Since I post so many pork recipes I felt perhaps it was time to show what you can do with the leftovers. This may not be tricky for you, but it frequently is for me. No doubt you can do Asian stir-fry, or pot pie, but if your pork has a distinct flavor it can be difficult to find the right dish for it.

This was the situation at our house two days after I made the pork roulade. The day before that I had made a huge pot of chicken and shrimp etouffee, and a soup for lunch, so the fridge was full and I was loathe to throw something else in there. It almost worked, too, except that I had leftovers of this. It is inconvenient to cook for 4 when only two actually eat any reasonable portion.

Anyway, I needed something quick, easy and used pork, and a Google search led me to the always reliable Chowhound, and this post in particular. I grabbed an eggplant from the store and went with it, and now I share it with you.

Mediterranean Stew
adapted from aussiewonder

You will need:
1lb or so of leftover pork, cubed or shredded
1 eggplant, peeled and diced
1 red pepper, sliced into strips
6 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
28oz can crushed tomatoes
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup red wine
Rice for serving

In a large skillet or Dutch oven, head 3 Tbsp oil over medium heat. Add the eggplant, red pepper and a pinch of kosher salt and cook, stirring frequently, until the eggplant has lightly browned and the red pepper has softened, about 5-10 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and the pork and stir to coat, cooking another minute or two, then add the wine and crushed tomatoes. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to simmer until the pork is heated through or until you want to eat it. Serve over rice and top with kalamata olives.

I, personally, am not much of an eggplant person, and I don’t eat olives at all, but the eggplant is not a huge flavor component here and so anyone with objections will probably find this tolerable. The flavor is simple and lovely, and perfect for a low-effort meal.

You may say to yourself, wait, hasn’t she made something like this before? And yes, I have – matambre is a roulade as well. Roulade (from the French word “rouler”) just means “to roll” and can apply to anything from a jelly roll to sushi. In this case, it’s a butterflied slab of pork loin slathered in a paste made of Italian parsley, a bulb of roasted garlic and lemon juice, seared and chucked in the oven. Couldn’t be easier. Let me show you.

You will need:

1-2lb pork loin
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 c white wine, chicken broth or water
A bulb of garlic, roasted
A small lemon, cut in half
A bunch of Italian (or flatleaf) parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Kitchen twine

If you’ve never butterflied meat before, I strongly encourage you to look up a Youtube video. I will try to explain it here but I think it’s one of those things best viewed and I should know since my matambre butterflying was just a disaster. It was actually kind of catastrophic, but we all have to learn somewhere, right?

Go ahead and roast up your garlic, if you so desire. I served this with roasted potatoes so I just oiled up the bulb with the potatoes and roasted it for about 40 minutes at 425F. If you don’t want to roasted, I recommend slicing it very thin or mincing well. With either method, once you’ve prepared your garlic the way you choose you’re going to smash it together with a pinch of kosher salt, the juice of half a small lemon, and as much chopped parsley as you would like. I started with a fork but finished with a pestle, and that was with roasted so those of you using unroasted garlic may want to do the same – just add a teaspoon or so of olive oil to help bind it all together.

Grab your hunk of pork loin and lay it on a sturdy cutting surface, long side facing you. You’ll want a very sharp knife for this, so use the best one you’ve got. Make a vertical slice halfway through the thickness of the meat. Lift the edge of one side of the cut up enough to angle your knife and slice through horizontally to make an even plane of the meat, then repeat on the other side. Think of it like opening a cardboard box, first one flap, then the other. You should have a relatively even surface of meat now. If you see any obvious thicker sections, feel free to pound it out with your meat mallet.

Haha, beat your meat. Please excuse me, I’m obviously 10 years old. MOVING ON. Here’s a little photographic help to show you what it should look like:

Make small slits with a sharp paring knife here and there on the surface of the meat, then spread your garlic mixture on top. Try to cover the whole surface as evenly as you can, but don’t sweat it if you’ve got bare spots. Finish with a little black pepper, then turn the meat so that the short side is facing you.

