Italian Rolled Pork Roast

I've not been cooking much lately.

Well, let me clarify. With three children at home I've been doing nothing but cook. I spend all day cooking pancakes, waffles, fixing bowls of cereal, mid-morning snacks, lunchtime hot dogs, chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas, cutting up fruit wedges, making hot chocolate, milk shakes, ice cream cones, opening cheese sticks, brownies, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, ramen noodles, canned ravioli, and fried egg sandwiches. I am a full time scullery maid!

My sweet Dear One came home the other day and as we gathered the kids for a baseball game at Mt. Legacy he asked "What are we having for dinner?" I replied "peanuts and juice boxes." There must of been something strange in the tone of my voice because he just said "Oh . . . okay . . ."

But there are occasional glimmers! I fed my children cold cereal and frozen Banquet meals for two days in a row and worked up the will to cook. So I decided to play with my food a little. We hadn't had any pork in awhile so I thought "Self, it's been a while since you did any butterflying or roulading'" Why not!

(Okay, I admit, I don't think roulading is actually a word but you get the drift right? We're making rolled up meat!)

Wanta Roulade?

Roulade is nice because you take some nice lean meat and you give it tons of FLAVOR and can even add a little fat to it.

I had a nice little boneless pork loin to work with . . . lean . . . bland . . . rather waterlogged . . .

Now since we're cutting into the inside of this roast we're exposing it to microbes. So I knew I needed to make my end product DONE. Well done! Well done, lean pork, can be dry and chalky so I decided to buy a little insurance. A brine!

So I take a large container of cold water and add sugar . . .

 . . . and salt . . .

It'll give us insurance . . . the pork will be able to handle the heat! Can you handle the heat?

Here's my pork loin! It's a sort of skinny one. Some have a nice little layer of fat on them. If yours has fat on it don't cut it off! Makes things extra tasty and crispy on the grill.

So I start about 3/4 of an inch from the side and cut straight down until I'm about 3/4 of an inch from the bottom. Before starting this you may want to drink a beer, take a deep breath and repeat . . . we can always have shish-ka-bob, we can always have shish-ka-bob . . .

Looks a little like Pac Man, huh? Well throw it up on its side and pull it open and start to cut again, stopping 3/4 of an inch from the bottom. Are you starting to see a pattern?

See! Now it's starting to lay down for you a little. Now if you like you can cut sideways into the roast until you're an inch from the edge. Or you can flip it over and make your cut downwards which is safer . . . how many beers did you have before you started this?

I was on my second so I took the safe route . . .

A little extra cut and voila! You may notice it's not perfectly flat and beautiful. It doesn't really matter but . . .

If it bothers you beat it with a heavy object. It'll get smooth and flat and pliable. Just tell people you're tenderizing it!

Now throw it in your nicely mixed up brine! Half an hour is more than enough time. It's a pretty thin piece of meat at this point and the brine is going to do it's work super fast! Oh and yes, I do refrigerate it while its brining.

I was feeling an Italian vibe in the air and my basil is prolific right now so I gathered some flavor . . .

I wanted it to have that lovely flavor of a good Italian sausage so I chose a little fennel seed. This is whole fennel seed so I crushed it up a little . . .

Yes you can do this with a coffee mug and a wooden spoon! Fennel seed is so big though I've seen people chop it with a heavy chef's knife too. But it tends to fly all over the place . . . This crushing thing will hurry up it's flavor release. Fennel is and isn't like licorice. I personally hate black licorice yet I enjoy fennel. Anyway as soon as you smoosh it you'll start to think some really good Italian sausages are cookin' in the background.

Throw it in a little Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The flavor will migrate through the oil and carry it into your pork. I have read that extra virgin olive oil has tinier molecules so it'll actually soak into meat! I read it on the Internet so it must be true!

Black pepper! Freshly ground pepper has a lot of flavors in it other than heat. That's why you can use it with a generous hand! Some red pepper flakes wouldn't hurt anything at this point either if that sort of thing floats your boat!

. . . just a teeny tad of garlic . . . well four cloves actually . . . I did mention this is a profoundly flavorful dish?

Now take your meat out of the brine and rinse it off. I think I dried it too! It's all becoming blurry now . . .

Now pour your seasoned oil onto the roast. On the side you cut preferably . . . if you can't tell then you did a FANTASTIC job and it doesn't matter.

I could tell . ..

Rub the deliciousness all over the top surface.

Now go out to your basil bush and pick a peck o basil.

Doesn't it look like a bush to you?

This is actually an after shot! I've already picked a peck of basil and this is its happy thriving self. It's planning on overthrowing the cilantro next door which can't handle the heat.

Rinse off your basil leaves and start to lay them across your roast.

Just fill in the spaces . . .

Sort of like tile work but more random. Now if you don't have this much basil laying around in the garden or you prefer something milder just cut the leaves up and sprinkle them on. I won't tell.

Now roll that puppy back up!

