Saturday's dinner

Well, this is a "cheese sandwich" kind of post.* So be it. The roast is from Simca's Cuisine, and some of the directions seemed a little off to me (I think the final cooking shoudl have been uncovered, for example), but the flavor was great. She calls for a pork loin roast larded with ham or tongue. I couldn't find a larding needle in any of the four stores I visited, including China Fair, which has such niceties as a spaetzle maker and a croissant-cutter, from which I restrained, but with delight that someone in Boston is making spaetzle and croissants. Anyway, the larding started to seem overwhelming, and the loin was so expensive, I just bought a pork sirloin roast, which comes with its own damned fat, but doesn't look as nice when sliced (see above). I followed her instructions to paint with mustard, then roll in brown sugar, and then brown - at least, up until the browning part. A roast covered in lots of mustard and brown sugar doesn't so much brown as simmer. After the "browning" you add a little bourbon, then light it, which was great fun, if a little scary. Foot-high flames from the pot! Exciting cooking adventures! Bouillon, cover, into the oven, cook cook cook, turn, salt, pepper, cook some more, then add prunes which have been soaked in more bouillon, cook just a bit more, remove meat, more whiskey into the sauce and a little arrowroot and voila! Deliciousness. Even without browning. Prunes and pork, always a winner.


*For those of you who don't read a few dozen cooking blogs a day, somebody wrote a piece a while back about how bad most food blogs are, characterizing the great number of them as "I had a cheese sandwich for lunch today" sort of affairs. In response, the food blogger community posted an enormous number of essays about cheese sandwiches, which I found charming. A "cheese sandwich" post has come to describe a post that lacks any sort of thinking or interest, just a quick description of something someone ate for lunch or, as in this case, dinner.