French-Style Pork Baked with Cheese and Onion | Easy Oven Recipe

Name: French-Style Pork Baked with Cheese and Onion | Easy Oven Recipe
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Lean pork (loin steaks or pork loin) 250 g; Onion 1-2; Hard cheese 50 g; Mayonnaise 2 tbsp; Vegetable oil 1 tsp; Salt, black pepper, ground coriander to taste

Hardly anyone has never tried French-style meat — thinly pounded meat baked under cheese. Here it has somehow become a dish for the holiday table, and as a rule it is made with pork — French-style pork. It is a simple dish, and the whole difficulty of cooking it comes down to one simple rule: it must not burn.

They say French-style pork has a history of its own, even though it is not a dish of French cuisine. Most likely the version we know goes back to the fairly well-known Veau Orloff, veal Orlov, credited to the French chef Urbain Dubois, who cooked for Count Orlov. In French Alsace it is veal pounded as for a Wiener schnitzel, with potatoes and mushrooms, onion and carrot added. Often there is no cheese in the dish at all — béchamel sauce is used instead. Still, it is not all that simple.

The cooking technique called gratinating — from the French gratin, meaning baked — implies a crust: creating a special baked crust on the dish. People often say pork gratin, meaning pork baked under a crust, usually of cheese or béchamel sauce.

Everyone has their own home recipe for French-style meat. It often happens that quite minor details in the cooking make the dish turn out different. A pork bake under a cheese crust is a simple dish; don't overcomplicate it or try to “improve” it by adding all sorts of ingredients. If you want to add mushrooms, it is better to make it in individual ramekins.

For a holiday table, French-style meat is served hot, straight from the oven. To my taste, given how many dishes and appetizers there are during a celebration, it is better to save the cheese-baked meat for the morning, reheat a few pieces and make yourself a breakfast sandwich with very fresh bread.

The dish takes less than an hour: just pound the meat and layer all the ingredients in a suitable baking dish. Pork with cheese is quite a rich, filling dish. You can serve it as a hot main course, with baked potatoes dauphinoise, or as an appetizer. You can bake a large batch of the meat — it keeps well in the fridge for a few days, and you can reheat it as needed.

Ingredients

2 servings

Lean pork (loin steaks or pork loin) 250 g
Onion 1-2
Hard cheese 50 g
Mayonnaise 2 tbsp
Vegetable oil 1 tsp
Salt, black pepper, ground coriander to taste

Step-by-step recipe

At home we traditionally make French-style pork, but it can be any meat — veal, chicken breast or even fish. For this dish we buy a few pork loin steaks or a piece of pork loin. This cut pounds out well and thin and has only a little fat along the very edge. Besides, loin is not stringy and cooks through very well in a short time while staying tender.
Pork for this dish is usually pounded very thin, so choose pieces no more than 12-15 mm thick, otherwise pounding will be a struggle. On a wooden board, pound the pork thoroughly with a meat mallet so it is very even and thin, even slightly translucent. You can trim off the remaining fat along the edge so the meat is less fatty. By the way, when pounding, put a towel folded in four under the board — it reduces the noise.
You will need a ceramic or heat-resistant glass baking dish about the same size as the pounded meat. Grease the bottom and sides of the dish with a little vegetable oil — literally a trace, so the pork doesn't stick to the bottom at the very start of baking. Cut the pounded pork into pieces the shape and size of a slice of sandwich bread.
People often advise using one whole piece of meat or cutting it small. In the first case, the pounded meat may curl up in the heat and lose its shape. Finely cut meat will most likely turn out dry, and the pork should be very juicy. Lay the cut meat in the dish, covering the whole bottom with no gaps. The thin pieces can be moved, stretched a little and shifted to cover the bottom completely.
Salt the meat and season it well with freshly ground black pepper. There is not much meat by volume in the dish, and the other ingredients are neutral in taste, so you can even over-pepper the pork slightly. If you like, sprinkle the meat with a pinch of ground coriander — it is very fragrant and goes perfectly with pork.
Peel the onion and slice it very thinly into rings or strips. Usually, while the meat bakes, the onion doesn't have time to soften. It is often fried before being laid on the meat, but the taste of even lightly fried onion comes through and spoils the impression. I do it differently. Pour boiling water from the kettle over the thinly sliced onion, then after 4-5 mins rinse it under running water and squeeze lightly. Spread the onion over the pork in the baking dish as evenly and uniformly as possible.
The best hard cheese for baking is Emmental, Swiss or Radamer — the kind with large holes. It bakes very well, forming the excellent crust so highly prized in French-style meat. Grate a piece of cheese on the medium side of a grater. Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the meat and onion, leaving no gaps.
Press the cheese lightly onto the meat with your palms so it doesn't lie loosely. Next, brush the surface of the cheese with something that forms a pleasant dark golden layer on the cheese crust as it bakes. It can be homemade sour cream, a cream-based sauce or ordinary mayonnaise. If you like, you can make homemade mayonnaise. But you only need a little, so good-quality store-bought mayonnaise will do. Brush the grated cheese with mayonnaise.
Preheat the oven to 180-190°C and put the French-style pork in. It will take some time for the meat and cheese to heat through, usually up to 15 mins. Then the French-style meat will start to bake — you will notice the liquid bubbling in the dish. The meat cooks through very quickly, and the cheese melts a little and forms a crust. The surface of the cheese brushed with mayonnaise will start to brown.
Usually, including the heating time, French-style pork is fully cooked and baked to a nice golden brown in 30-40 mins. Watch that the meat doesn't start to burn and that the cheese near the edge doesn't turn hard and crunchy.
Take out the dish of meat baked under cheese and set it on a board — the dish is very hot. If you are going to serve it as an appetizer or on sandwiches, divide it into pieces by running the tip of a knife between the pieces of pork.
If the meat under cheese is served as a main course, loosen it from the sides of the dish with a knife and cut it into large pieces. Either way, the key is not to disturb the layers of the dish, so the onion stays on the meat and the golden cheese crust on top. Place the cheese-topped pork on a plate and add pickles and marinated vegetables, herbs and toasted croutons to taste.