Pork stuffed with calvados marinated Prunes

[bitter_dave]

Here is a recipe involving booze.

1) Take some pitted prunes (about 100g, but can vary depending on weight of meat) and marinate them in some calvados for about 3 hours, about 4 tbsps should do the trick. (The prunes are the ready to eat kind you get in a plastic pouch.)

2) Put the oven on about gas mark 7, or whatever the electric equivalent is.

3) Drain the prunes of calvados, but retain the juice. Get a joint of pork. If when the pork has the net-thing removed this reveals a cut into the centre of the meat (where bone was removed) place the marinated prunes in there. You may want to cut a bit deeper, so you can get loads in. Otherwise make an incision into the centre of the meat and bung the prunes in there. To hold the meat together after stuffing I always use the net thing, but you could use string.

4) Put in the oven. Cook for 20 mins at gas mark 7, reduce to gas mark 4. Cook until, erm, cooked.

5) When cooked, remove from the juices. Remove as much of the fat from the juices as you can be bothered useing a spoon. To the juices add the juice of 1 orange, a tsp of honey and the Calvados you marinated the prunes in - there is your sauce.

6) Serve with whatever you want - I like it with green beans and roast potatoes.

It tastes great because the apple flavour from the calvados and the sweetness of the prunes really flavour the pork. I realise calvados is not cheap, we bought a small bottle back from our last holiday camping in France, so if you happen to be visiting france and want to make it, bring some back. The recipe book I nicked this from says you can also use Marsala, although I don't know what this is.

[bitter_dave]

The Hugh FW method sounds similar - burst of heat to produce crackling, and lower heat to cook until succulent. If you want crisp crackling score the rind as you normally would for roast pork.

Calvados is available from Tescos - I just did a quick search - for £11 a bottle, so I expect it's available at all reasonably large supermarkets as well (Tescos is rubbish for alcohol, including beer alas). You might be able to get a minature from an offy (not sure) or at a visiting French market if you have one.