No it's not a dog, it's pork, pork comes from pigs. (Public service announcement for the younger audience!)

Rolling, rolling, rolling, . . . rolling, rolling, rolling, . . . rolling, rolling, rolling, . . . RAWHIDE!

My father exposed me to a LOT of cowboy movies as a child . . .

Now hopefully before you hit this point you located your kitchen twine. . .

I unfortunately could not find any kitchen twine.

Word to the wise, always buy two bundles of good kitchen twine. See because as soon as the man in your life sees the twine they're going to find 100 uses for it in the garage, garden, campsite, automobile . . . who wants greasy, oily, dirty twine on their roast?

I had to use skewers . . . the children always get nervous when I get out the skewers. Because if they misbehave while I'm skewering I wave them at them. I'm Irish but I've got to talk with my hands you see. Please don't threaten anybody with the skewers!

Did you know Shaka Zulu of THE Zulu Nation (the one who gave the Boers in South Africa so much trouble used to use skewers for his torture rituals . . . don't tell your children . . . Have you ever seen that movie, Zulu? Okay, my dad exposed me to a lot of British Colonial movies too . . .

Push them all the way through! Now this is enough skewers if you're going to be grilling this whole. I was considering cutting it up into little pork chop, steak like things so I needed more . . . always be prepared!

So I flipped it on its side and pushed them all the way through.

Put the second set perpendicular to the first ones. You know, a right angle? Uhm, criss-cross? Ideally you'll actually smack into the first when you push in the second.

Now if it doesn't go in quite the way you planned then pull it out and try again! If anybody says anything tell them you're tenderizing the meat. We're TENDERIZING here! I live in a house full of critics!

It's not beautiful but it's not going anywhere either! Now I put it in a big plastic dish, covered it up, and threw it in the fridge until I was ready to grill. Actually it wouldn't hurt it to get room temperaturish before you put it on the grill. It'll make it cook a little more evenly. I let it sit out while we were lighting the charcoal--that takes 20-30 minutes to get ready.

I wrangled an invitation from some friends and they were willing to fire up their grill for my roast. Yay!

All the charcoal is on one side and my roast is on the other! It's called indirect heat. Now if you were working on a one burner gas grill you'd have to slice this into separate steaks and grill them fast and furious. But indirect heat will let you do it whole.

About 30 minutes in you're going to want to flip it over.

An hour in you're going to want to take it's temperature. We're looking for 149-152 since we opened up it's center. I'd go lower if the meat hadn't of had it's center open to the air.

A wise person will let this hunk of meat sit for 10 minutes before they mess with it. This lets the juices settle down. That pinkness is from the natural smokiness of hardwood charcoal on brined meat. Think ham!

Now let's say you don't own a meat thermometer. Seriously they are less than $5 at most grocery stores! Go get one. But if you don't let it rest the 10 minutes and cut it right down the center. Put it on for 10 minutes more if the meat is still kind of pink and soft in the very center. Put it on the 20 minutes if it's a pink jiggly mess of rawness.

Slice it up! See the pretty basil? See the pretty smoke ring! We weren't even going for a smoke ring and we got one!

It's so pretty! The pink of the smoke ring, the whiteness of the pork, the green of the basil! The smell! The smell! It smells like every good Italian restaurant you've ever been in!

The taste? It's intense. You get strong saltiness from the brine! The basil, fennel and garlic add a beautiful fragrance and that slight bitter component our tongues enjoy. It's like an Italian sausage on steroids! But it's leaner. This is practically a diet recipe . . . possibly? This is beautiful with a lovely salad. We had it with garden fresh lettuce with a beautiful sweet and sour vinaigrette! Oh the glory! It was perfect! We had macaroni and cheese too. So we got that whole textural creamy soft thing going on too. A baked potato would of worked if you're not an overachiever like my host and hostess!

This is truly a beautiful way to transform a plain jane cheap cut of lean meat!

Italian Rolled Pork Roast

for the brine
8 cups cold water
3/4 cup sugar
6 Tbsp table salt

For the roll
2 lbs boneless pork loin roast
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp fennel seed, crushed
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup basil leaves

12 short bamboo skewers*

Mix together brine ingredients. Cut roast according to pictures above. Place roast in brine for 20-30 minutes.

Mix olive oil, fennel, pepper and garlic. Rinse brine off roast and dry off. Lay flat and rub oil mixture on cut side. Lay basil leaves across roast and roll up into its original shape. Skewer or tie. (See pictures)

Grill** over indirect heat for 30 minutes and then flip. Grill 30 more minutes and then test for doneness. When roast reaches 150 deg F. remove from heat and allow to rest uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove skewers/ties and slice into thin slices.

* if you can't find  6 inch skewers use a longer skewer and just break it off to make it more manageable.
** if you want to cook this in your oven you can. Cook at 350 deg. F. for at least one hour. Test as described above. It'll be a little paler but very tasty.