Pork ballotine with invisible sauce

Anyone seen that episode of the IT Crowd where they go to Heston Blumenthal's restaurant and eat invisible food? Well, this is a bit like that. Yep.

What actually happened was that I misjudged the amount of juice I was going to get from the ballotine, and as such it was nice but it was missing something. Therefore, I'm going to describe this recipe as if it has apple sauce with it, as it's a classic combination with pork.

Ingredients:

• 4 x pork steaks
• 2 x garlic cloves
  
• 12 x new potatoes
• Handful of thyme sprigs
• 2-3 tbsps olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• About 15 rashers of streaky bacon
• 8 x sage leaves
• 1 x large bramley apple
• About 2 tbsps soft brown sugar
• 1 tbsp butter
  

Method:

1. Tenderise a pork steak, i.e. bash it flat using a rolling pin or tenderiser (this is a special hammer you can buy from cooking shops). When it's roughly doubled in size, put a couple of sage leaves in the middle along with half a clove of grated nutmeg. Season it lightly with some pepper, but NOT salt.
2. Put a layer of streaky bacon rashers on the sheet of cling film. Put the pork steak on top and roll it all up very tightly so that you have something that looks like a sausage. Fasten each end with sellotape and chill it in the fridge for half an hour. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for your other torpedoes. The reason you didn't add salt is that the bacon already has a lot of salt in it anyway.
   
3. Poach the ballotines in simmering water for about half an hour. Make sure you sealed them tightly.
4. Peel some new potatoes and cut them into slices. Pour some butter into a frying pan with some olive oil on a medium-high heat. Season the potato slices and fry them for a few minutes on each side until they're golden and cooked through.
5. Melt some butter in another pan. Peel the apple and cut it into slices, then gently fry them in the butter with some sugar so that the apples melt.
6. When the pork is done, take it out of the packet and get a pan very hot. Add a smidgen of olive oil to said pan and sear it on all sides so that it goes crispy.
7. Carve it into slices and serve with the potatoes and invisible apple sauce.