12.13.2011

See How To Do It


Here's the most interesting combination of ingredients for a meal I've ever seen.
(Pineapple, capers, cocktail onions, green olives, raisins, potatoes, honey, garbanzos...?)

First you cook a cup of rice in 1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil, stirring every so often, until some of the grains start turning opaque, but not brown. Add just a cup of water, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and simmer covered without lifting lid for 20 min.

Trim the fat off your boneless pork sirloin. Cut lengthwise down the center and carve down about an inch in and around the side as if drawing a smaller cylinder an inch inside the larger cylider that is the sirloin. Do the same to the other side. Not sure if this metaphor is going to fly, but you are opening this sirloin up like a dress jacket down the middle so that the piece of meat that finally lays open is a rectangular shape and consistent thickness.



Make generous zigzags of both honey and honey mustard, and massage them all over the meat with your hands. Then (obvioulsy!) wash your hands. Let the meat marinate while you make the filling. The filling Jenny taught me was 1/4 of the cooked rice you started earlier, small handful green beans, 2 Tbsp capers, 2 Tbsp garbanzos, 6 prunes (now often called dried plums), 4 cocktail onions, and 1 green onion, cut into rounds like the green beans. Here's a picture of Jenny's filling ingredients:



Put the filling down the middle of the sirloin.

Then sew it up. I'm going to use butcher's twine next time, but Jenny insisted on using wooden skewers. The skewers make it look like a giant caterpillar, though, which is cool.



Then decorate the top with cored slices of pineapple and a dried plum (a.k.a. prune) in the center of each. Does this not look like a close up of a catarpillar? Can't wait to do this with the kids! Put three more pineapple rounds in a row down the center of your rectangular roasting pan, and place the pork catarpillar on top of them. Then put peeled potato rounds along the outside so they roast with the meat. Voila!

Put the pork-pillar in the oven, and now prepare the ingredients for the relleno, a whole bed of stir fried goodies on which the pork sits when it's done. Here's what the relleno looks like when it's done.


To make it, first you slice your cabbage in half and boil both halves briefly until the raw green color changes to cooked color throughout. But you don't want the cabbage to get "cooked" fully or soggy. "Just remember, you have to behave," she told me, "Not to overcook." Peel two of the biggest carrots you can find and put in the cabbage water. Take out when they're barely cooked (no longer crunchy, but not fall-apart soft either.) Cook a large handful green beans briefly in the water, too, until not quite cooked (still a touch of crunch is okay) and remove. Cut the carrots into matchsticks, and slice the cabbage into narrow wedges.

She shows me how to cut the carrots into equal sized segments before I cut them into fine pieces. And then how to slice thin wedges of cabbage from the heart to the edges to get the right shape.


Then cut the green beans into rounds.


Cut 1 red pepper into slivers, and 3 green onion into rounds.

Put the rest of the rice you cooked in the bottom of the rectangular casserole dish or platter in which you will serve the feast. Then stir fry the the veggies (cabbage, carrots, peppers, green onions) in batches and add to the rice. Use just enough vegetable oil when frying to loosen things up in the pan and just enough salt-free Ketchup (about 1 Tbsp per large handful of veg) to give the ingredients a slight golden color. You want everything to be cooked, to lose their cold, raw crunch, but not to be soggy.




She gives all the sauteed items a slight golden color and ups the general overall sweetness by adding doses of salt-free Ketchup while stir frying.

While you've got the salt-free Ketchup out, you can baste the meat/pineapples and potatoes in the oven with it as well for good color and depth of flavor. Keep sauteeing those relleno ingredients. Don't stop. Trust me, they're good all together ...1/2 cup prunes, 1/4 cup green olives, 1/4 cup drained garbanzos, 1 Tbsp capers, 1/2 cup cocktail onions.)

Mix all the sauteed stuff in serving dish together, and add more honey than feels comfortable. 1/2 cup think. Add 2 tsp of honey mustard. Use your hands to mix it all in.

When you stick a meat thermometer in the lomo and it's 160 degrees in the middle, take the pork out. Transfer it on top of the relleno and put the potatoes around the edges. Put the three pieces of pineapple, now soaking in delicious juices, on the top of the other pineapple pieces on the pork. Pour meat juices on the relleno.


Slice off portions for each person, trying to keep the stuffing from falling out with a spatula. Here's what individual plates look like.