French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	Roast Pork This post, however, is far simpler. Its about my favorite way to cook a pork loin roast. Tasty and delicious. In fact as I'm writing this after dinner my sister-in-law is still going on about how good the pork was. Nice compliment. Anyway, first you buy your pork. Look for a nice lean loin roast , not the tenderloin, but loin. Once you have that you want to brine it for at least 48 hours, preferably for 72 hours. Just make up a brine with roughly one cup of salt per 2 quarts of water, add about a tablespoon of sugar, then your herbs. The herbs are to your choice, but I use marjoram, thyme, crushed juniper berries, crushed black peppercorns and coriander seeds. Mix the brine well, put the pork roast in making sure its covered and put it in the fridge for the requisite amount of time. Give it a stir every so often. About 3-4 hours before you're going to cook it take the pork out of the fridge and out of the brine and let it rest at room temperature. Set the oven for 150 degrees F, not Centigrade. Now make a paste using lots of Dijon mustard, fresh sage (dry if you can't get fresh) well chopped up, and coarsely ground black peppercorns. Spread this thickly over the top of the roast then place the roast in the pre-heated oven. Roast for one to two hours depending upon the size of the roast or until a thermometer inserted into the middle of the roast reads 135 degrees F. Take the roast out of the oven, scrape the crust off into the roasting pan and set the roast onto a carving board to rest. Place the roasting pan over medium high heat, add a good dollop of dry white wine to the roasting pan and stir around to get all of the crust and baked on bits dissolved. Add one pork stock cube (if you have one. If not its OK, the gravy just won't be quite as rich.) Turn the heat right down and when the mixture quits boiling add a generous amount of cream (the heavier the better, but if you're watching the calories you can use lighter cream or even sour cream), bring back to the boil and stir until it gravy is reduced and of a nice thick consistency. Put the heat on low and carve the roast into nice slices. Don't be panicked if the pork looks red. The brining process cures the meat and its perfectly safe to eat and will be the moistest most tender pork you've ever had. Serve with the gravy and enjoy. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but when I went to use it I discovered that our trusty Nikon's batteries were too low for picture taking. In any case its not a particularly photogenic recipe, but do try it as its absolutely delicious.