Kitchen Witchin -- Clue's fruit stuffed pork loin
This is what's cooking in my oven right now. It smells like the very best kind of sin.
Take first a pork loin roast, butterflied so it can lay out flat.
Make a stuffing of chopped pecans, prunes, dried apricots, and crasins -- you may use dried grapes if dried cranberries please not your household gods, I won't tell. Add a minced shallot, a minced, seeded jalapeno pepper, and the minced heart and leaves from a head of celery, and mix well.
Put this into the center of the loin roast, like the jelly on a cake roll, then using kitchen twine, pinch the meat closed around it, and tie it at inch and a half intervals from one end to the other.
Put sea salt, whole peppercorns, garlic powder, ground ginger, cloves, and dried rosemary and sage leaves into your coffee grinder, and pulse them into a fine powder. Then pat this powder all over the outside of your well-tied pork roast.
Sear the roast in a Dutch oven, or some other oven- and stovetop-safe covered dish. Get as much of the outside of the roast seared as you can manage, using tongs to turn it about, and trying to avoid noticing that it rather looks a bit like an unsettlingly large grub.
Pour half a bottle of beer into whatever of the fruit filling you hadn't been able to get into the roast, and then pour that into the pan with the meat once it's all set. Then put the lid on, and slide the whole thing into the oven on a low-ish side of heat. I've got it cooking at 250 right now, with the idea that I'll check its temp in about half an hour, to see how long it'll be.
The intention is that I'll begin doing some brussels sprouts on the stovetop about half an hour before the meat will be ready, and add them to that pot to finish while I make sweet potato fries in the toaster oven to go along with.
I'll let you all know how this plan comes along.
In other news:
I'M DONE PAINTING THE FRAKKING LIBRARY!
Take first a pork loin roast, butterflied so it can lay out flat.
Make a stuffing of chopped pecans, prunes, dried apricots, and crasins -- you may use dried grapes if dried cranberries please not your household gods, I won't tell. Add a minced shallot, a minced, seeded jalapeno pepper, and the minced heart and leaves from a head of celery, and mix well.
Put this into the center of the loin roast, like the jelly on a cake roll, then using kitchen twine, pinch the meat closed around it, and tie it at inch and a half intervals from one end to the other.
Put sea salt, whole peppercorns, garlic powder, ground ginger, cloves, and dried rosemary and sage leaves into your coffee grinder, and pulse them into a fine powder. Then pat this powder all over the outside of your well-tied pork roast.
Sear the roast in a Dutch oven, or some other oven- and stovetop-safe covered dish. Get as much of the outside of the roast seared as you can manage, using tongs to turn it about, and trying to avoid noticing that it rather looks a bit like an unsettlingly large grub.
Pour half a bottle of beer into whatever of the fruit filling you hadn't been able to get into the roast, and then pour that into the pan with the meat once it's all set. Then put the lid on, and slide the whole thing into the oven on a low-ish side of heat. I've got it cooking at 250 right now, with the idea that I'll check its temp in about half an hour, to see how long it'll be.
The intention is that I'll begin doing some brussels sprouts on the stovetop about half an hour before the meat will be ready, and add them to that pot to finish while I make sweet potato fries in the toaster oven to go along with.
I'll let you all know how this plan comes along.
In other news:
I'M DONE PAINTING THE FRAKKING LIBRARY!