Food Riot

The pork fillet shrunk a bit during cooking. Still looks pretty tasty, though!

So there I was plying you with generous doses of verbosity, telling you exactly how I was going to make Pork Wellington-ington-ington-tiddle-i-po. Well, I stuck as close as possible to my recipe and achieved a pretty good result. Pretty good, not perfect. Here are the things that didn’t work and the reasons (I think) why.

The marinade: I made a tasty marinade. A lovely marinade and if I may make so bold, a sexy marinade. But it failed to really influence the taste of the pork which wallowed therein for 5 hours. And it could have been sweeter. Add more honey, marinade for longer. Try 24 hours.

The pork fillet/tenderloin. It wasn’t tough, but it wasn’t melt in your mouth tender either for several reasons. Here is what I think they were:

• Not enough time in the marinade
• Too much time in the oven – I’ll go for hotter and quicker next time – the pastry can handle it
• Needed bashing (I use my fists – there’s nothing as satisfying as boxing a piece of meat) – to break down the fibres
• Perhaps needed to be stuffed with herbs and apple chunks – slit the fillet open,and wrap round the chunks of herby apple
• Maybe it didn’t need browning in the pan.

As I said, it wasn’t a disaster, but it wasn’t perfect either.

I can tell you that I was pretty pleased with the goo blanket that wrapped round the fillet and the overall look of the dish after cooking – although the meat did shrink a fair bit and looked a little overwhelmed by the pastry. The cooked goo and the pastry tasted pretty good.

Unfortunately, I relied on myself to get butternut squash, so I forgot. Had to make do with carrots instead, but no real problem there; they worked well with the dish.   The rice was lovely.

So there you have it. Not everything turns out perfectly, but lessons were learnt and next time, I will do better.

If you have any tips for me in relation to my Pork Wellington-ington… yeah whatever – please do let me have them.