Serenbe Style and Soul

with Marie Nygren

Wednesday

16

July 2014

2

COMMENTS

Georgia On A Plate: Pork with Peaches and Tomatoes On Top

Written by , Posted in Miscellaneous

When we moved to Serenbe full time, my youngest daughter, Quinn, was six years old and heading into first grade. One day, after picking her up from Woodward Academy, I saw a car with a Woodward license plate frame getting off at the Palmetto exit. I didn’t know anyone else in our area who sent their child to Woodward, so I followed the car and pulled up beside it at a stop.

The driver looked at me like I was crazy when I motioned to roll the window down. “Hi there,” I said. “Do you have a child at Woodward?” That’s the way I started a conversation with Sharon Thompson, whose daughter Olivia became Quinn’s lifelong best friend.

The Thompsons have lived in the Chattahoochee Hill Country for generations. They were pork farmers decades ago, then got out when big business took over the pork trade. Now that the tides have turned and heritage pigs are hot again, they’re back selling some of the best swine in the south as Double T Farms.

I used one of their beautiful Berkshire pork loins for a demo I did recently at the Serenbe Artists and Farmer’s Market. The dish—roasted pork with tomatoes, peach, Vidalia onion and mint—is a version of my recipe that appeared in the July issue of Atlanta magazine. They wanted me to use chicken because my family has been known for fried chicken for decades, so I did paillards because they’re so much easier for the home cook. But at the demo, I used pork because it’s delicious at room temperature.

I rubbed the pork with grapeseed oil, kosher salt and pink peppercorns because I thought black would be too strong and not marry well with the topping. For some reason, pork and peaches go well together, but I’d never tried peaches and tomatoes together. It worked beautifully—a make-ahead dish perfect for summer entertaining. You know what they say: What grows together goes together.

Roasted Pork with Tomato, Peach, Vidalia Onion and Mint topping
  • 1 three-pound boneless, center-cut pork loin
  • 1 tablespoon grapeseed oil
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ teaspoon ground pink peppercorns

Preheat the oven to 450. Rub the oil, salt and peppercorns evenly over the entire surface. Place the meat on a rack in a roasting pan. Roast for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 250 and roast until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the meat registers 150 to 155 degrees.

Remove to a cutting board, cover loosely with aluminum foil and let stand for 15 minutes. Skim off the fat in the roasting pan, leaving behind all the pan juices.

  • Tomato, peach, onion and mint topping
  • 2 cups heirloom tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 medium peach, peeled and chopped
  • ¼ cup diced Vidalia onion
  • 2 tablespoons mint, finely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice

Place tomato, peach, onion, mint, oil and orange juice in a bowl and toss together. Season to taste with salt, place on top of the pork and serve.

2 Comments

  1. sarah killmeier

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>