Stuff your stocking (and your pork roast)

Since it took me almost a month to do an ex post facto documentation of Thanksgiving, let me see if I can't get ahead of Christmas like a responsible food blogger should do.

My parents got divorced a long time ago - pushing 30 years - so for as long as I can remember I've had two Christmas celebrations, one with Mom's family and one with Dad's.  Each holiday gathering has its own traditions, including the food.  Uncle Mike (my dad's brother) always brings these little roll-up appetizers - pickles and cream cheese wrapped in dried beef - that I just can't get enough of.  Grandma Rose (my mom's mom) brings her caponata, an Italian cross between ratatouille and salsa that's heavy on eggplant and olives and suspended in a sweet and sour tomato sauce.  Both sides have a traditional Christmas ham: mom's is a spiral sliced Honeybaked, dad's is hand carved and served with simple sandwich fixins.  There's usually a complementary poultry on dad's side; most years it's pulled chicken though there's occasionally an upgrade to roast goose or duck.  On mom's side the secondary meat is a bacon-wrapped pork loin stuffed with bread dressing that her butcher calls a "Colorado roast."  It's always one of my holiday favorites (because, no surprise, I love pork) but I've always found it to be slightly lacking.  This year, I aim to fix that.

For one thing, I have no idea why they call this a "Colorado roast."  A quick Google search reveals that they are the only butcher shop in the world that uses this terminology (they're not located in Colorado, by the way).  So if regional reference is out, then what about culinary usage?  "Colorado" is a Spanish word meaning "red" as used in the dish Chile Colorado, a red chile sauce used to marinate and smother your choice of carne.  But there's no red chile sauce in the Colorado roast, so again, I'm stumped.

Secondly (and most importantly) the roast comes pre-made and ready to cook from the butcher, which is great if you've never butterflied a pork loin before, but it requires some kitchen precision to make sure the pork is tender and that everything is safe to eat.  Whole pork needs only to be cooked to 145 degrees to be considered safe, but when you add bacon which must be cooked to 155 (not a problem since it's on the outside) and the stuffing which must be cooked to 165, the tendency is for the pork loin to dry out as the temperature rises, which isn't very appetizing.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably learned by now that brine is the secret weapon for retaining moisture in lean meat.  So here's how Justin's Colorado Roast is going down: first, I'm going to brine our pork loin in a mixture of salt, sugar, chile de arbol and cumin, then I'm going to butterfly it and marinate it overnight in chile colorado sauce, then I'm going to mix up some cornbread stuffing with more chile colorado sauce and roll that into the loin before I wrap it all in bacon and roast it.  A tender, delicious and appropriately named roast that is fit for a holiday banquet.

Now, since I don't have a time machine to show you how the roast turned out 3 days from now, you're going to have to use your imagination as I show you some pictures of a similar roast I made a couple months ago.  Or, you can just make this roast for your own holiday celebration.  It's pretty good too.

First, brine your roast.  BRINE YOUR ROAST.  Lean meats almost demand to be brined, especially if they have to be cooked to a higher than normal internal temperature.  Let it sit in the brine for 24-48 hours.  It'll be worth it, trust me.

After removing the roast from the brine and rinsing it off, you're going to need to butterfly your roast.  This can be pretty tricky, but as long as you've got a sharp knife you should be all set.  What you're doing is called a "roll cut" as you're basically using your knife to unroll the pork loin.  Hold the knife parallel to the cutting board somewhere between a half-inch to an inch above it.  The thinner you cut the roast, the more surface area you have for incorporating stuffing later.

Now that you've got the loin all splayed out, you've got the option to pound it out with a meat mallet to get it to the thickness that you want.  I really wouldn't recommend going any thinner than a half inch, since you still want it to resemble a roast and not just a rolled up meat paper.  However, if you've got some thick spots in your butterflied loin, feel free to whack away until you've got a uniform thickness.

If you're going to further marinate the roast, do it now.  The extra surface area will absorb more flavor than if you marinated it whole.

Next you want to cover the entire surface of the roast with your stuffing.  Like I said, for Christmas I'm planning on using a cornbread stuffing, but for this roast I used Monterey Jack cheese and green chiles.  Once you've got a liberal application of stuffing mixture, roll the roast back up until it looks like its original shape.  It's going to have a seam in it, so you're going to have to tie the roast up with twine.  If you're wrapping it in bacon, the twine goes on the outside (duh).

