Dangling Conversations

Posted 16 Aug, 2005 at 23:51 by kael in /FoodDrink | Permanent link

Pork Loin is probably one of the best cuts of all, arguably surpassed only by the pork tenderloin.

I don't really dig on swine all that much myself, but decided I'd try something I wouldn't normally make while I was up at the cottage this year. So, after browsing my Barbecue Bible, I found this really great recipe for a roast pork loin.

The original recipe called butterflying the pork loin roast (basically, this means getting it flat--cut a slice about a half inch above the bottom of the roast, and when you get close to cutting it off, roll the roast, the way you would a roll of paper towels; the goal is to get a big flat sheet of meat about a half inch deep), and putting an olive based paste on it. Unfortunately, the lines dividing olive lovers and olive haters are deep and evenly split, but in an issue of Canadian living, they had a similar recipe using a mushroom and pepper paste instead.

So, in order to minimize time away from the cottage, I put the ingredients on the shopping list three days ahead of the intended cook date.... Unfortunately, all the mushrooms and peppers got used up making pizzas for lunch, so on the grand day I was in a bit of a bind. The refrigerator was almost bare, except for a basked of blueberries at the bottom, and looking around, the only other thing I could find was a basket of crab apples. So, I improvised a blueberry crabapple paste by reducing about 2 cups of blueberries in a cup of water and a cup of rum (Appleton Estate's V/X).

After spreading the paste on the butterflied pork loin, I rolled it up, and put it on bacon and cooking string, so that the string was perpendicular to the string, and parallel to the bacon. Then I tied the string ends together, so that the strips of bacon wrapped the pork loin. This is important because pork loin is essentially a huge chunk of protien, with almost no fat, so you need to put some fat around it to keep it from drying out. While I learned that it is possible to do while everyone else is waterskiing, it's MUCH easier to do this with an extra pair of hands to tie the string together.

To go with, I barbecued a whole cabbage and did some beans in some lemon-dill vinegrette that was left over, but I'll leave that for another post.

1 pork loin roast (about 3 lbs.) 2 cups blueberries 1 cup water 1 cup rum 6 crabapples, peeled, cored, and sliced into chunks. 5 strips of bacon 4 12" lengths of cooking string

1. Trim the sheath of fat off your pork loin. Discard the fat.
2. Butterfly your pork loin, using as long and sharp a knife as you can handle. The easiest way to do that is set the loin down like a paper towel roll, so that if you're right handed it will roll to your left. Cut in from your dominant side and unroll it when you need to. Don't worry if the end of the roll is not quite level.
3. Reduce your sauce: Put the blueberries, crabapples and water in a sauce pan, and warm at medium low heat, mixing occasionally. When the water is almost completely evaporated, pour in the rum (don't drink any of it yourself!), continuing to stir occasionally. Remove when the rum is almost evaporated. Allow the paste to cool slightly.
4. On a flat clean surface, lay out the four lengths of string. Lay the bacon perpendicularly across it.
5. Spread the paste evenly over one side of the butterflied pork loin, except for a 1 inch strip where you started cutting (when you roll the pork loin up, the paste will come out and cover that part anyways).
6. Put the rolled up pork loin on the bacon and string, so that the rolled axis is parallel to the bacon strips. Tie up the string so that the pork loin is wrapped in bacon strips.
7. Grill indirectly on medium heat (about 300° to 350°f) for about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. (grilling indirectly requires at least a two burner barbecue: get one of the burners going, but leave the otherone off. Put the meat on the cool side, close the lid, and leave it closed!. Every time you open the lid you're going to add about five minutes to the cooking time. The bacon's on there so that you don't have to baste it, and it's on indirect heat so that it will cook evenly without burning.
8. Remove from the grill to a cutting board. Let cool for five minutes before serving.

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