DH and I picked this recipe strictly from the picture in the book. It looks delectable! It's a pork loin with what looks like a mushroom tapenade all wrapped up in puff pastry. Um, that's pretty much exactly what it is. So we venture out to Kroger to get our weekly groceries and the ingredients to amke this dish. We pick everything up, the mushrooms, lemon, onion, pork loin and phyllo dough. What's that you say? Phyllo dough isn't the same as puff pastry? Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way.
We decided to make these recipes on Sundays since we have more time to make dinner. Our normal weeknight dinner is usually planned out but sometimes I may or may not eat half a block of cheese and a glass of wine while I'm cooking. And then there are the nights that we say "Screw it!" and just order pizza.
I get the mushroom and onion mix going, I'm feeling pretty dang good about this recipe. I even read through it multiple times to make sure I didn't mess it up. I mean, this is The Silver Spoon and I'm Italian. If I screw this up I'm pretty sure the Polizia di Stato come and take away my Italian card. So there I am, stirring away, getting everything ready to go. And I ask DH to come trim the fat off of the pork loin.
Now, the concept of this dish is that you have a pork loin. And you slice it like a hotdog bun and open it up. The mushroom mixture goes on one side of the "bun" and the other side is folded on top. You slice the filled loin in half and wrap the whole thing in puff pastry. The end result when you slice it is a stuffed pork loin. Everyone good with that rambling description? Good.
Well my lovely DH comes to the kitchen, takes the pork loins out....wait, what? Pork loins? Our two pound package of pork loin was 2 one pound loins. Hmmmm....so we improvised and beat the crap out of the loins to flatten them enough to stuff with the mixture. We ended up with 2 very long more narrow than really acceptable loins that dropped mushroom stuffing everywhere. Enter into this tragedy the imposter puff pastry: The Phyllo Dough. In my defense the box said "Phyllo puff pastry". Kroger didn't have puff pastry by Pepperidge Farms.
I have taken the time, followed the instructions etc. to make sure the phyllo dough is thawed and is ready to be "rolled twice the width of the loin". I had a flutter of misgiving when I opened the package and a sheaf of paper rolled out. Those misgivings increased quickly when I attempted to roll the very dry phyllo sheets wider than God intended. I was ready to give up, toss the overstuffed pork under the broiler and call it a day. But my engineering DH separated the bundle of dough into for stacks that overlapped in the center to create enough dough to wrap the pork in. So we wrap it up, pop them in the oven and wait.
They come out looking...ok. Not quite the picture in the book. But it looks like this might be a winner-ish.
The picture from the book...seriously check this out at your local book store or Amazon!
We let it rest, we sniffed it, we were standing ready with mouths watering. Finally the 10 minutes pass and we can cut into these bad boys.
Can you see the layers upon layers of uncooked phyllo dough? It's there. You don't have to squint...it's freaking layer upon layer people!
The Verdict: As now noted for my future generations to come within the book, make sure you buy ONE pork loin, not two babies parading as a larger one. And more importantly, phyllo dough may be wonderful for baklava, but it is not in fact a replacement for puff pastry. Ever. The dish was tasty, and when you scraped off the uncooked dough, the crispy bits were good. We did finish eating the whole thing though!
Up Next: Beef Stroganoff
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