Noisettes De Porc Aux Pruneaux

Preamble
"This dish, a speciality of Tours, is a sumptuous one, rich and handsome in appearance as well as in its flavours. But it is not one to try out for the first time on guests, unless you can be sure of ten minutes or so uninterrupted in the kitchen while you make the sauce. Neither is the dish exactly a light one, and is perhaps best eaten, as pork dishes are always supposed to be, at midday rather than in the evening. Both the utensil for cooking the pork and the dish to serve it in are important. The first should be a shallow and heavy pan to go on top of the stove, either a saute pan or the kind of dish in which a whole flat fish is poached; failing this the meat will first have to be browned in a frying pan and then transferred to an oven dish. The serving dish should be a big oval one, preferably one which can go for a few minutes in the oven without risk."

Ingredients
6-8 noisettes cut from the boned and skinned chump end of the Loin Of Pork
1 lb of very fine large juicy Prunes (there should be approximately 2 dozen)
1 half bottle Wine which should be by rights white Vouvray
1 tablespoon Red Currant Jelly
Approximately 1/2 pint Thick Cream
2 oz Butter
A little Flour
Seasonings

Method

First put the prunes to steep in a bowl covered with 1/2 pint of the wine; this is supposed to be done overnight, but with good prunes a half day will be sufficient. After which, cover them and put them in a very low oven to cook. They can stay there an hour or more, the longer the better, so long as the wine does not dry up.

Season the pork very well with freshly milled pepper and salt and sprinkle each noisette with flour. Melt the butter in the pan; put in the meat; let it gently take colour on one side and turn it. Keep the heat low because the butter must not brown. After 10 minutes pour in the remaining 2 tablespoons or so of the white wine. Cover the pan. Cook, very gently, covered, on top of the stove, or in the oven if necessary, for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, but the timing must depend upon the quality of the meat. Test it with a skewer to see if it is tender.

When it is nearly ready (but it will not, being pork, come to harm if left a bit longer ever after it is tender), pour the juice from the prunes over the meat - this, of course, must be done over very direct heat on top of the stove - and keep the prunes themselves hot in the oven. When the juice has bubbled and reduced a little, transfer the meat to the serving dish and keep hot.

To the sauce in the pan add the red-currant jelly and stir until it has dissolved. Now pour in some of the cream; if the pan is wide enough it will almost instantly start bubbling and thickening; stir it, shake the pan and add more cream, and when the sauce is just beginning to get shiny and really thick, pour it over the meat, arrrange the prunes all around and serve it quickly. The amount of cream you use depends both on how much juice there was from the prunes and how quickly the sauce has thickened; sometimes it gets too thick too quickly, and a little more cream must be added. In any case, there should be enough sauce to cover the meat, but not, of course, the prunes. These are served as they are, not 'boned', as the French cooks would say.

Remarks
Appeared on menu: Noisettes de Porc aux Pruneaux $3.70 (loin of pork cooked with white wine, prunes and cream sauce)