Sunday, October 11, 2009

Stuffed Pork Loin With Tomato Cream Sauce


Dave over at My Year on The Grill has done a few spiral sliced pork loin posts lately and he motivated me to finally get around to trying one myself. Spiral slicing is a technique in which you convert a round pork loin into a flat piece of meat. Check out this post of his for actually HOW to do it, but definitely use the sharpest knife that you have.

Here's how my 2.5 lb pork loin roast ended up. TIP: have your cooking strings laid out under your meat before you start to stuff it. That way when you get ready to roll it back up, you don't have to fiddle with them.

I made a quick red sauce, Maria's Twenty-Minute Tomato Sauce from the Joy of Cooking (pg 305). Maria is either a liar or can't tell time, it took me 37 minutes but I'll let that slide since it tasted good. I ladled some of the sauce onto the flattened roast,

then topped it with mozzarella cheese,

some fresh halved basil leaves,

rolled it all back up, tied it, and topped it off with some more herbs and pepper.

Then it was onto a grill set up for indirect heat at 350f for just about 1 hour or until the internal temp is 140f. TIP: You will want to put foil or a drip pan under this baby.

While it is roasting, I made a simple tomato cream sauce, also from the Joy of Cooking (Pg 48). It is simply 2 cups of chicken STOCK (not base, broth, etc) reduced to 1/2 cup and 1 cup of heavy cream reduced to 1/2 cup, whisked together. Then I added 4 tablespoons of the tomato sauce that I had made earlier and simmered another 5 minutes.

This is why I warned you about foil or a drip pan! Ooey gooey cheese, glorious cheese.

I pulled the roast and let it rest while the rice finished up.

Sliced and served with the tomato cream sauce, wild rice with sun dried cherries and green bean almondine.
I was very happy with the flavors. But I took the roast to 147f before taking it off the grill. So after it rested, it was a bit over done for my preferences, but that was my mistake and I can fix that the next time. It was still good, just not as great as it could have been.