For my holiday feast, I made pork wellington; delicious pork tenderloin wrapped in prosciutto and buttery, flaky puff pastry. Christmas is over, but there’s still New Years coming up and this beautiful savory pie will be a perfect dish to celebrate your holiday dinner table.
Tableware
I love celebrating Christmas and I still have my holiday décor around my house. I will probably use the same tableware that I used for Christmas to celebrate New Year’s. Festive pieces shown here are my French hand painted pottery (serving platter and dinner plates) and vintage Japanese porcelain pieces, (covered vegetable and gravy dish) circa 1960’s.
Pork Wellington
Wellington is a classic English dish usually made with beef tenderloin, covered with pate and mushrooms which is then rolled into a puff pastry and baked. My version is pork and doesn’t include pâté. I originally found this pork wellington recipe by Alton Brown from Foodnetwork.com and adapted the recipe to my liking.
What you Need
Pork Tenderloin
To make sure my pork is cooked properly, I chose to pan sear the pork tenderloin first. It’s fine to have medium or medium rare beef tenderloin but with pork you need to cook it thoroughly. It only takes 4-5 minutes to get a nice golden color all the way around the tender pork.
Prosciutto
You need about six pieces of prosciutto to wrap your pork tenderloin before it gets rolled into a puff pastry. When you buy your prosciutto, choose high quality prosciutto imported from Italy. It will be worth it. Lower quality, cheaper variety will just add incredible amount of salt to your dish without adding any flavors.
Caramelized Onions & Dried Cherries
In the original recipe, chopped dried apples are used to stuff the pie; I opted instead for onions mixed with dried cherries. I caramelized a mountain of thinly sliced onions which bring out wonderful sweet flavor and it also helps to keep your pork moist when it bakes in the oven. These onions will not make your puff pastry soggy by the way, because who wants soggy pastry dish.
To the caramelized onions, I also included dried tart cherries from Trader Joe’s. I used these cherries for a salad over the summer and have been waiting to use them for my pork wellington. It adds the right amount of acidity to the sweet caramelized onions.
Puff Pastry
You need to have really excellent puff pastry for this dish. I’m not an expert baker and I was not about to make a puff pastry dough from scratch especially during the holidays. So I pulled out my all time favorite pastry dough from Trader Joe’s. This is the same puff pastry I raved about and used to make my Sweet & Savory Apple Tarts and I absolutely swear by this. As I said before, you have to work quickly with this dough. To defrost the pastry, I just leave in the fridge and I leave it in there until I’m ready to roll out the pastry.
Rolling & Baking
To get a beautifully wrapped wellington, you need to wrap your prosciutto and pork like you would a sushi roll. First you need to line up your ingredients nice and neat.
- Layer prosciutto pieces on the parchment paper, sprinkle with fresh thyme.
- Place the pork tenderloin pieces in the middle of procisutto, and stuff it with caramelized onion mixture.
- Grab the bottom part of the parchment paper, fold it over the pork snugly and roll until you reach the end.
Next step is to roll out the puff pastry dough into a rectangle, place your pork in the middle of the dough and roll it up. Tuck in the sides, and brush the pastry with egg wash. In about 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven, you’ll get a beautiful, flaky, tender & moist pork wellington.
Your family will love it, rave about it and will probably ask you to make it again soon.
Pork Wellington
Ingredients
- 1 pork tenderloin (approximately 1 lb.)
- 1 sheet frozen puff pastry (Trader Joe's), defrosted
- 2 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
- ¼ cup dried pitted cherries, rough chopped
- 6 slices prosciutto
- 1 tbsp fresh thyme
- salt and pepper for seasoning
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1½ tbsp butter
- 1 egg wash
Instructions
- With a paper towel, blot excess moisture from pork tenderloin and trim excess fat. Slice the tenderloin in half and season with salt and pepper.
- Heat large pan over medium heat and melt ½ tbsp butter and add 2 tbsp olive oil. Sauté onions for about 20-25 minutes until onions are caramelized. Turn off heat and transfer onions onto a plate to cool. Once onions are cooled, stir in cherries, season with salt and set it aside.
- Heat the same pan over medium heat and add 2 tbsp olive oil. Place pork tenderloin pieces in the pan and sear the pork until golden brown. Take pork out of pan and set it aside to cool.
- Turn the oven to 400°. Take a piece of parchment paper and layer pieces of prosciutto and sprinkle thyme over the prosciutto. Place seared pork tenderloin pieces in the middle of prosciutto layers and place caramelized onions between pork pieces. Grab the bottom of parchment paper, fold over the pork tightly and roll. Set the rolled pork aside.
- Place frozen puff pastry on a flat surface and roll the dough until you get a rectangle large enough to cover the pork. Place the pork tenderloin in the middle of pastry, then roll the pastry, tucking in the sides.
- Brush the pastry with egg wash and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Rest the wellington for 5-10 minutes before serving.
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