Grilled marinated pork served with oven roasted potatoes & braised fennel with Pastis

This is an adapted recipe from Nigel Slater. It is from his book: Kitchen Diaries. I love him! He is a very, very good cook!

The potato recipe is from myself! Here & there I adapted things!

Pork chops are marinated in a combination of garlic, olive oil, pepper corns, sea salt & fresh rosemary needles. After 3 hours of marinating, they are grilled in a hot griddle – pan.

This is a very chique recipe, a recipe to impresse somebody…or for a dinner party.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So, here we go,…

 

Recipe: For 2 persons, with seconds

Ingredients:

2 pork mignonettes, cleaned & sliced horizontally in 2

* For the marinade:

garlic, 2 fat cloves, peeled & roughly cut up

fresh rosemary leaves washed, pad dry, from 2 bushy sprigs, finely cut up

6 whole black peppercorns

sea salt, grinded :1 teaspoon

a neutral olive oil: 3 tablespoons

the juice of 1/2 lemon

* For the fennel:

3 medium sized fennel bulbs, cleaned & the 3 top green tubes & hard white bottom cut out, cut into strips or little wedges. You have to have 1 kg of cleaned & cut up slices of fennel. This sounds like a lot but you need this amount because the fennel will caramelise a bit & shrink when fried on the stove!

100 ml of Pastis

baking margarine or butter

* For the oven baked potatoes:

1 kg of peeled & cleaned potatoes, cut up in 4 or into 2 ( as you wish )

garlic: 2 fat cloves, peeled & finely sliced

fresh rosemary leaves from 1/2 sprig, cleaned, cut up finely

olive oil

Method:

1. A few hours before dinner, we are going to cook the potatoes. Take a large cooking pot & fill with hot water. Bring to the boil. When boiling, add the cut up potatoes. Cook until tender. Drain. Let them get completely cold.

2. When the potatoes are cooking, we can prepare the marinade for the pork. It is ideal to marinate the pork slices for 3 hours! You can marinade them for a less time, but 3 hours is ideal! Then, the pork is juicy & full of flavour!

3. Take a pestle & mortar. Place the ingredients for the marinade before you. Take the cut up rosemary leaves & put them in the pestle & mortar. Add the 2 cut up cloves of garlic. Add the 6 black pepper corns. Add the sea salt. Grind or pound these ingredients together until you have a rough paste. The pepper corns have to be completely crushed. Mix in the olive oil slowly until you have a loose paste. Now, add the lemon juice. If you do not have a pestle & mortar, you can use a foodprocessor.

Your marinade is now ready. Take a ziplock bag & add the pork slices. Add the marinade. Close the ziplock bag. Massage the meat with your hands, at the outside of the bag. Put the bag in a bowl in case of leakage. Place into the fridge. Leave to marinate for 3 hours.

4. When preparing to get ready for dinner, take the meat out of the fridge.

5. Preheat the oven for 10 minutes on 250°C.

6. Take a large non – stick baking dish & tip the cooked potatoes in it, side by side. Take all the ingredients for the oven roast potatoes on your counter. Add the cut up rosemary leaves & scatter over the dish. Add the cut up garlic. Scatter evenly over the dish. Add 4 or 5 good drizzles of olive oil over the potatoes.

Now, with your hands mingle everything together. Place into the center of the oven & bake for 40 minutes.

The first 15 minutes, bake on 250 ° C. Then, bake at 225°C for 20 minutes & then bake at 150°C for 5 minutes. When ready, leave the dish in the oven but turn off the heat.

7. In the meantime, take a large cooking pot like Creuset with a lid & put it on a large heat. Heat up on high. When hot, add butter or baking margarine. Let it melt. When sizzling, add the cut up fennel, all of it! Let it fry for about 5 minutes on high heat with the lid on, stirring from time to time. Now, add the 100 ml of pastis. Stir well. After 10 minutes or so, turn the heat down at medium heat.Put the lid the whole time on but for 3/4, so that the steam can come out. I promise you, the fennel will increase because it will be cooked down a lot & it will caramelise a bit. The fennel bits musn’t stick to the pot! So stir frequently! Cook until tender. In total, this takes about 20 or 25 minutes. When done, take off the heat & put the lid back on & set aside.

8. In the meantime, take a large grill pan & heat up on high heat. When hot, add the 4 marinated pork slices. Grill on each side for about 4 to 5 minutes until the pork is soft & rosé in the middle, splashing on the last bit of the marinade on the meat.Turn the heat off.

9. Take your 2 plates & serve at once!

This is is lovely with 1 or 2 glasses of red wine: J.P. Chenet: cabernet – syrah de 2007!

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