Spicy Pork and Fresh Apple Salad

You can’t beat a big glass of cider with a few ice cubes on a hot summer’s afternoon. Imagine sitting in the beer garden of a nice countryside pub in England and then ruining that pint with a bland boring salad! Here’s something to try as an alternative.

The pork will be tender and really tasty, with a spicy edge. This is balanced with the sweet refreshing apples, crunchy croutons and crispy bacon. Add to all that a mustard dressing and you have a perfect combination to go with the cider.

It’s a relatively quick salad to make. Make sure you give the pork a bit of time to marinate in the herbs, spices and lemon juice. The citric acid will help to tenderize the meat so it’s not tough or chewy at the end. You need to use tenderloin as most other cuts will be too dry or tough. I couldn’t get my hands on any decent bacon at the time of cooking so made do with about 10 strips of prosciutto which turned out to be fantastic as they got really crispy in no time, although they give out much less fat than bacon rashers so you may need a little extra olive oil or butter in the pan to get the croutons crispy. For the croutons, ones from a packet are not the same but if you can’t be bothered to make your own then they can make do. We always have lots of leftover bread so we either make breadcrumbs of croutons from this. The good thing about doing them yourself is that you can make them any flavor you want with any combination of dried herbs, garlic etc.

This really is a mouthwatering dish and fantastic to wash down with the cold cider.

Serves 2
Ingredients:
- Tenderloin Pork
- 100g of bacon rashers, finely sliced.
- 3 Apples: golden delicious, red delicious and pink lady are all suitable varieties.
- 6 slices of a fresh loaf of bread cut into inch cubes, or a packet of croutons if you can't be bothered to make your own.
- 100g cos lettuce leaves
- Fresh tarragon leaves hand torn
- 1 teaspoon of paprika
- Small red chilli, finely sliced (de-seed if you can't take the heat)
- 1 clove of garlic minced
- Half a red onion thinly sliced
- Juice of half a lemon

Dressing:
- 1 tablespoon of dijon mustard
- 6 tablespoons of olive oil
- 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar
- A teaspoon of dried Marjoram
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- salt and pepper to taste

1. About 20 minutes before cooking, slice the pork into thin strips and marinate with the garlic, chilli, paprika and tarragon. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
2. Core 2 of the apples, dice into inch size cubes and coat in a bit of olive oil to stop the flesh from browning.
3. Slice your bread into inch size cubes and drizzle a little olive oil to coat them.
4. Prepare the dressing by combining all the ingredients. This should mix down into a thick dipping-sauce-like consistency.

5. Heat a large frying pan and add the bacon. There’s no need to add olive oil as the bread is already coated in this. As the juice starts to come out of the bacon, add the bread to soak up the flavours and fry it all on a medium heat until it gets crispy. The bacon should give enough saltiness so just add a twist of black pepper for taste. With a slotted spoon, remove the bacon and croutons and drain on kitchen towel and set aside.
6. In the same pan, there should be enough olive oil left in but add a little if not. Fry the pork for 3 minutes until cooked.

7. Core and slice the other apple thinly to dress the plate and scatter the salad leaves and red onion liberally on the plate.

8. Add the bacon, croutons, pork and apples to the salad. Dress and serve with a glass of chilled apple cider.