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Anthony Bourdain was an outspoken proponent of meat-eating in all its varied forms, and an equally passionate champion of the beauty of garlic. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that his go-to roast pork recipe marries meat and garlic in their most elegant artistic incarnations: Tenderloin, meet garlic confit.
If you’ve never tried, made, or worked with it before, garlic confit is a spreadable condiment made by slow-cooking whole garlic cloves in oil at just below a simmer. Under the low, slow heat, that pungent garlic transforms into a sweet, smooth, rich-yet-tamed spread – and Bourdain cascaded it over his roast pork. Here at Tasting Table, we’re even adding a dollop of garlic confit to our fried eggs, and (happily for home cooks) you can whip up a flavorful batch of garlic confit in your slow-cooker.
Bourdain lets intrepid home cooks in on his ultimate roast pork recipe in his “Les Halles Cookbook.” The 2004 publication takes its name from Brasserie Les Halles, the Manhattan restaurant where Bourdain served as the executive chef before publishing his seminal “Kitchen Confidential” in 2000. Les Halles was known for elevated takes on traditional French dishes, and as Bourdain writes of his mignons de porc a l’ail recipe, “This is one of the most popular dishes at Les Halles.” Bourdain’s mignons de porc a l’ail is a zhuzhed-up pork tenderloin layered with bacon and garlic confit. The recipe calls for four heads of garlic confit per four 10-ounce pork tenderloins.
Bourdain slathered his pork tenderloins in a layer of garlic confit
What makes this dish special is the interplay of the luscious, pungent, sweet-umami garlic confit and the natural sweet-savory depth of the pork. In tandem, these two elements serve to highlight and showcase each other’s uniquely dimensional robustness. Anthony Bourdain himself famously preferred pork over chicken. As he waxes in “Les Halles Cookbook,” “Is there any better, more noble, more magical animal than the pig? […] Virtually every single part of a pig can be made into something delicious. Pork makes just about everything taste better, and no beast offers more varieties, more possibilities, more traditional, time-tested recipes per ounce.”
To make it, the garlic confit gets spread over the uncooked, malleted pork tenderloins in a thick paste. From there, two strips of bacon get layered on top of the garlic, which gets topped by another pork tenderloin, and the whole thing is tied with kitchen string. The bundle then gets browned in a simple yet impactful pan sauce of shallots, white wine, olive oil, butter, parsley, and “strong, dark chicken or veal stock,” then transferred to a roasting pan to finish cooking in the oven.
To serve, pair Bourdain’s garlic confit roast pork with a glass of the same white wine you used to make the pan sauce; an oaky, full-bodied chardonnay would pair fabulously, as would the vibrant acidity of a French sauvignon blanc. Accompany with an understated French haricot verts salad dressed in butter, lemon, and sea salt.
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