Roasted Pork Loin Waits For Us

Last night I was so excited to make two special recipes from October’s Food & Wine. The pork loin roast with herbs and garlic (p. 97) and the pan-roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and raisins (p. 114) sounded perfect for a cool fall day. But events conspired against me.

To start with, I couldn’t find a bone-in pork loin roast at the store, and I didn’t have time to wait for the butcher, so I bought the market pack of pork loins. I felt good about this, knowing that even though I was sacrificing the flavor of the bone, I had made a very economical choice, plus probably reduced cooking time.

But in the late morning, when I organized the meal before the afternoon rush of appointments and kids’ events, I realized that I had neglected the recipe line that says, “Cover and refrigerate overnight or for up to two days.” If you know me, you are saying, “This is a classic Patty mistake.” I am famous for reading the title and ingredients of a recipe, not the actual directions, until it is time to cook. (Where cooking magazines state servings and time required, I would appreciate a “day ahead” warning label.) So with a prayer in my heart, I flipped to the index, where the good people of F&W had listed another recipe using pork loin, roasted with orange-herb sauce (p. 72). Thank you! And now I had the proper cut of meat, to boot.

With the day back under my grasp, I ran around all afternoon like usual, picked up my daughter, and got back to the house at 5:15 to begin cooking. I needed an hour, according to the recipes, which would mean 6:15 dinner, just enough time to eat before we left for a 7:00 viola lesson. Clock-work.

As I cook dinner, I am usually helping my daughter or son with homework or music practicing, finishing household chores, and catching up on phone calls, so it was a bit risky to try new recipes on such a tight time-frame before lesson. The Roasted Pork Loin with Orange sauce came in exactly on time. After the two hours in olive oil and garlic (since late morning), the loin gets browned in an oven-proof skillet and then braised in the oven in o.j., wine, and herbs. It reached 145 degrees in only 15 minutes, and the liquid boiled down to a yummy sauce. A big plus on this recipe was minimal mess – only one pan and one measuring cup.

I like cauliflower, but I rarely buy it, so I was apprehensive, but as the dish cooked, my 13 year old said, “Mmm, what smells so good?”, which is the best possible thing you can hear when you are racing to feed your family on a busy night! The 25 minute active cooking time was right, almost to the minute, and the total time was much less that the expected 1 ½ hr. What a delicious dish! The richness of the tomatoes and pine nuts, the sweet of the raisins and sugar, the tang of the lemon and parsley, a little hot red pepper… My daughter ate it, my son liked it, I loved it.

Everything was cooked and perfect at 6:15, right on schedule, when it suddenly occurred to me that I had confused piano lesson time with viola lesson time. A fast check of my palm pilot revealed that we needed to leave THAT MOMENT for a 6:30 lesson. Our wonderful dinner, tantalizing our nostrils, had to sit under foil for an hour. (But it was still great at 7:15: tender, juicy pork; thick sauce; comforting, deeply flavored veggies.)

This is the stuff I do to drive myself crazy. P.S. I’ll save the rest of the pork loin and try that other recipe next week.