Bay of Delicious Pigs

My four regular readers have probably noticed that I've written a few articles about pork loin roasts.  There's a good reason for that: they're relatively cheap (who isn't on a budget these days?) and, when prepared the way I tell you to, delicious.  At the risk of getting monotonous, I'm going to write one more article about pork loin and then I'm going to shelve this subject for a while.

Last time we talked pork, I was telling you my plan to make a bacon-wrapped loin roast with Hoppin' John and dijon carrot slaw.  As you can probably guess by the photo above, that all turned out great.  Still, since I was only cooking for the lady and me, we had a fair amount of leftover pork.  I'm a lazy man around the house (well, until my resolution kicks in) so most of the remaining pork got eaten as it was prepared.  However, toward the end of its shelf life, I decided to dress it up a little bit by turning those last few slices into sandwiches.

Specifically, Cuban sandwiches.  There's something mysterious and magical about the Cuban sandwich, despite its simplicity.  Roasted pork meets ham, plus Swiss cheese, mustard and pickles on crusty bread, all pressed together and served hot.  If it's that easy, why do so many attempts miss the mark?  As with most sandwiches, the answer is simple: if the bread's wrong, the whole thing is wrong.

Traditional Cuban bread is similar to commonplace Italian or French bread, but with the addition of lard to the dough.  My wife has been experimenting a lot with baking of late (despite my culinary prowess in several areas, I am a shitty baker) and makes a pretty impressive rustic Italian loaf.  However, when I suggested that she bake a pan Cubano for our sandwiches, she was put off a bit by the idea of larding up the bread.  I suspect that revulsion, along with the fact that the hardening lard makes the bread nearly inedible after 24 hours, explains why it's nearly impossible to get Cuban bread north of the Everglades.  We settled instead for some ciabatta mini-loaves.  Yeah, it's not authentic anymore and I'll bet you'll view the rest of this post with disdain, but you know what?  It wasn't going to be authentic anyway, because I was repurposing leftover pork loin instead of slow cooking a shoulder in mojo marinade anyway, so shut up.

I sliced my pork loin pretty thick and I knew I was going to need thinner pieces for these sandwiches, so I beat my meat.  Yup, just plopped it down there on the counter and pounded it out.  I'll be here all week, folks.  First, I had a little bit of tenderloin on these slices so I separated that into small chunks, then I hit the remaining loin portion with the tenderizer mallet until they were a little under 1/4-inch thick.  A layer of mayonnaise on the bottom bun (optional), a little bit of shredded Swiss cheese, then the tenderized loin, then the tenderloin chunks (the pinkish meat on top in the following photo).

If you ever find yourself in Ybor City, you might see something called a "sandwich mixto" which is another name for a Cubano, so named because it is a mix of ham and roasted pork.  You might also see something called "medianoche" which is a Cuban sandwich made with soft egg bread instead of crusty Cuban bread.  Nothing wrong with that either.  Anyway, throw some shredded Swiss cheese on top of the roasted pork (I like to layer the cheese throughout the sandwich to help it all stick together), then add thin sliced ham (you can also add some salami, but it's not an essential ingredient), more cheese, dill pickles and more cheese.  Dress the top bun with yellow mustard and finish off the sandwich.  Now for the fun part...

A Cuban isn't a Cuban unless it's pressed to within an inch of its life.  I guess, in retrospect, it's social commentary on the oppressive Castro regime, but I'm sure that's not why the sandwich is made that way.  Probably more to do with, you know, taste than politics, especially since the sandwich predates the dictator.  Anyway, if you happen to have a commercial panini press at home, you're in luck.  If you don't, you have a couple of options.  The George Foreman grill is a common bastardization of the panini press, but you may find that your sandwich is too big for the Foreman to accommodate it.  I went with a griddle pan on the stove top, plus a heavy cast iron skillet (with a layer of aluminum foil between it and the sandwiches) and a little bit of extra downward pressure provided by my burly man muscles.  I've actually seen people use foil-wrapped bricks to crush their sandwiches.  The instrument of oppression is secondary to the drive to make the sandwich submit to your will.

