SERVES: 4
Ingredients:
400g pork fillet
2 red peppers, sliced into large strips
1 red onion, cut into wedges
6 unpeeled cloves of garlic
1/2-1 Tbsp harissa
1 Tbsp tomato puree
100ml boiling water
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
Couscous or rice to serve
Recipe Summary
A little goes a long way to make this lean pork fillet a more gout friendly way to have a roast. Peppers, rich in vitamin C, are great for gout. Pick the deepest red ones and don’t worry about leaving in a bit of the white pith as it’s packed with polyphenols. I’ve replaced processed stock cubes with a little tomato puree, a trick I learnt from French cooking. Although it might sound odd, by browning the tomato puree in a pan before using it, you caramelise the sugars and increase the ‘umami’ flavour which makes for a delicious dish.
I add the garlic unpeeled for flavour — squeeze the soft garlic out of the cooked cloves and serve on the pork, or smear it on a baguette for instant garlic bread.
Method:
Put peppers, onion, and garlic in a roasting tin and drizzle with olive oil. Stir to coat evenly in oil, then pop in a preheated 180 C oven for 10 minutes.
Trim any sinew off the fillet and rub the harissa paste all over the meat. Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan until hot and sear for 5 minutes, turning halfway.
Remove the peppers from the oven and place the pork on top of them. In the meat searing pan, cook the tomato puree until it has gone a brown-orange colour, then add in boiling water and stir, scraping up any pan juices as you go. Pour this over the meat and return to the oven for 25-30’. Allow the meat to rest, before slicing and serving.
Variation: For a veggie version, replace meat with a tin of drained butter beans (235g). Simply add the beans at the start with the peppers and onions. They will puff up and split and go nicely crispy.
Nutrition (per serving of pork): 248 cal; 9.4g of fat, of which 1.9g saturates; 7.3g carbohydrate, of which 4.6g sugars; 2.1g fibre; and 22.5g protein.
Nutrition (per serving of butter beans): 154 cal; 6.9g of fat, of which 0.9g saturates; 15.5g carbohydrate, of which 4.1g sugars; 5.7g fibre; and 6.1g protein.