Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Secret Roast Pork Recipe


Per maeo’s request (again...someone’s excited to try out new stuff), I’m putting up the recipe for the roast pork from last week’s chopstick night. There is an actual recipe that I wrote down in my secret black book of recipes...but I modified it (as usual) so that it fits my lifestyle better (i.e. mura at mabilis). By the way, the picture above is not mine, but Williams-Sonoma's.

Stuff that you need:

1 pork roast. I don’t know exactly how much it is in terms of weight, but I get the usual size from Modern then I cut it in half lengthwise to have it look more like pork tenderloin. But if you can get pork tenderloin, that’s good too, maybe a pound to a pound and a half (2 pieces).

Garlic, five large cloves, crushed. I tend to go crazy with the garlic, especially with a roast. You can also use garlic powder. In fact, I realize this would be better because you can just dissolve the powder in the marinade, and the meat will take the flavor in better. If using powder, maybe 1 level teaspoon of powder.

Hoisin sauce. This is a sweet sauce made of fermented soybeans, garlic, chili peppers and vinegar. You need a good amount of this, depending on how much meat you have. I probably use almost half a bottle for the recipe...you won’t have to worry about over-seasoning anyway. You want to be able to slather the meat with the sauce.

Oyster sauce. Instead of adding salt, I add maybe 2-3 tablespoons of oyster sauce. I finally looked it up in wikipedia.org and oyster sauce is really made from oyster broth. Most brands have MSG, so you want to look at the label (Roomie is sensitive to MSG).

Rice wine. One of my discoveries at Chang-li was the $1.89 bottle of Chinese rice cooking wine. It’s something my mom’s family uses for some of my favorite dishes, and I find that it gives a good aroma to the roast.

Sesame oil. A little goes a long way. Maybe a teaspoon for the two pieces of meat.

There are other things you can put too...a little bit of crushed ginger, black bean sauce, star anise, but these give a stronger flavor (which I might enjoy, but some of you might not), so experiment with discretion.

The night before actual cooking, place the meat on top of aluminum foil (there should be enough foil to loosely wrap the roasts after cooking) in a roomy baking dish. If you have 9”x9” dishes, place each roast in separate dishes. If you have the ginormous lasagna dish, you can put both in the dish. Combine all the ingredients except for the meat. Slather the marinade on the meat, making sure all areas are covered. Place in the refrigerator overnight.

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove meat from the refrigerator while the oven pre-heats.

Bake pork in pre-heated oven for about an hour to maybe an hour and 10 minutes. When the timer hits 45 minutes, you want to check on the roast every now and then starting at that time. When you see that the tops are slightly golden brown, remove the roast from the oven, and wrap the aluminum foil around it, and let it stand for 10-15 minutes.

Slice into medallions and serve.

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