June 8th - Cook's Illustrated Cookbook - Tuscan-Style Garlic-Rosemary Roast Pork Loin

June 8th - Cook's Illustrated Cookbook - Tuscan-Style Garlic-Rosemary Roast Pork Loin - One of the definite joys I get in this world is putting together a good meal.  Good meals are a combination of a lot of things, not the least of which is the foundation of intention that goes into them.  We appearing humans have a lot of energies running through us, and being an artist in any realm means sensing, balancing, and transmitting those energies out into the world in a form or expression. 

Cooking is one such expression.  Not many people would tell you to learn to breath and to use energies of intention and purpose in your cooking... but I will!  Through meditations of various sorts, I gather energies in my body and transform them into useful forms so I can express my art (in this case, good cooking) with ease.

Enough about all that, let's talk about Tuscan Style Pork!  So I had this boneless Pork Loin in my freezer from Costco, and I decided to finally use it!  And I looked around at a bunch of recipes and came up with some ideas.  I'm listing the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (from the Cooks Illustrated folks) in the title because they gave me the inspiration for the garlic and rosemary.  

Now let me tell you about this meal.  It turned out absolutely fabulous, a real treat.  We ate it with the family last night out on the porch and it touched us all emotionally.  That's what the best meals do, right?  There are some things I think could be improved.   For instance, I think the roast loin could be cooked Sous Vide and we would have had more tender pork cooked perfectly all the way through.  That's what I'm going to try next time.

So here we go...

We started with about a 4 pound pork loin.  Cook's Illustrated folks tell you to use one with bones, but I didn't have one with bones, so there wasn't much I could do about that.

Brining the Pork

There is a method in the book where you submerge the pork in a brine liquid in the fridge for 2 hours... I didn't do this.  Instead I used my handy syringe and injected salt water brine into the pork in many places.  I've never really figured out if this works very well.  The Modernist Cuisine folks do it all the time.  I've got to eventually learn about brining, because I really know next to nothing.  Never the less, I injected salt water into the pork.

Paste - Garlic - Rosemary

So next I made a paste of 2 tablespoons of minced garlic (I got mine from a jar, but you could use fresh), three or four sprigs worth of fresh rosemary leaves chopped up, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and some pepper and salt.  

Brown the Loin

I patted the Pork Loin dry and heated some Olive Oil.  I then browned the Loin fat side down in the oil for a 5-10 minutes.  I took the loin out and set it on the cutting board.  I cut holes in the loin with my knife and stuffed it and slathered it with the Paste.

In the Pan

In the pan with the olive oil and the juices from the pork, I heated it up, added 2-3 more sprigs worth of rosemary leaves, then an onion (I used a red onion of all things) and cooked them down a bit.  Then I added white wine.  I used Pinot Grigio, which I don't think is a 'dry'  white wine.  Well, maybe it is, I found a Blog about it:  Wine Folly.  Yes indeed Pinot Grigio is a dry white wine.  What do you know?  Though they suggested I use a Chardonnay for Pork.  Oh well.

I cooked this mixture together till the wine reduced and tasted amazing.

Dutch Oven

In a dutch oven I layered in some carrots.  Then put the pork loin on top of the carrots. I then added the white wine mixture of onions.  I think added a few more splashes of wine.  Then I put the whole thing in the oven at 275.  I wanted to cook it slow.

It would be at this point where next time I'll put the whole thing in a bag and Sous Vide cook it slowly to the perfect temperature of 140 degrees

In the oven I had a hard time getting to 140, I had to eventually increase the heat to 325, and then it over shot the 140 mark to 155 which is overcooked.  Damn it.  (It still tasted wonderfully, but we can do better and I'm convinced Sous Vide is the way to do it!)

You take the roast out and let it sit for 15 minutes, best covered in tented foil.

Sauce

So I heated some olive oil while the roast was sitting, and added 2-3 more sprigs of rosemary to the oil and four small shallots chopped up!  Then I slowly added Chicken Broth, probably 1-2 cups, maybe more, then boiled it. I added the accumulated juices from the pork as well as lots of the juice from the wine mixture the pork just cooked in.  I cooked this mixture for 5 minutes or so and it was the most wonderful gravy.

Carrots and Onions

So the carrots and onions that the Pork Baked in were a side dish and the carrots just tasted AMAZING.

Mashed Potatoes

My daughter made Mashed Potatoes which went with the meal perfectly!

We ate outside with the family and it was just wonderful. One of the better meals.  Just so perfect.  I will say again however that next time I'm Sous Vide cooking it so the meat is just perfect. 

[I'll let you know one day when I do that and come back and add a link to this post pointing to the new recipe]

Again, this was a fantastic meal.  Thanks to the folks at Cook's Illustrated for some of the ideas that inspired this!