If you can do the fancy butcher knots with a single strand of twine, bully for you. I am very bad at it and so I cut 4 equal lengths of twine and set them aside. You can start at either the top or the bottom, but roll the meat up, gently but firmly. Lift up and place your twine underneath at about 2” intervals, and tie tightly.

I would insert another picture here but – and I know, I KNOW, this is completely and remarkably immature of me but I can’t post it. It would get me censored. It’s so phallic it might as well be pornography. So, if your pork loin tied up looks like it could MAYBE be something else, something attached to the human body, you know you did it right.

I have no dignity. I apologize.  Let’s get back to the food, shall we?

Preheat the oven to 350F. Heat a large skillet or dutch oven over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and allow to get hot enough to shimmer but not smoke. Add the pork loin and sear on all sides, about 3-5 minutes per side or until browned. If your skillet is not oven-safe, put your pork in a roasting pan, add a quarter cup of chicken broth/wine/water, and cover tightly with aluminum foil. If you’re using a dutch oven, add a quarter cup of chicken broth/wine/water, cover the loin itself inside the vessel loosely with aluminum foil, then cover with the lid and into the oven it goes for about 25-30 minutes. Check it after 20 minutes – pork dries out quickly and this cut doesn’t have a lot of fat to keep it moist, so once that center hits about 145F on an instant-read thermometer you’ll want to take it out and let it rest for 10 minutes or so, the temperature will continue to rise and should peak at no more than 155F*.

From here, cut the twine, slice into your desired thickness and serve. If you used wine or broth, you’d have the makings of a nice pan sauce, too!  Roulades are great, there’s no end, really, to what you can add as the filling. Traditional German rouladen has pickles, Italy’s braciole is breaded and has cheese. Set your creativity free!

(* – the USDA says the appropriate internal temperature for well-done pork is 170. Pork frequently disagrees with this by turning into something like a mouthful of pig-flavored sand. You don’t want to eat it raw, but I think – and so does Mark Bittman – that a little pink is OK. 150 is the perfect happy medium for me.)

Something about that picture puts me in mind of a fish. No idea why. Anyway, so in yet another magazine post (hey, at least it’s a different one), Food Network magazine puts out 6 issues per year, instead of the usual one per month. This recent addition is action-packed with recipes, including one for hot buttered rum. I’ll give you one guess as to who created that one!

Buried amidst the plethora of turkey and stuffing and other traditional Thanksgiving feasts was a section entitled “A Cuban Feast” and it had me at this title: Slow-Roasted Pork with Citrus and Garlic. You might have picked up on it by now, but I love pork. I think I  subconsciously look for the pork recipes before I even consider other meats. This particular recipe calls for a 6-8lb Boston butt, which is a shoulder cut (also used to make the incredibly and surprisingly delicious cabbage soup from Veselka) and not only does the grocery store I use to buy my meats not carry any that size, it’s just too much for my small family. The side dishes listed weren’t great for us, not big squash eaters here and bananas flambé, well, let’s just say I think it’s better if I don’t intentionally light things on fire in my kitchen since I do it so well accidentally already. I served this up with some honey-balsamic glazed carrots and some pan-fried corn with red pepper and parsley.

I can’t lie to you, this was an insane amount of prep for a roast that was not particularly spectacular, which actually did not surprise me too much as Saveur’s Caribbean pork roast was also heavy on prep but disappointing on flavor. I don’t want to discourage you from making it though, because taste is such a subjective thing, but be prepared. I’ve cut the recipe in half here and it should serve 4 comfortably.

Slow-Roasted Pork with Citrus and Garlic
(adapted from Food Network Magazine)

5 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon fresh oregano
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 3-to-4-pound Boston butt pork shoulder
Juice of 3 oranges, peels reserved
Juice of 2 lemons, peels reserved
Juice of 2 limes
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
6 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 white onion, thinly sliced

OK, here’s where the work starts. The magazine said prep would be 40 minutes. My experience was closer to 90 minutes, and it might be because I don’t have a juicer so I squeezed my citrus by hand, and since I had cuts on both hands I opted to leave the peel on and just cut it off after. If this is something you plan on doing as well, I did score four lines down each fruit before cutting in half, to make peeling easier.

