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Pork, Rechauffe Of
Cut the crackling and most of the fat off the remains of a loin of pork, then cover the joint over with a mixture composed of minced herbs, bread-crumbs, salt and pepper, finely-chopped onions, and apples. Blend these together with two beaten eggs, press over the meat firmly, and bake in a brisk oven for twenty minutes. Serve with tomato sauce.
A leftovers dish: cold roast pork given a herbed crumb crust and a short blast of heat. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the crust adhering, so the coating must be pressed on hard and the meat must be cold and dry when you do it.
- "Brisk oven"Read this as 425-450F. The point is to set and colour the crust quickly rather than to cook the pork, which is already roasted; a slower oven will dry the joint out before the crumbs brown.
- Reheating already-cooked porkTwenty minutes at that heat will bring a modest piece of loin through, but check that the centre reaches 165F. Cold roast meat that has been refrigerated needs to come back up to a safe serving temperature, not merely be warmed at the surface.
- The cracklingCut it off, as directed, but keep it. It will not re-crisp under a wet crumb coating; crisp it separately in the oven for a few minutes and serve alongside, or chop it into the crumbs at the last moment.
- CrumbsDry or day-old white breadcrumbs, not fresh soft ones and not commercial panko. Fresh crumbs plus two eggs plus apple juice gives a paste that slumps off the joint in the oven.
- The applesChop them small and, if they are very juicy, squeeze or blot them. A firm apple such as Granny Smith holds its shape in the crust and gives the acidity that makes the dish read as pork-and-apple rather than stuffing; a Bramley or similar cooker will break down to puree and wet the coating.
- The herbsUnspecified, as often in the period; sage, thyme and parsley would be the usual choices. Sage is the one that matters with pork; a tablespoon of chopped fresh, or a teaspoon dried, for a coating of this size.
- EggsTwo beaten eggs is generous for a crust and can make it set rubbery. One egg is usually enough to bind two cups of crumbs; add the second only if the mixture will not hold together when pressed.
- Tomato sauceA cooked, seasoned tomato sauce of the kind found in books of the period, typically reduced tomato with onion and stock, sometimes sharpened with vinegar - not modern bottled ketchup. Something sharp is wanted against the fat.
- YieldDepends entirely on what is left of the loin. Reckon on the coating quantities above for a piece serving three or four.
Réchauffé is simply French for "reheated", and in nineteenth-century English cookery books it became a polite standing heading for the day-after treatment of a joint. Cassell's, like Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton before it, devotes real space to these dishes because a household that roasted a loin on Sunday was expected to account for every ounce of it during the week, and the period's own writers liked to suggest that a cook who could not make cold meat look like a new dish was thought poorly of. The technique here - masking the meat in a bound crumb and herb crust and firing it in a hot oven - is the same one behind breadcrumbed cutlets and the crumbed hams of the period, and it does two jobs at once: it hides the tired cut surface of a carved joint, and it puts back the crisp exterior that reheating otherwise destroys. The apple and onion in the coating are the roast's traditional accompaniments folded into the crust rather than served beside it, which is a neat piece of economy in itself.