Sunday, June 14, 2009

Dinner for less than the price of two combo meals

I wasn't even going to blog about this but when I realized that this meal for our family of 4 plus 1 guest cost about $10, I couldn't resist.Alexis scored a 3.35 lb "boneless pork sirloin roast" at the store for under $4. A pork sirloin is apparently just the extreme end of your run of the mill pork loin. It wasn't close dated, green or anything. It was nice and pink. It was just something on sale, nothing wrong with it.

I rubbed it with a paste of 2 TB of rosemary (from our front yard), 1 t of minced garlic, 1 t of kosher salt, 1 t of pepper, and about 1/4 c of olive oil. I popped it in the oven** at 450f for 10 minutes in a oven safe skillet. After 10 minutes, I reduced the heat to 250f and cooked it to 150f internal.

I too it out of the pan to let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing. I added 1 minced shallot to the pan on the stove top over medium heat and sauteed for about a minute. Then I deglazed the pan with about 1/4 cup "cooking wine". After it reduced a bit I added maybe 1/2 cup of beef broth, mixing well. I whisked in a tablespoon or two of flour and a finely diced green onion.

We served it family style with a nice rice pilaf that Alexis made up all on her own. I was very impressed since she normally doesn't cook something unless she has a strict recipe to follow. And guess what....it was better than the pilaf I normally make!Sure beats a couple of McDonalds extra value meals.

**Yes! Can you believe it? I actually own an oven and use it from time to time. I know that comes as a shock since this time of year almost everything we cook is cooked outside.