoon some butter/oil on that too;
- Like in the picture tie off with some string about every 3″ or so to keep it all together and pop back in the oven at 190 to crisp up the bread;
- Serve on a platter and cut into individual pieces at the table – it’s all about food theatre…
- We had this with a green salad, bloody brilliant dinner.
