Ad hoc cooking

On the flight home Tuesday from The Most Relaxing Vacation Ever, I was looking through my photos and recipe files on my Mac and apparently, I used to be a cook! Unless you dig back several months on this blog, you would never know, since most of what I’ve been doing here has been staring straight ahead with a glazed expression on my face in disbelief and horror that I have actually been relocated from California to New Jersey. That or gibbering about the dismal quality of kitchen in which I’ve been cobbling meals together for (can you believe it) the last three months.

I sat there on the plane, scrolling through the pictures of strawberry rhubarb tarts and bi bim bap, grilled strip steaks, orange-and-garlicky pork roasts with caramelized onions, pad thai and artichokes with clarified butter, creamy leek shiitake risotto and duck and andouille gumbo and lemon meringue pie and potato mushroom gratin and chili con carne….man, that looks GOOD! I wouldn’t mind making that bouillabaisse again! It was like that little flame in the back of my brain flickered for a second, reminding me that it is still there. I guess that’s what a good vacation will do for you.

And about that vacation. We were about 3 years overdue for one, what with extenuating circumstances, so when a very last-minute trip to Grand Cayman to chill, see some family, and celebrate our anniversary suddenly worked itself out, I took about 37 seconds to pack, shook the NJ dust off my feet and headed south to balmy breezes, silky warm aquamarine water, powdery gold sand, palm trees with iguanas lolling in their fronds, and a little tropical storm action thrown in the middle to keep me from getting too sunburned. I read books, basked in the sun, lying supine upon a beach chair as much as possible. It was blissful.

Did I mention the incandescently glowing equatorial sunsets?

And the gaudily brilliant blue water?

But, back to that little flicker in the back of my brain.

I’m still in boxes here, those mysteriously labelled boxes of small paper-wrapped lumps that contain, somewhere in their depths, all of the tools I’ve collected over the years. I am reluctant to do a full-scale unpacking yet, since there really isn’t anywhere clean to put things away until the work in the kitchen is finished, so I’ve been digging through and trying to find the absolute necessities as much as I can. It was a tearful reunion when my two small cast iron skillets surfaced, but a sieve or strainer has remained resolutely beyond reach, so when I decided to blanch  broccoli raab to saute´ with a pork roast and sweet potatoes, red peppers, and pearl onions, I improvised with a little green strawberry basket to stand in for the strainer. It didn’t actually work that well. It was a little flimsy. We did, at the end of the day, have steamed broccoli raab, which was a deliciously peppery counterpoint to the sweet potatoes and bell peppers.

 

Simple and good, I give you-

Pork Roast

1 boneless pork loin roast

oil

salt

black pepper

sage

paprika

1 onion

 

Preheat the oven to a blistering 450 F.

Using paper towels, thoroughly dry the surface of the meat.

Drizzle a spoonful of oil and coat the surface lightly.

Liberally season with salt, pepper, sage and paprika.

Slice the onion into thick rings and make a “rack” in the bottom of a cast iron skillet

or whatever suitably oven-proof dish that will hold the pork roast. Put the pork roast on top, fat side up.

Place in the hot oven for about 15 minutes and then reduce the heat to 250 F and continue

to cook for about an hour to an hour and 20 minutes or until your thermometer reads about 150.

Allow the meat to sit, loosely covered for  10-15 minutes. Slice and serve.

Make a sandwich with the leftover pork and onions the next day.

 

I’m back in the saddle.

 

Advertisement