Cooking Up a Storm

This is a recipe for how to spend a frigid day before a monster storm arrives....

It's Monday January 26th and pretty much the entire country has been impacted by a blast of cold and snow. It hit here in Maine late Sunday and through the night to the tune of about a foot of fluffy white snow, and I say fluffy because the average temp for Sunday was zero.

On Saturday while everyone else was storming the area grocers, I was cooking up a storm in the rabbit hole without needing to shop because I keep this place stocked like a bomb shelter.

Here's how it went.....

In the downstairs freezer I found a pork loin and thought, "how awesome would it be to smell that slow roasting while it's like 2 degrees outside", so I grabbed it. When I did that, I needed to move a frozen Portland Pie pizza dough out of the way, and once it was in my hand, I thought, "hmm, maybe a focaccia might be nice with that left over marinara source in the fridge," so I grabbed that too. (There's more coming on Portland Pie dough in an upcoming pizza post.

I set the roast and dough on a kitchen radiator to help speed up the thaw, and took a tour of my fridge to see what else I could cook while waiting. (If you use the radiator method to thaw things, keep a close eye on them -- it could get ugly if you don't.) Ultimately, it was I was some parsnips, potatoes, and broccoli that inspired me.

I boiled drained and mashed the parsnips with butter, cracked pepper, and lemon juice planning to serve them as a base for the sliced pork. Since I was planing to mash the parsnips, I opted to bake and braise the potatoes in the style of a Jersey shore Italian restaurant, Carmen Armenti's Bayview Inn, that my family used to frequent.

That full Potatoes Armenti recipe and the associated story coming to a future post. For the broccoli, I decided to melt a few tablespoons of salted butter in a sauce pan and steam / toss the florets until they were steamed crisp tender and buttery.

Once the pork was thawed enough to get a thermometer in it, I dried the roast with paper towel and rubbed in on all sides with a generous amount of sea salt, cracked pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. I preheated the oven to 200 degrees, stuck the thermometer in the meat, set the temp alarm to 145 degrees (medium for pork) and set it in the oven. Then it was on to enjoy the aroma and see what other trouble I could find in the kitchen.

When the pizza dough was thawed and beginning to rise, I coated a baking pan with olive oil and stretched the dough into the pan to sit at room temp and rise a bit more. When the dough started to look puffy again, I stretched it again and brushed it with olive oil to coat the entire thing. Then, and here's the important part when making a focaccia, I poked holes all over the top. You can either use your index finger or the end of a wooden spoon handle. Ultimately you create these dimples all over the top before spreading any of the toppings. I used a pastry brush to spread that marinara sauce I mentioned and decided on a simple topping of grated Parmesan and some herbs de Provence.

When the roast was done and resting, I cranked the oven up to 425 and baked the focaccia for 15 minutes. Having learned from the puff crust method of cooking out of the pan, I transferred the focaccia to a rack to cool.

At some point, I was rooting around in the upstairs freezer and came across a small container of 'pork gravy with mushrooms', so I grabbed that and thawed, adjusted and added it to the feast.

A bit about sauces and gravies

I have this tendency to make a little too much of whatever I cook and in the case of gravies and sauces, some times there is even so much that it outlasts any associated leftovers. Since many of these sauces can be labor intensive, I have taken to freezing them in small plastic containers. I have successfully thawed and reconstituted everything from Hollandaise, to Béarnaise, and Béchamel. Depending on the sauce, I may need to add some liquid or just heat really slow, but whatever coddling is needed, it's usually easier than starting from scratch.

When it was time to actually have dinner, the oven was warm from the focaccia so I placed the mashed parsnips and roast in the oven to keep warm while I reheated the pork / mushroom gravy, steamed the broccoli, and cut a couple of pieces of focaccia to serve.