For the record, I rubbed this roast with Bolner's fajita seasoning and placed it on a bed of onions, bell peppers and whole garlic cloves (my plan was to make pork fajitas out of the roast and the pan vegetables). It's ready to go in the oven: blast it at 450 for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 325 for about 30 minutes per pound.  The meat needs to get to 145 degrees but the stuffing needs to be 165.  A cheese based stuffing like the one above should have no trouble getting to that higher temperature if the meat around it is adequately hot.  A more dense stuffing (like the cornbread) will be a little trickier.  If you can take separate readings, do it.  If not, you can cook the whole thing until the meat reaches 160.  Your brine will help the meat retain moisture, so don't worry about blowing past 145 degrees.  Tent it in foil for 25-30 minutes: it will carry over up to safe temperature and the juices will settle throughout the roast so you don't get a gushing mess when you carve it.

Note in the photo above that I still lost some juice when I carved this.  Regardless, this pork was almost perfect: beautifully colored (pink pork, as long as it's cooked to proper temperature, is safe to eat), fork tender and robustly flavored.  I can't wait to plop this down next to the Christmas ham this year.  A roast worthy of any foodie holiday.

Posole revisited

A few years ago when I was writing for the other food blog with the ridiculous name, I wrote a piece on posole, the traditional Mexican green chile and hominy stew.  The batch that came from that article met with some pretty high praise; one person even said it was the best chili they ever had in their life, which made me proud enough to bite my tongue and not explain the differences between chili and posole.  Despite the success, I never made it again.  Then, one day, my former colleague at the old food blog said he makes it according to that recipe several times a year and it's a household favorite.  I decided to give it another shot.

I asked my wife if she'd be into some posole and she said "eh, I don't know, I don't really like hominy."  So I asked her if she thought she'd like it better with corn instead of hominy (since hominy is just nixtamalized corn anyway).  We decided that a corn batch and a hominy batch would make sense and even be decent fodder for a comparison taste test.  We do keep it extra nerdy in the Braise Jebus household.

First step is to prep your veggies: onions, green chiles and garlic.  Onions and green chiles get a 1/2" dice or "rustic chop" (it is stew, after all), garlic gets minced or pressed.  I know it's cheating but I love the jars of pre-minced garlic when I need to use a lot for a recipe.  Throw it all in the pot with your hominy (or corn).

 I'm all out of long pig at the moment*, so I thawed out a 4 lb. pork loin roast I had in the freezer (left over from this excursion into deliciousness) and cut it into little cubes.  I didn't bother brining the meat beforehand since it was going to simmer in a pot for 6 hours and absorb all of the other posole flavors while staying tender.  I did want to give it a quick brown though, so into the skillet it goes with some salt and pepper.

Once you get all sides tanned, into the pot goes the pork.  You want to add water and season the stew at this point.  The recipe I used calls for menudo spice or chili powder.  Went I went to the Mexican grocery, I discovered that there is menudo spice (an herb heavy mix, mostly oregano, onion and pepper flakes) and menudo chili spice (which is more like a traditional chili powder with ground chile, cumin, and other goodies).  I bought both but opted for the herb mix, wanting to avoid the colorado appearance of a red chili.

And that's pretty much it.  Simmer it for 6 hours or so and adjust flavors as necessary.  In the original recipe that inspired my post, the author says "don’t be stingy with the salt and pepper in this recipe – you’ll need it."  When I made my first batch, I found this to be true.  However, this time around, I aggressively seasoned the stew from the outset and it ended up way too salty.  Lesson learned: you've got 6 hours dude, relax, taste it when the pork is safely cooked and adjust as you go.  You've got all day, no need to rush.

If you want to thicken it up at the end, a little masa flour does the trick, just pour a little bit in at a time and let it cook in until you get the thickness you want.  I found that the corn version needed a little more than the hominy version since the corn is not a starchy to begin with.  As far as how the two stews stacked up side by side, they were very similar in flavor (since they were made exactly the same way) though the corn posole did seem a little sweeter than the hominy variant.  If you like that sweetness but prefer hominy in your posole, you can always add a splash of corn syrup at the end of the stew to round out the flavor.

Posole is a beautiful thing: unique, flavorful, inexpensive and simple to make.  I really should revisit this more than once every couple of years.

*For the record, the Braise Jebus blog does not practice, endorse or condone cannibalism or human sacrifice.  Beware of the hairless goat.