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Roast with a chestnut-apple filling in a cider sauce with sweet potato puree, “Christmas” vegetables and gluten-free Yorkshire pudding.
Yields: 6 servings
Prep time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 2.5 hours
Ingredients:
- 4-5 pound pork roast (if you chose 5, there will be leftovers)
- 1.5 cups peeled chestnuts
- 2 green apples
- 500 ml cider
- 8 medium sized potatoes, 4 sweet potatoes
- Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- 1 red cabbage
- 2 cups of long green beans
- 8 whole cloves
- 2 handfuls of spinach salad
- Nutmeg
- 1 fennel
- 1 lemon
- Olive oil
- Knobs of butter
- 30 ml of milk or almond milk
- 1 handful of fresh parsley and 1 handful of fresh mint
Yorkshire pudding: (yields 8)
- 150 grams gluten-free – self raining flour
- 150 ml milk
- 30 ml water
- 3 eggs
- 40 gram butter (melted)
- Pinch of salt
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
- Prepare the filling: blend the chestnuts with 1 green apple and 20 ml of milk until you get a “rough” texture. Season with salt and pepper.
- Prepare the roast: cut a hole in the middle of your roast, so that you can stuff the roast all through the middle from one end to the other and make sure you stuff the roast evenly. Slice the fat on top of the roast and insert a little bit of thyme under the skin. Place the roast on a baking tray and cover it with foil. Once the oven is heated, place your roast in it and let it cook under the foil for 1 hour. After 1 hour, remove the foil, increase the temperature to 200 degrees Celsius and cook for another 1.5 hours.
- Prepare the red cabbage: wash and chop the cabbage. Place it in a big pot, cover the mixture with ½ cup of water, season with salt, pepper and add a couple of whole cloves (place them in a tea bag, so that the flavour mixes with the cabbage, but you won’t bite on the spices afterwards). Let it all simmer on a low temperature for about 40 min. For the last 20 min, add the washed long green beans in a “steamer form” on top of the cabbage and let it just steam away in one pot. All flavours will mix that way.
- Prepare the mashed potatoes: peel the potatoes and cut them in halves. Bring water to a boil and boil the potato pieces for 20 min in it. Strain the potatoes and mash them with 20 ml of milk and 1-2 knobs of butter or 1-2 spoons of oil. Season with nutmeg and salt. You can leave this in the same pot and reheat again, if needed.
- Prepare the Yorkshire pudding: mix all ingredients together and fill muffin forms to ¾ full with the dough. Please make sure it’s either a non-sticky form or add oil and flour to the form before adding the mixture. Place the form in the oven at the very end for the last 20-30 min (until golden brown).
- Apple-cider sauce: cut 1 green apple and fry the slices in a pan with a little bit of oil until golden brown. Add the cider and let it simmer a while. Mix 1 spoon of gluten- free flour in a separate glass with ½ glass of water. Add this “flour mix” to the sauce to thicken it – be careful: stir it in slowly. Strain the apple, so that only the sauce is left. Season with salt and pepper.
- Salad preparation – all at the end: wash the spinach, wash and cut the fennel and quickly fry the fennel for 5 min in a pan with a little bit of oil. Mix 4 spoons of olive oil with the juice of 1 whole lemon and season with salt and pepper. Wash and chop parsley and fresh mint and add them to the salad.
TIP: for the vegetarian version, cut a medium sized pumpkin into two halves, remove the seeds and fill one pumpkin half per person with 2-3 spoons of filling. Cook that in the oven for about 45 min at 200 degrees Celsius.
Written by Nutrition Nation nutritionist Tanja Guigon-Rech.
The team from Nutrition Nation can help you change your life for the better creating long term improvements in all aspects of your life. They offer nutritional counselling and lifestyle guidance for adults and their families in Hong Kong.
