Roast Pork with Vinegar and Bay Leaves

It's Sunday and 6pm, and unless I think fast, it's going to be "let's order in." I rummage through the freezer and take stock of the few "emergency" meats I keep on hand. (With a butcher's shop right on the way to my car after work, I like to buy fresh the day that I'm going to use it.) Some boneless chicken breast, a skirt steak, flank steak, and boneless pork loin. Hmmm... maybe Italian? Okay, let's check out what Marcella Hazan has to suggest. I pull out her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

I find a suitable pork loin dish. Now I all I need is a vegetable and a starch. I glance at a carrot and caper dish, but recall that I have a head of radicchio in the fridge. Hazan comes through again with a radicchio and bean salad. Perfect.

The salad recipe requires cranberry beans, but says that cannellini can substitute. Cranberry beans I have not. I do have dried cannellini, but I lack a time machine that will let me turn the clock back 24 hours so I can soak them. Digging through my shelves turns up a can of navy beans. Good enough for me!

Add a pasta and olive oil side dish for an easy starch, and I have...

Dinner Menu:
- Roast port with vinegar and bay leaves
- Radicchio and warm bean salad
- Whole wheat fusilli sauteed in olive oil with garlic and pinenuts and herbs

The roast pork is wonderfully simple. Brown the loin on all sides in butter and olive oil at medium heat. Then salt all sides and add fresh ground black pepper, red wine vinegar (1/2 C per 2lb pork), and 3 bay leaves. Cook tightly covered over very low heat, turning occasionally, until tender. Remove the pork and let it rest. Slice. Skim fat off of juices. Add a bit of water and boil, using a wooden spool to get all the browned bits off the bottom. Pour of the meat and serve.

The salad consists of shredded radicchio and cooked beans still warm tossed with olive oil, black pepper, salt, and splash of red wine vinegar. Serve immediately. The recipe claims to make enough for 4-6 people, and though I make only 1/3 of the recipe, it still makes enough to feed four as a side!

The pasta was simply cooked whole wheat pasta sauteed in olive oil with garlic, toasted pinenuts, and tossed with Penzy's pasta sprinkle and salt. Say what you want, but I like whole wheat pasta.

All three go wonderfully together. The splash of vinegar ties the salad in nicely with the pork without tasting the same. The pasta offered a nice contrast to the other two without clashing.

Cook book: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. (Note: the pasta dish was improvised)

Some specific ingredients I used:
- Pork loin from Sparrow Meat Market
- Portuguese sea salt, used on the salad and pasta
- Sel Marin gros sel (grey sea salt), used on the pork loin
- Trianna, olive oil from Argentina (won the first international competition "Sol d'Oro 2002"), used on the salad
- Philippo Burrio extra virgin olive oil (my "inexpensive" cooking oil)
- Forvm cabernet sauvignon vinegar by Cellers Puig & Roca S.A, for the pork and salad
- Penzy's Spices pasta sprinkle
- Bionaturae organic whole wheat fusilli

Comments

[Triple Nickel]

I am a huge fan of the Trianna Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. However, I live in Houston, TX and have only found it in Austin. Do you know of a way to order it online? I love to use this olive oil for dipping bread, and I add Alessi Brand dipping spices that come in their own grinder top bottle.

Anyway, thanks for any help you can give me. I love to cook as a hobby. I am a NASA research pilot here at the Johnson Space Center, where I teach the astronauts how to land the shuttle and I also fly 3 other jets. Cooking is what I do at home alone, and I have been introducing friends to this oil and they too are hooked!

Triple

[Kitchen Chick]

Wow. Your day job is a lot more interesting than mine. What are the three other jets?

Here's the one place I've found that seems to sell it online:

Social Enterprise, LLC

Apparently, in addition to being tasty, Trianna Olive Oil is also organic and made in accordance with fair trade principles. And kind of hard to find online...

Enjoy!