French Fridays with Dorie - Pork Roast with Mangoes and Lychees

Today´s recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is Pork Roast with Mangoes and Lychees. A delicious treat on this lovely Spring day - with tons of flavor from the sauce and delightful sweetness from the fruits.

The recipe calls for pork loin roast but I opted for pork tenderloin instead. This is the eye fillet that comes from within the loin. It is a "lazy muscle" and as such is lean and very tender, It is very quick to cook but will soon dry out if overcooked. Remember to remove any tough white membrane or sinew from the outside of the loin before cooking. I browned the fillet first, then transferred it to a pre-heated oven for 15 minutes and then while the sauce reduced in the pan, let the meat rest, covered, then sliced thinly and served with the sauce and the fruit.

Dorie´s recipe call for two fruits to accompany the pork - lychees and mangoes. The lychee is a fruit that originated in China and is now grown in the Far East and the West Indies. In Europe, fresh lychees are only available from November to January, and they are most often sold canned, preserved in sugar syrup. So, although at this time of year no fresh lychees were to be found for this recipe, I used really good-quality, plump canned ones that Í drained prior to using.

Mangoes have a fragrant sweetness, rich flavor and succulent texture. The majority of Asian mangoes have a delicate skin and a short shelf life. They are at their best when enjoyed raw. For that reason, they are flown into Germany (mainly from India and Pakistan), so are more expensive. The thicker-skinned varieties are shipped in by sea year-round, they are more suitable for cooking and baking - and those are the ones I used in this recipe. They held their shape nicely, even in the sauce.

The sauce is a wonderful reduction of pan juices, onion, garlic, red wine vinegar, dry white wine, soy sauce, lime juice, local runny honey, piment d´Esplette (you can also use sweet Spanish smoked paprika here), bay leaf and thyme from the garden and then the added fruit - what a combination of bold flavors and what a success! Served with soba (buckwheat) noodles - this dish made us all very happy eaters!

To see whether the other members of the French Fridays with Dorie group enjoyed this week´s recipe, please go here.

For copyright reasons, we do not publish the recipes from the book. But you can find the recipe for the Pork Roast with Mangoes and Lychees on pages 278-9 in Dorie Greenspan´s cookbook "Around my French Table".