In your food processor (or blender, or mortar and pestle) blend the first five ingredients into a paste. It may not look like one, but it should feel like one. Don’t expect the spices to get too finely ground, this is more like a slightly damp rub than anything. Trim any excessive fat from your pork and cut deep slits about every 2 inches all over. I tend to just stab mine with a paring knife, I’m not sure precision is especially important here. Rub your spice mixture all over the pork, into the slits, and set aside for now.

In a large glass or plastic (no metal! acids + metal = reaction!) bowl, whisk together the juice of the oranges, lemons and limes, the Worcestershire sauce and the olive oil. Submerge the pork as best you can in the marinade, then top with the onions and finally, the orange and lemon peels. Cover with plastic wrap (not foil! acid + metal = reaction!)  and marinate in the fridge for at least 8 hours and up to 2 days. (I let mine marinate for 12 hours.)

Preheat the oven to 450F. Remove the peels and chuck ‘em into the fridge for later. Place your pork onto a rack and into a roasting pan and roast, uncovered, for an hour. Keep the marinade and onions, you’ll need them later. After an hour, take your pork out and turn the oven down to 350. Pour the marinade over the roast and top with the onions, cover with foil and roast for another hour. Take the pork out, add the peels on and around the pork,  and roast for another 1-2 hours, basting with the juices occasionally. The recipe says to cook until it reaches 190, but at it’s peak mine only got to about 184. It doesn’t matter, pork is safe at 160 (Mark Bittman says 150) and is lovely, juicy and flavorful at that temperature anyway. Let it rest for 10 minutes, slice and serve.

Can I just tell you, the idea of leftovers, chopped, on toast with gravy? It’s really working for me right now. I’ll have to try it.

Anyway, I’m going to be up front and tell you that the proportions for these side dishes are going to be estimates. I didn’t work from a recipe (!) and it’s so fun to just throw some of this, toss some of that, that I failed to write down what I used. So play with it a little, both recipes here are extremely forgiving.

Honey-and Balsamic-Glazed Carrots

4-6 medium carrots, peeled and julienned
1 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

To julienne your carrots: slice in half lengthwise, then into thirds across. Take each piece and slice into 3 or 4 pieces lengthwise. If pieces look large, turn them on their sides and slice again lengthwise. Though really, there’s no reason you couldn’t do baby carrots or coins instead of strips, you would just need to adjust the steaming time.

Speaking of steaming time, add the water and the pat of butter to the skillet, give it a few minutes to warm up, then add the carrots. Cover and allow to steam for 10-20 minutes, crisp-tender is the goal but your preference is key. If you like softer carrots, let cook to the long end of the time frame. Once the water is almost evaporated, add the honey, stirring to coat, and then the balsamic, and allow to reduce to a glaze. Towards the end, add your salt and pepper to taste.

Pan-fried Corn with Red Pepper and Parsley

3 ears of corn
1 Tbsp butter/margarine
Pinch of red pepper flakes or cayenne
1/2 tsp dried parsley, or 1 Tbsp fresh Italian parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Really, any kind of corn will do here. You could use drained canned or thawed frozen, but as a former contestant of the Little Miss Sweet Corn pageant of Gibson County, Indiana, I favor fresh yellow sweet corn.

To prepare fresh corn for the pan fry, shuck the ears (if you peel from the bottom, the silk is easier to deal with), trim the bottoms and steam for 10-20 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Corn should not be mushy, it needs a bit of bite to it, imo, but again, it’s all about preference. Once it has reached desired doneness, run under cold water to cool and slice kernels off the cob. Don’t worry if it stays in chunks, it’s nicer that way anyway. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, add butter and allow to melt.  Add corn, red pepper, dried parsley and your salt and pepper, and cook just until corn starts to brown. If using fresh parsley, chop and add to corn once corn is finished cooking.

I would love to know what you thought of that pork roast, so tell me if you try it out!