Christmas Main Dish: Pork Roast with Currant Sauce

 

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Ingredients:

Pork Roast

• ½ cup of cooking sherry
• ½ cup of soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. of dry mustard
• 1 tsp. of dried thyme
• 1 tsp. of ground ginger
• 2 cloves of minced garlic
• 4 pounds of pork loin

Sauce

• 2 tbsp. of cooking sherry
• 1 tbsp. of soy sauce
• A 10-ounce jar of currant jelly

Procedure

Pork Roast

1. Mix the sherry, soy sauce, garlic, mustard, thyme and ginger in a bowl. Pour half of the mixture into a re-sealable plastic bag and put in the pork. Seal the bag and shake it a little to ensure the entire pork is marinated. Refrigerate overnight.
2. Remove the roast from the fridge and discard the marinade. Place it on a rack inside a shallow roasting pan. Bake uncovered for 2.5-3 hours at 325ᵒ. Baste every 30 minutes with the remaining marinade.
3. Leave the pork to cool for 10 minutes then slice it.

Currant Sauce

1. Put the currant jelly in a saucepan and heat it over medium-low heat.
2. Add the soy sauce and the sherry.
3. Leave to cool then serve together with the pork.

You can make this Christmas main dish on other days of the year besides Christmas. Serve it during a special occasion or event and you’ll be sure to receive compliments. The currant sauce adds an elegant touch and is a must. For the best results, leave the sauce to cool for a while. It will thicken and turn into a wonderful glaze. You can also substitute the sherry with apple juice.

What dinner recipes will you serve this holiday season?

Baking cookies with your kids is a holiday classic and who doesn’t love Christmas cookie recipes? Why not take it up a notch and add some fun and yummy twist to them, making beautiful stained glass cookies? They taste great and look fantastic. Fit for the Christmas tree decoration and for giving them away as a treat present, you should try making them with your kids and just have a blast doing it.

Christmas Cookie Recipes: Kids’ Stained Glass Cookies

Image via: Pinterest

Ingredients

(the yield depends on the size you will make them, but you should get between 2 and 4 dozen)

½ cup sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup butter

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 tablespoon molasses

2 cups flour

¾ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

30-40 hard candies in various colors. You can use Life Savers or even butterscotch candies

Image via: Flickr

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375° F and line baking sheets with some parchment paper
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the butter and the sugars until they are fluffy with an electric mixer. That should take about 2 minutes. Then add the vanilla extract and molasses while continuing mixing. Now add the egg and mix until you have a smooth, light mixture. That takes about 1 minute using medium speed.
3. Sift together salt, flour and baking powder in a separate bowl. Fold these ingredients into the mixture. Blend just until the flour is incorporated with the electrical mixer. Then, divide the dough into two balls and flatten them to have discs. Now, wrap the discs with plastic wrap and put them into the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
4. Now the fun part. Unwrap the candies and divide them by colors. Put them into plastic zip bags and crush them using a mallet or something similar.
5. Take the one dough disk and roll it out between two waxed paper sheets to ¼ inch thickness. Choose your favorite cookie cutters and cut the dough. Transfer the cookies carefully to the baking sheets. Take care to have them about 1 inch apart from each other. Now use a smaller cookie cutter and cut shapes in the center of your cookies.
6. With a spoon, sprinkle some crushed candy into the holes. Try not to get candy on your dough.
7. If you want to hang the cookies later on, you’ll need to make some holes using a straw before you bake them.
8. Bake 9 – 10 minutes. The cookies should not get to brown and the candies should have melted. Take the baking sheets out and let the cookies cool on pans for at least 10 minutes so the candy can harden. When they are cooled completely, remove them. They can be stored in an airtight container or hang. Keep in mind that the candy center might melt away after a few days, especially with the presence of humidity.
9. If you want, you can decorate the cookies with some icing.

Image via: Pinterest

Thank you Simply Recipes for this recipe.

These cookies are really fun to make with your kids. You can even prepare the dough ahead of time and freeze it. When you are ready to make the cookies, thaw them in the refrigerator overnight. Let the dough sit in room temperature so it softens up just enough to be able to roll it. And one last thing: You can use store-bought sugar cookie dough if you are in a rush! Have fun!

For more holiday dessert recipes on Stagetecture, click here.