Dinner Party. Roulade Out!

It's been a while since a dinner party has been had but this past May we had an epicly meat filled one. It started with an idea. Stuffing. So, with the help of my Co-Dinner Planner Brett (and Katie, by proxy), we planned a dinner to feed all the peoples lots of stuffed meat. 

Stuffed Pork Roulade

Makes enough for 2 X ~2kg (~4 lbs) pork loin roasts

1 lb bacon, thick cut, chopped (I used smoked applewood!)
7 small onions, chopped (I used yellow)
4 stalks celery, chopped
4 tsp garlic, minced
1 cup fresh parsley, stems removed, chopped
2 tsp ground thyme 
2 tsp ground sage
2 tsp fresh coarse ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1 lb artisan bread loaf, cut into 1 cm cubes (I used garlic peppercorn)
1/2 cup apple juice

2 X ~2 kg pork loins, filleted by your local butcher

Twine

  1. Chop all the veggie things. Onion, celery, (garlic if its not pre-minced).
  2. In a large dutch oven, fry bacon over medium heat until fat renders and bacon is crisp and cooked. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon leaving fat in dutch oven. Set aside. (Try not to eat them all! They smell so goood.)
  3. Increase heat to med-high. Add onion and celery to hot bacon fat. Cook, stirring, until onion is clear, about 15 minutes. Be careful not to brown veg or it will stick to the pan.
  4. Add garlic. Stir. Cook until garlic is fragrant.
  5. Add parsley, thyme, sage, pepper and salt. You can add more sage and thyme depending on your tastes. Mix well.
  6. Cube bread. Reduce heat to low. Add bread cubes to dutch oven. Mix together carefully. Pour apple juice over bread. Stir together until bread is evenly mix in. 
  7. Remove from heat. Let cool before using. (If cooling in the fridge, stir every 10-ish minutes to ensure the centre cools too.)
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Filling the roasts: Lay pre-filleted pork loin flat, fat side down, on a raw-meat only surface. Make sure the fat is face down on the left or else the fat will end up rolled in your roast instead of on top of it. Divide stuffing in half and place one half mountained on top of laid out roast. Using your hands or a wooden spoon, spread out stuffing in an even layer, leaving about an inch of room from the inside and outside rolling edges. 

Carefully roll meat and stuffing, starting from the right side. Roll as tightly as you can without squeezing stuffing out. After it's rolled, take twine and slip it underneath the roast. Retighten roll and then tie twine around the centre. Repeat for both ends. The pork roulade should now be secure enough to move!

Cooking the roasts: Pre-heat the oven to 500F. Place roast in a roasting pan, fat side up. Season the roast with salt and pepper. Place roasting pan in oven, uncovered. Reduce oven temperature to 300F. Cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (~30 min/lb or ~1 hour/kg) or until a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat reads between 150F-155F (check at the 1 hour mark!). Remove from the oven and the pan. Tent with foil and let sit for at least 10 minutes before cutting. Then it's slicing time!!

I am definitely going to miss all the lovely dinner parties. I'll have to cook for strangers in T.O.! I'm sure the BF would Love that! Haha.

Bon Appetit! 

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Spring Rollin' By

Spring has sprung, or so to speak. Edmonton just got a healthy dusting of snow on March 20th, the supposed first day of spring - Mother Nature is laughing her ass off at the irony (me: not so much). And because the weather is warmer and the sun doesn't set at 4:30pm anymore, it's time to break out the cooking skills and make spring rolls! 

I first learned how to make spring rolls when I was a kid. My dad, sister and I went to a local chinese place pretty often and one of the ladies who ran the place would make all the spring rolls, by hand, sitting out in a booth in the dining room. I was always looming around her, watching how she mechanically rolled the things, so she invited me to sit down and learn. Total free child labour... but I had lots of fun and learned how to make spring rolls. Looking back, it was probably super unsafe foodwise to have an 11 year old hand roll spring rolls at a restaurant table, but it was a fun learning experience! 

Below is the recipe I made up (based on my childhood spring rollin' days and an old test kitchen recipe I made a billion times - over 300 spring rolls produced! Mmmm.)

Spring Rolls

1 lb ground pork
1 TBSP ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup finely chopped white onion
1 cup shredded carrot

White rice vermicelli
Wonton Wrappers or Egg Roll Wrappers
Water

Oil for frying (optional)

  1. Mix together ingredients (pork through carrot). Use a fork to make sure the mixture is thoroughly mixed.
  2. In another bowl, soak vermicelli in lukewarm water until it's limp (~2 mins). Drain remaining water.
  3. Fill another bowl with water - this water is used to wet the wrappers to seal them up. 
  4. Place a wrapper on it's diagonal (so it looks like a diamond).
  5. Put ~1 1/2 TBSP of pork mixture in the lower centre of the diamond. Form it into a cylinder-type shape. (Meat tuuuube!)
  6. Place some vermicelli above pork. 
  7. Wet bottom corner of wrapper and wrap it firmly over pork and vermicelli. (Making sure the wet part contacts a dry part on the other side of the meat to seal).
  8. Wet the side corners and stretch them inwards and slightly forwards, to seal.
  9. Wet the top corner. Roll spring roll up over top corner, to seal.
  10. To Cook: 1) Frying - either use a deep fryer or the pan frying method. Cook for ~8 minutes, until wrappers are browned and meat is cooked. 2) Pre-heat oven to 400F. Brush spring rolls with oil. Bake for ~15-20 minutes, turning them over at least once, until wrappers are browned and meat is cooked. Makes ~20 spring rolls. 

These spring rolls freeze super well too so you can make a bunch and freeze them for later. Nom!

Super glad that the lady at the chinese place didn't have any problems with an 11 year old kid rolling her restaurant's food. Mmmm. Strange learning experiences. 

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist