Smoking your pumpkin and preparing your stuffing:
Light up your bbq and bring it to around 120C indirect for smoking. Cut the pumpkin/squash in half and then deseed. Season with a little salt and pepper and a drizzle of oil. You only need half a squash/pumpkin per pork fillet, but worth smoking both halves and using leftovers for a delicious soup the following day.
Lay the pumpkin/squash skin side down on your grill.
Add a couple of chunks of apple wood for smoke.
Smoke for a couple of hours or until a knife passes through with little resistance. Take off the grill and peel the skin. Leave to cool. Cut your pumpkin/squash into small chunks. Slice your chestnuts into small chunks. Mix together your pumpkin, chestnuts, one egg yolk, sausage meat, crumbled blue cheese and a pinch of sage. Season and leave to one side.
Pork tenderloin and hasselback potatoes: Bring your bbq up to 180C-200C, set up for indirect cooking. Peel and thinly slice your potatoes. A mandolin can guarantee a consistent thickness and makes life a lot easier.
In a large bowl, pour in your cream and season well - you can't really season too much! Throw your potatoes into the bowl and mix until every potato is coated on all sides.
Peel your garlic and rub your roasting dish all over.
Take handfuls of the cream potato mixture and stack vertically in your roasting dish. Once finished, pour over a little more of the leftover cream until it's a 1/3 - 1/2 way up the side of the dish.
Season and top with a few slivers of butter. Cover with foil.
Once your bbq is up to temperature, place your roasting dish in the centre.
Butterfly your pork tenderloin: cut lengthwise down the middle, about 3/4 of the way through. Make sure you don't cut all the way through. Open it up like a book, spreading the meat flat.
Cover the pork with cling film and pound with the flat side of a meat mallet until it's around 1/2 inch thick. Start in the middle and work out. Trim your meat into a uniform shape.
Next, make your bacon weave: lay 8 rashers of bacon vertically side by side. Interlace 8 more rashers horizontally to make a lattice.
Place your pork tenderloin across the middle of your bacon lattice, leaving 2cm of bacon clear top and bottom.
Spoon your stuffing across the middle of the pork. Tightly roll the bacon lattice into a cylinder; use the bacon border to join underneath.
After the potatoes have been cooking for 30 minutes, remove the foil cover and roast for another hour - we like to grate some cheese over the potato dish 30 minutes before the end - use comté or parmesan, most cheddars would also work well.
At the same time, lay the bacon wrapped tenderloin on the grill alongside the potato dish. Cook for 1 hour or until the internal temperature of the pork tenderloin is 60C before resting, wrapped in foil, for at least 10 minutes.
While your pork is roasting, prepare you apples. Chop them into 1cm chunks and throw into a saucepan over medium heat with your sugar and cider. Cover and gently stew until they have completely broken down, around 10 minutes. Take off the heat and leave to cool. If you prefer a smoother texture, you can purée once cooked.
Once everything else is ready, after roughly an hour and a half total cooking time you should have a beautifully crisp topping on the potatoes with cream bubbling out of the base.
Remove from the cooker and leave to cool for a couple of minutes before serving.
Serves 4-5
Ingredients:
1 pork fillet - around 600g
16 rashers smoked streaky bacon
for the stuffing:
1/2 squash/pumpkin
8 roasted chestnuts - gather your own and roast them yourself if you have the chance.
1 egg yolk
100g sausage meat - if you can't get sausage meat from your local butcher, cut open a couple of sausages and squeeze out the meat.
50g blue cheese, crumbled - we used Blacksticks blue.
large pinch of sage
for the sauce:
2 bramley cooking apples, peeled and cored
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp cider
for the hasselback dauphinoise: (makes enough for a 27x18cm roasting dish)
potatoes 1200g
double cream, 500g
salt
pepper
1 garlic clove
comté/parmesan
27