Supper · 18 September 2003
Roast Pork with Ecru Sauce, Root Vegetable Purée
Pork roasts, in general, make for incredibly boring food. For this there are at least two reasons: dryness and a complete absence of flavour. Some try to counteract these by crusting a roast in herbs, or by cramming it with fruit and nuts, or by floating it in applesauce, but these solutions – like reckless bling bling or a bald man’s rug – do little more than shine light on the problem.
Buy or shoplift a pre-tied, rolled pork roast, about 2 lbs. Ideally it’ll be well trimmed, with a generous swathe of fat along one side. The fat, and its browning, are key to doing this right.
You want a tight-lidded casserole or saucepan that can handle high heat over direct flame as well as in the oven; a sturdy, steel-lined copper saucepan will do. Its diameter should be slightly more than the length of the roast, and it should be deep enough that, once the lid is on, there’s at least an inch of clearance above the meat.
To get the roast ready, take it out of the fridge and let it stand at room temperature at least a half hour before you start. Immediately before browning, wrap it up in paper towels (night night roast) until the surface is dry. Get the oven going at gas mark 6 (fairly hot).
Browning. I suppose this could be done in some soulless, flavourless polyunsaturated oil, but please, if you can, suspend any lingering Eighties cholesterol paranoia and get some god damned pork lard. This could be bacon dripping collected in a coffee can, or a chunk of fat from the butcher, or go all DIY and do the slaughter and rendering yourself. In France they sell saindoux pur porc in foil bricks, like butter. Note that if you do use bacon dripping, some of its salt will be absorbed by the roast, so less will be needed later.
Unplug the smoke detector and get the saucepan really screaming hot, with enough fat so the entire cooking surface is covered; it’s hot enough when the surface of the fat begins to ripple and smoke. Brown the roast, rotating it every few minutes, until it’s uniformly caramel coloured all over. Some people stand the meat on end to brown the entire surface, but that is silly. Partially cover the pan with its lid if you want to cut down on the thin layer of aerated hogfat presently making its way to every surface of your home.
Drain off the fat, which should by now be burnt and nasty. Arrange the roast with its fat side up, and dust on a little white pepper and, provided you didn’t brown with bacon dripping, some salt. On with the lid and into the oven it goes, where you may forget about it for the next 45 minutes.
That’s all it needs. If the roast has been properly browned, it will by richly flavourful, benefitting from only the simplest sauce, of which more in a moment. With the lid on it roasts in its own steam, and hence tends not to dry out.
For the vegetable purée, have ready 2–3 peeled cooked beets, one sliced sweet apple (skin on) sautéed in butter until soft, two sweet potatoes roasted in the oven and peeled while still hot, a nutmeg and grater, some powdered ginger (superior to fresh for our purposes here), and, it goes almost without saying, an assload of butter.
How you do the purée is a judgement call: use a fork or potato masher to retain lots of texture, a food processor with a steel blade if you want pabulum. I prefer passing it through a rotary food mill with a coarse sieve, which produces something in between, and which satisfies a certain need for gadgetry. Mash it all up with butter and a pinch or two each of nutmeg and ginger.
With the purée at a consistency you like, start stirring in salt and pepper until it tastes just so, then scoop it into a baking dish and toss it in the oven. You now have five minutes to spend with the family.
Once the roast has had its 45 minutes, transfer it from the saucepan to a plate and let it stand while everything else comes together. If you have a dog larger than a border collie, push it to the back of the counter. Reduce the remaining juices in the saucepan over high heat until there is about half a cup, then splosh in half a cup or so of white wine. Reduce by about half again, then fling in a dollop of dijon mustard. Use a metal whisk or wooden spoon to blend in the mustard and to scrape up all remaining caramelised bits from the pan. Check for salt and pepper, then keep the sauce over a low flame until the roast (carved in thinnish slices) and vegetable purée are on the table, at which point you will whisk in a free-pour of heavy, heavy cream, presumably with a slightly perverse look on your face. Serve the sauce in a gravy boat.
A possibly good accompaniment would be onion relish.
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