Roasting Pork

A good friend of mine and my roommates came over to the house a while ago to hang out and spend some time with us before moving to Missouri. She brought with her a fabulous William Sonoma recipe for Roast Pork with Pears. She is a great cook, and the pork was delicious. I have since tried to replicate the recipe and have learned a few things about roasting a pork loin.

The Williams Sonoma recipe calls for a pork loin split horizontally. You put a mixture of herbs and garlic on the top of one half and then tie the pork halves back together. Placing the herbs inside the roast allows the flavors in the rub to seep into the meat while it roasts. The pork loin is browned on the outside and placed on top of a bed of leeks swimming in stock and then surrounded with grilled pears before it is roasted. The pork turns out quite juicy and flavorful, the leeks wilt down until they are delicious bits of subtle onion flavor and the pears give everything a burst of sweetness to contrast with all the savory flavors. You can find this recipe on the Williams Sonoma website, and I highly recommend it if you want to make something special for dinner guests. The link to the recipe is at the bottom of this post. I have a few tips to add to the recipe, however, that I think will ensure a successful venture.

The first step in a fabulous roast is getting the pork. Most stores don't have pork loin sitting out except for the kind that come pre-marinated in a plastic tube. That pork is very expensive because it is just the choice part of the meat. You don't need to spend the money on a choice cut of pork because you will be ensuring the tenderness and juiciness of the meat with your cooking method. If you don't see other pork options, just ask your butcher to cut you a pork loin. You can also ask the butcher for some butcher string, mine just gave me a large chunk of it without charging me for it.

The last time I made pork I asked the butcher for a cut large enough for 4 people, I got a cut large enough for 8 so we froze half of the loin. If you end up in this situation, make sure that you thaw the loin entirely before cooking the previously frozen piece. Cutting corners here will result in an unevenly cooked piece of pork that is to done in places, and too raw in others. You can eat pork at a medium rare, but it is not recommended to eat rare pork. I also do not recommend microwave defrosting, I tried to speed the defrost process along and ended up with the corners of my loin fully cooked before I ever started the official cooking process. If time is an issue for you and you must enlist a microwave to speed up the defrosting process, cut off the cooked portions of the pork before continuing with the recipe. If the pork is fully cooked before you put it in the oven, it will burn while the rest of the pork cooks. This is definitely something to avoid; burning loins are only a good thing in trashy romance novels.

Leeks can be tricky to handle if you have not worked with them before. Leeks are essentially a really big scallion, or the green onions you often see in salad or on top of baked potatoes. They are grown in sandy soil and their layers are not as packed as a traditional onion, so the soil often will get lodged between the layers. Eating sand is never desired. Cut the white portions of the leeks off and then slice them in half lengthwise. Fill your sink with clean cool water and place the leeks in the water. The leeks will float and the sand will fall to the bottom. Separate the layers of the leek to ensure all the soil had fallen away. This recipe only calls for the white portion of the leeks but save the greens, they make a great potato leek soup.

One thing that I like to do is find a recipe and then change it while still keeping the basic idea of the recipe intact. I did that with this recipe and had quite wonderful results. The basic idea that I see in this recipe is to place flavor elements inside pork and then roast it on top of some aromatics. You can experiment from here with the flavors you place on the inside of the meat as well as what you roast it with.

For my variation on this recipe, I placed sliced peaches and onions inside the pork loin. I used hot spices on the outside of the loin (cumin, onion powder, and red pepper flakes) before browning the meat. I used chunked yellow onions and apples as the base for my roasting pan. I glazed the outside of the loin about halfway through the roasting time with a mixture of honey and orange juice concentrate. The flavors of spice and fruit contrasted nicely with each other, both seemed to pop individually in the mouth as you ate. I recommend serving this with a sweet wine wine, we used a Riesling and that was lovely. If that doesn't sound like the type of thing that gets your taste buds excited play around with different flavor combos at home. Once you get the hang of the basic steps, this can become a go-to dinner without getting stale because you can mix up the flavors however you like depending on what you have on hand.

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/recipedetail.cfm?objectid=18361AE7-A94D-104C-7EE77833DFF8F77D