Gerard's No Onion Stuffing

Ingredients

500g Hicks or Superquinn Sausage Meat or some good quality product
 300g Staffords White Bread Crumbs or some good quality product
 1 Egg, Beaten
 Fresh  Thyme and Parsley. As much as you like.
 1tsp Salt
 1tsp Freshly Ground Black Pepper
 200g Butter and some more for on top before baking

Method

Pull the Thyme off the stalks.
Remove Parsley stalks.

Chop the Parsley and Thyme with a sharp knife.
Put the Sausage Meat, Butter and bread Crumbs in a bowl and using a non sharp knife, break up the sausage meat and butter into the bread crumbs.

This takes a while. There are no short cuts.

You may want to add more bread crumbs, if you like.

Add the beaten egg.

Add the herbs and salt

Combine lightly. I prefer a light stuffing, so I don't compress it.

Put it in a loaf tin.

Put a few (loads) 1/4 tea spoons of butter on top before you put it in the oven.


Cooking

The turkey was on @ 150C, so I baked it for 2 hours. I then cooked the Ham for 20 mins @ 230 for 20 minutes.

Normally I would bake it @ 180 for an hour or so until it was brown and crispy enough.

Turn it out and serve.

Marinated Pork Tenderloin wrapped in Streaky Bacon

I was talking to my friend Russell who lives in one of the great BBQ states in the US and he mentioned a particular marinade he likes. It turns out that it is only available fairly locally. You would not get it in the BBQ wastelands of Ireland. After a bit of searching and following a few bread crumb trails, I came across a marinade recipe on southernplate.com which looked nice and is an All Purpose Marinade. There are some pretty good recipes on that site.

It was a great day weatherwise here today and I had a pork tenderloin in the fridge. Obviously a great opportunity to try it out.

Here is the basic recipe, which I modified slightly for my tastes:

2 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp ground ginger
250ml soy sauce
250ml water
½ tsp liquid smoke (optional)

1 Pork Tenderloin
1 packet of streaky rashers

Oops, when I made it I forgot to add the liquid smoke, but it was great anyway.

Basically mix it all together.

Cut the pork into about 25mm (inch) slices and put in the marinade. I probably used about two thirds of the marinade for this.

I left the pork in the marinade for about 40 minutes, removed it and wrapped each piece in the bacon and put on a metal skewer. The next time I would separate the pieces, so the bacon crisps up more.

This is them on the old BBQ

I cooked them for about 4 minutes on each side before turning them and re-positioning as required. I also used a temperature probe to make sure they reached at least 72C. I think it took about 12 to 15 minutes in total.

I turned off the BBQ and let them rest for a further 5 minutes in the residual heat. This is the final product minus 1 piece that Nuala scarfed (an Irish term for eating without due care and attention).

It was totally delicious. Juicy, tasty and full of Umami. A real winner. Everyone present liked it. Definitely worth a further try. I presume that the Soy Sauce had a Brining effect on the meat, which made it extra juicy. If Nuala liked it, and she is a Supertaster, then it must be good. Street Cred 180.