Pork Week! 2

If you haven't read the first post in this series, I suggest doing it in order. I'm a formalist, after all.

Pork has become a pervasive theme in our society. The internet memes alone are enough to make one turn to Tarvu for solace. How many of you are fans of bacon on Facebook? Even the New York Times has featured the bacon explosion. That makes it the pork of record.

But, I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Amidst all of this excitement, I need to return to my roots. In the 80s, low fat diets and healthy eating invaded the middle of our country from the coasts, this one in particular. Cholesterol and triglycerides made traditional American breakfasts and Sunday dinners taboo, and to fight off the onslaught from the chicken folks, the National Pork Board advised us that pork was really the other white meat. And why would they give us bad advice about pork? After all, they had bred their pigs lean and were giving people like my mom great tenderloin recipes through trustworthy channels like Cooking Light.

In all seriousness, I enjoy the nutritive aspect of food nearly as much as the hedonistic. In my own home cooking, I really do try to strive for the latter while achieving the former. In that respect, the tenderloin has been a staple for me ever since college, when I first started to cook for myself. Like its beefy cousin, the filet mignon, the pork tenderloin is a lean, mildly flavored cut that takes many preparations well, in particular, both stuffing and wrapping, as you shall see momentarily.

Oddly enough, it is sometimes difficult to find at our local WFM or TJ's. Weird, right? In fact, I was just thwarted a couple of weeks ago. The butcher couldn't believe that I didn't just get one of the beautiful loin roasts, but in the end, a ribeye is not a filet. This was no problem on Saturday, and I did hear later from ML that on Valentine's Day, it was the filet that was selling out in our local grocery stores.

As you know, I am serious about mise en place, and this was going to be a serious construction project, so I spent a good portion of the afternoon being fussy with small piles of veggies. I planned to stuff my roast with bacon, leeks, mushroom, and cornmeal, so I started there. I also intended to make a pan sauce of mushroom and Marsala, so I had those the consider as well. 

The bacon was the bulk black forest bacon that they sell at WFM. I got it so I could just get 6 strips, but the smoky-sweet flavor was just perfect for the application.

The other essential ingredients were the fresh herbs. The sage I got at the store, but the rosemary grows outside my back door, and it is prime for pickin' right now.

I chopped some of the bacon and rendered it, setting the crisps aside while sautéing the stuffing in the drippings. After preheating the oven and laying the pork open, I was ready to stuff.

Unlike a certain Top Chef contestant, I am familiar with the method for tying a roast. 

Once all gussied up, my roast was ready for the big time. Big time bacon that is. The process brought to mind on this Valentine's Day a poem of Browning called Porphyria's Lover.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

Read it. It goes on. I sent this to BoW when we were first courting. Kinda like taking a date to see El Topo at a midnight movie (sorry Count R)  just to make sure she's worth your time. In my case she was, and we are prone to wrapping pork in bacon to this day because of it. Also, Miike.

It did require toothpicks to hold the bacon in place, but they're easy enough to remove for service.

That's a lightly oiled, oven-safe vessel. I roasted for a while, but I don't remember how long - I'm an instant-read thermometer kind of guy. I kept turning it to get a nice sear on the bacon where it rested on the pan. When I took it out to rest, I transfered most of the fat to another pan where I began frying up some slices of store-bought polenta with garlic and herbs. To the drippings, I added some flour then deglazed with a reduction of broth and mushroom liquid with Marsala. The polenta soaked up most of the grease, but there was just enough of that and browned garlic left in the pan to nicely wilt some spinach.

I'm kinda spent just reliving it. Time to strangle my lover and take a nap.