Roast fillet of pork stuffed with sweet medjool dates and glazed with hot honey is simple and delicious. Slice it thickly and serve with spicy stir fried hispi cabbage.
Date bingeing
There are some foods that I find seriously dangerous: you take one morsel and then before you know it the whole bag/packet/bowl is empty.
Dates are like that for me, especially medjool dates: the fat and sticky, deliciously soft and jammy dates native to Morocco, and these days grown all over the warm world.
I appreciate that it’s relatively better to binge on dates than, say, crisps but still a single medjool is over sixty calories and about four spoonfuls of sugar! Even though it’s fructose, the natural sugar and dates have low GI, lots of fibre and minerals, it’s still a whopping amount.
They usually come dried but not dehydrated which makes them softly irresistible. Thankfully the nicest ones are quite pricey thus becoming more difficult for me to devour a whole tray with impunity.
Dates not just as a snack
But of course dates are wonderful as a cooking ingredient as well as a bingeable snack. Sticky toffee pudding is possibly one of my favourite desserts and it is just a date cake. Dates are wonderful in dessert bars or squares, and they will sweeten your breakfast porridge in a gorgeous way.
But all that sugar may be used in savoury dishes too. I add dates to all kinds of stuffing for poultry, and as you will find if you try the recipe below, they are fantastic with pork.
How to prepare pork with dates
Pork fillet, aka tenderloin is super easy to stuff with dates. All you need to do is make an incision lengthwise in its side so the long piece of meat opens up like a butterfly.
The dates will sit there in a row, anointed with mustard for a tang, and you can either tie the meat back up with a string or close the flap with meat pins.
How long to cook pork fillet?
Lean cuts of pork should be cooked until just done, to 65-70C/148-158F if you use a digital probe for meat. If overcooked, they become impossibly dry and all those jammy dates inside won’t help.
I like to sear it in a frying pan first, for the appetising Maillard’s reaction on the outside of the meat. Afterwards it will only need fifteen minutes in the oven and a ten minute rest for the meat to relax and the juices to be reabsorbed.
Hot, hot honey
The icing on the cake (or the glaze on the pork to be precise) here is a liberal drizzle of hot honey over the roasted meat. Hot honey is the condiment so delightful and so easy to make at home I’m amazed it has not trended until recently.
For the real McCoy simmer red hot chillies with a little white wine vinegar, then steep them in honey.
For an absolute quick hack, add sriracha hot sauce to a squeezy bottle of honey, as much or as little as you can take.
Make sure you serve extra on the side, with the pork fillet sliced thickly. With the date sweetness in the middle and the hot honey drizzled around, it is much more delicious than you’d think considering how little effort it is to prepare.
More pork fillet recipes
Buttermilk fried pork fillet cutlets seasoned with mustard and marjoram. Pork tenderloin brined in buttermilk and shallow fried in cornmeal coating.
Twice cooked pork fillet with mushroom sauce, inspired by Mark Bittman NY Times. Pork tenderloin is seared whole then browned again in slices; simple and brilliant.
Pork and mushroom stroganoff: perfect for when you want to cook an easy but special dish and can’t afford to spend a small fortune on the ingredients.
More date recipes
Date and nut squares, with chunks of Medjool dates and a mix of almonds, pecans and pistachio in rich, chewy batter. There’s a reason why these are called ‘food for gods’.
Tom Kerridge’s carrot cake energy balls are no-bake, no sugar, no nonsense bites made from goodness itself. Sweet with no added sugar, satisfyingly filling and easier to make than mud cakes.
Honey cake with dates and apples from Nigella Lawson’s collection is not only suitable for Rosh Hashanah: it’s simply the perfect autumnal cake.