The key here is to melt the cheese, heat the meat and crisp the bread without burning it.  I found that my bread got toasty on the bottom well before the cheese in the middle melted, so I gave them one more downward push and then finished them in the oven to get more even heat than the stove top griddle could provide.  If I had a panini press, there'd be heat coming from both the top and bottom.  Probably should've heated up my cast iron.  Eureka moment: if you have a pizza stone, heat that up in the oven and then use it to press the sandwiches.  Boom, homemade panini press.  Be careful though: obviously balancing a 450 degree pizza stone on top of sandwiches on your range is a little dangerous.

Once everything's all hot and gooey, you're all set.  The salty sweet of the ham plays off the savory roasted pork, the acidity of the pickle gives depth to the tart spice of the mustard and the luscious melted Swiss is contrasted by the crispy, toasted bread.  If there is such a thing as the perfect sandwich, the Cuban has to be in consideration for that spot.  So simple, yet so richly complex.  And to think something this good came from transformed leftover pork loin.  A food that I shall not speak of again until, oh, let's say, June.

The new calendar

It's amazing to me how much stock people put into the idea of a new year.  Without getting too much into the philosophy of time - after all, time is just a construct of man to prevent everything from happening at once - I can safely say that if there's snow on the ground at 11:59 on New Year's Eve that there will still be snow on the ground when the ball drops at midnight.  Nothing is dramatically altered when we put up a new calendar: the amount of change from December 31st to January 1st is roughly equivalent to the amount of change that occurs from Flag Day Eve to Flag Day.

But yet, new year traditions abound.  Oh fuck it, let's call them what they are: superstitions.  Some say that you should throw the doors of your home open wide at midnight to allow the old year to escape, as if it were some kind of squirrel or raccoon that needed to be ushered out of your house.  Seems like actual squirrels or raccoons would be more likely to come into your house in this circumstance, which would be in direct violation of the "first-footer" superstition that demands the first visitor of a house in the new year be a healthy, prosperous man of dark complexion.  Then there's the notion that nothing should leave the house on New Year's Day - not even garbage - as it is a harbinger of net loss in the new year.  I feel bad for anybody who throws a party, especially one where people follow the age-old practice of vomiting out the demons of the past year.*

Of course, these superstitions also tend to involve food.  I remember growing up in a house that always had some variety of pork and sauerkraut on January 1st.  What I didn't know as a child (and I'm not sure if the family knew either) is that this came about because the pig roots forward when it forages.  Cows stand still when they graze and chickens scratch backward into the dirt when they peck for food.  So, symbolically, eating pork is a testament to progress.  A little strange that we don't emulate other pig behaviors on New Year's Day, though I suppose if you're one of the aforementioned garbage retainers you could make the argument that you're wallowing in your own filth for the sake of future prosperity.

Interestingly, there's no hidden meaning behind the sauerkraut: it was simply a readily available winter vegetable that was complimentary to the traditional pork.  Though I'm not superstitious, I'm happy to learn that I wasn't ushering in bad tidings by turning my nose up to this rotting cabbage for the past thirty-some years.

This year, I think I'm going to make a bacon-wrapped pork loin roast (because if pigs really do bring good fortune, why not double up?), some Hoppin' John - traditional Southern New Year's food with black-eyed peas, rice, chopped vegetables and smoked pork (I'm using jowl bacon, but a hock will do just fine) - and Dijon slaw with fresh cabbage and carrot, prepared thusly:
1/2 lb. grated carrots
1/2 lb. shredded cabbage
1-1/2 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1-1/2 tbsp. scallions
1 tbsp. chopped parsley
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary
1/2 tsp. sugar

Combine carrots, scallions and parsley.  Thoroughly mix mustard, olive oil, vinegar, salt, rosemary and sugar, then combine with carrot mixture.  Chill overnight, then combine equal parts carrot mixture and cabbage before serving.

Happy New Year everybody!

*OK, I made that vomit thing up, but here's a big list of actual new year superstitions to help you ring in 2013 in a manner befitting a society without advanced technology.

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.

The Bard of Back

First thing's first: let's clear up a misconception.  Pork loin roast and pork tenderloin are not the same cut.  Pork tenderloin is the psoas major muscle, the same muscle that yields the filet mignon from a cow.  Like that steak, the pork tenderloin trades fatty flavor for lean, tender meat.  That's why you often find pre-marinated tenderloins in your grocery butcher case for $4/lb.  But we're not here to talk about tenderloins, we're talking about loins...

