This is the blog that I should have posted last night. Should have, could have, would have posted if only I had not nodded off…again. You see I am not a person who can function at an ultimate level of efficiency when overtired, so there will be times over the next couple of months (until my newborn sleeps through) when I will most likely fall asleep before finishing an entry on Cabinet of Cookery. So if you ever look up my post and find it trails off mid-sentence, chances are I have fallen asleep on the keyboard. 

This Fruit and Spice Pork Pie with Cos Lettuce and Cabbage Salad was the delicious and satisfying dinner that we all enjoyed last night. The addition of apples, cinnamon and preserved lemon added a whole new dimension in flavours which were a pleasant change to a traditional home cooked, meat-based pie. Cabbage is a natural accompaniment to a pork dish and this salad simply had a drizzle of vinno cotto added and tossed through just before serving.  

It was a great team effort with my mother and I working in tandem to pull dinner together in record time. While mum started preparing the ingredients for the filling, I whizzed up the cream cheese pastry in my ever reliable Magimix food processor. As soon as the pastry was wrapped and placed in the fridge to rest, I used the same food processing bowl and made fast work of turning the long, lean pink pork fillets from Chilcott’s Butchery, into textured mince. 

The Cream Cheese Pastry (recipe posted on the 8th August) takes five minutes to prepare using a food processor – it’s faster than driving to the store to pick up commercial pastry. While it rests in the fridge, the filling for the pie can be made. I used pork fillet because it has a mild, sweet flavour and cooks quickly, making it ideal as a mid-week meal ingredient. 

Maggie Beer has a recipe for Spicy Pork and Apple Pasties in her cookbook Maggie’s Kitchen, an edition I regularly cook from as shown by the well-thumbed pages. I based the recipe for my Fruit and Spice Pork Pie filling on this, making a few alterations to Maggie Beer’s original recipe based on what I had in the fridge. 

Fruit and Spice Pork Pie to serve 8 people

Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil
1 medium brown onion finely diced
3 cloves garlic crushed
1 tablespoon fresh ginger grated
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 preserved lemon, flesh removed, rind rinsed under running water and finely diced
1 large apple grated
1/4 cup dried raisins, soaked in 1/2 cup verjuice
1.5 kg pork fillet, minced
sea salt and black pepper to taste
2 eggs beaten
handful of fresh flat leaf parsley finely chopped
1 tablespoon honey

Heat a good splash of olive oil in a large pot and add the onion, garlic, spices, preserved lemon and apple. Sauté over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring to prevent the spices from burning. Add the raisins, but not the verjuice, reserve this for later. 

Increase the heat and add the pork mince in one lot along with the salt and pepper to taste. Stir regularly until the meat has browned evenly and the excess moisture has reduced. Once this is done, add the honey and parsley, along with the reserved verjuice and reduce the heat to low. Cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes. 

Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature. I plunged my pot into iced water in the sink to achieve this. Add the beaten eggs and mix through to combine. The mixture can either be added to your pie dish and covered with the pastry or refrigerated until needed later on. 

When covering the pie dish with pastry, make sure the pastry goes ALL THE WAY TO THE EDGE of the dish. If you leave a gap the mixture will bubble up and seep through. Brush the top of the pastry with egg wash; a combination of egg yolk with a couple of teaspoons of either milk or cream whisked through. Bake in a preheated oven at 225 degrees fan bake mode for 35 to 40 minutes until golden brown.