Virginal Outing for Staub Pan

At the recent Singapore food bloggers' lunch (read all about this lunch and the wonderful people I met here), I won this Staub oval pan and since then have been looking for the right recipe to try it out. Whilst pouring over back issues of Gourmet (one of my favourite pastimes), I saw this recipe called Pork Loin with Apples, Prunes and Mustard Cream Sauce, apparently a common dish in Scandinavian countries. What attracted me though was the full page photo of a deliciously tender looking slice of pork loin topped with the sliced apples, prunes and cream sauce. Unfortunately, although Epicurious has provided the recipe (click above recipe title), it didn't include the photo for me to share with you. So, you will instead be subjected to my amateurish attempts below at capturing this dish...

This dish is absolutely easy to do. I browned the seasoned pork loin on all sides in a skillet before placing the pork on Staub pan (and drizzled the pork and the pan with some olive oil) and chucking the same into the oven for 50 minutes or so, at the end of which the pork loin (after resting for 10 minutes or so) when sliced just before serving is wonderfully tender and moist. Remember to deglaze the roasting pan for the lovely roasted bits to add to the sauce - recipe called for half a cup of dry white wine which I replaced with half a cup of verjuice.

The green apples, pitted prunes and onions cooked in chicken broth with added heavy cream and mustard until slightly thickened is quite excellent. The slight tartness of the apples with the sweetness of the prunes and cooked onions meld very well with the slight sharpness of the mustard and the creamy sauce (which one can lighten with light cream if one is overly concerned with weight but what the heck, it's only half a cup).

I must say that the dish was quite successful, completely wiped out by family with sis-in-law almost singlehandedly devouring one-third of the platter meant for 7 persons. Definitely worth repeating for another weekend dinner affair.