The loin is a collection of muscles in the back which yield several cuts including pork chops, back ribs, top loin roast, sirloin roast and center roast (which can be turned into a crown roast by "Frenching" the bones).  The top loin and sirloin roasts are usually very lean and can be very flavorful, especially for a price nearly half that of the tenderloin.

The tenderloin, because it is so tender, is a somewhat forgiving cut of pork for the inexperienced cook, but  loin roasts have a tendency to dry out if cooked incorrectly.  There's nothing more embarrassing than serving a dried out, tough crown roast; believe me, I've suffered that misfortune.  Luckily, there are many tactics you can employ to help your loin roast keep its moisture and flavor.

First off, I highly recommend brining a pork loin roast.  Not only does this add flavor to the meat, but the salt breaks down muscle fibers to tenderize them while at the same time encourages the protein cells to retain water.  Brine is simple to make - about 3/4 cup of kosher salt per gallon of water - and you can add whatever flavoring agents you like to the salt solution.  For pork, I love brown sugar and apple cider vinegar.  The salt will carry those flavors into the deepest parts of the meat if given enough time.  Science!

Traditionally, this would be the perfect application for basting.  Now, I didn't go to culinary school so maybe I'm missing out on some trick, but I hate basting and I'm pretty sure that it doesn't actually work.  You pull the juices out and spritz the top of the roast, where they just run back down to the bottom of the pan.  Whatever's left gets put back into the hot oven where it evaporates and dries the meat out further.  Not to mention that opening and closing your oven over and over to baste affects the cooking temperature and time.  Someone give me one reason why basting works.  I dare you.

For fatty roast like shoulder, you can use the old "low and slow" technique in which fat collagen melts into gelatin and moistens the pork.  That's a long process though, and doesn't work well with lean loin cuts.  So what if there were a way to artificially marble the roast with fat?  Oh, that's called larding and it's ridiculously difficult even with the proper equipment.  There is another method of fat addition that basically bastes a roast automatically while it cooks.  It's called barding, but you probably know it better as bacon-wrapping.

Technically, you can bard with any kind of fat.  Fatback is the most traditional barding fat, but bacon is more readily available (unless you are on a first name basis with your butcher, which you probably should be if you're reading cooking blogs) and does an adequate job.  Plus, if you tell somebody that you wrapped it in bacon, they'll probably salivate.  If you tell them it's wrapped in fatback, they'll probably skip dinner and head to the gym.

So we're going to make a barded back roast (bacon-wrapped pork loin).  Start with a 4-5 pound roast and brine it in your fridge for a day or two.  Yeah, you need to plan ahead: you plan to fail when you fail to plan.  On the day you're going to cook, pull the roast out and let it sit at room temperature for a bit while you're warming up the oven to 450 and prepping the accoutrement.  If you've got a roasting rack for your pan, set it up, but if you don't you can make a natural rack by lining the bottom of the pan with carrots and onions.

Pork loin needs some help in the flavor department, so it's usually a good idea to coat the outside of it with herbs.  I used fresh rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil.  Sage is nice with pork too.  If you've got a mortar and pestle, mash it all up into a paste and slather it on there.  If you don't, crush it with a spoon to release the essences from the fresh herbs before applying to the roast.

Now for the bard.  Apply enough bacon to cover the whole roast from end to end.  Overlap the slices a little bit since they'll shrink up in the oven.

You want the oven to be at 450 when the roast goes in because you want to hit the bacon hard so it'll get crispy and release its fat into the roast below.  However, you should only cook at 450 for about 15 minutes - 20 tops - until the bacon just starts to crisp up at the edges.  Any longer than that and you run the risk of drying out the loin: even with brining and barding you still can't abuse it with temperature.  Drop that heat to 350 and let it go until it reaches an internal temperature of 140, which should only take another 50-60 minutes.  It should look beautiful and you will want to tear right into it.

DON'T!!!  Let it rest on a cutting board for about 20 minutes.  The carryover cooking will bring it up to a safe temperature of 145 degrees (thanks USDA) and the resting will allow all the juices - remember how hard we worked to keep those? - to settle throughout the roast instead of spilling out.  While you're waiting, rescue the carrots and onions from the bottom of the roasting pan.  Maybe chop up some red potatoes and roast those in the oven.  Just don't cut the meat until it's done resting.  Your patience will be greatly rewarded.