I am certainly no wiz-bang chef but simply a cook that prepares meals with love and health. What really substantiates a ‘real cook’ anyways? An interesting article I read this week on Kitch’n sums it up beautifully why there’s no such thing as a real cook
If you are a person attempting to make something out of ingredients in front of you, you are a real cook. You might not be an experienced cook (yet), but you’re still a cook,at whatever level you’re at, with your own skills, personal taste, strengths, and weaknesses. That is most certainly real, and real enough.
One’s “realness” status isn’t about how well you cook; it’s about whether or not you cook at all, period. If your cooking can truthfully be described as neither imaginary or hypothetical; if you actually do chop, smear, and sauté ingredients together to produce edible things, then you are really cooking. Thus, you are a real cook.
Doesn’t this just make you feel all warm and fuzzy and filled with confidence?
To help kick things off I have created a recipe to warm your Lil tums this winter.
Stuffed Pork Fillets with Raspberries and Walnuts
Ingredients
- 500gm organic or grass-fed pork fillets (no thicker than 1 cm)
- 1/2 cup blanched almond meal
- 1/4 cup shredded coconut
- 1/2 cup dates, finely diced (pitted prunes are great also)
- 1 free-range egg
- A handful of chopped parsley
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup broth or stock
- 1 tsp stevia or brown sugar
- 1/2 walnuts
- 1/2 cup raspberries
How to Make
- Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees fan-forced.
- In a bowl mix the almond meal, dates, parsley and egg. Mix to form a sticky batter.
- Lay one of the pork fillets flat on a clean surface (it may help to gently bang with a meat tenderiser to ensure evenness) and place a portion of the stuffing mixture on 1/3 of the fillet to allow a snug roll. Carefully roll the pork fillet and mixture over itself to form a roll and place a toothpick in place to hold. Repeat this until all pork fillets are rolled.
- Place the pork fillets in a shallow oven tray side by side.
- Mix the apple cider vinegar, broth/stock and stevia. Pour this in the prepared oven dish with the pork fillets. Dependent on the tray size, only allows enough liquid to cover the base of the pan without drowning the pork! 1/2 cm is a good guide.
- Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes and then another 5-10 minutes with the foil removed. Again this will depend on the thickness of the cut of meat you are using.
- Remove from the oven and position on a serving dish topped with roughly chopped walnuts and raspberries.
- Slice crosswise and serve with steamed vegetables and quinoa.
