Life's a Stitch

We talked to friends last night and their covid in retirement routine matched ours exactly: taking online art classes, doing puzzles, playing games, cooking, puttering, painting, knitting, reading, watching Netflix, walking, and participating in the spectator sport that is the US news. We are fortunate to be in this stage of life during the pandemic, but still, every day seems like the next with subtle variations. This post will be about food.

We stepped up the cooking a notch, the first was pressed pork with a sour cherry jus. We had similar recipes with lamb in Spain and New Zealand and it's taken me two years to finally find the recipe, thanks to the excellent search skills of daughter, M. I tried every adjective I could imagine to describe this dish to no avail and it was simply pressed meat. For New Year's Day we had the lamb variety.

Here's my version of the recipe. You have to think ahead, but it really isn't complicated thanks to the Instant Pot's ability to circumvent the need for 12 hours of slow roasting, but you can do that if you wish. It seems we have nothing but time these days.

Pressed Pork (Six servings)

Olive oil

2+ lbs pork tenderloin (Can also be done with lamb)

2 cloves pressed garlic

Herbs

Allspice

S&P

1.5 C chicken broth

12 dried cherries (optional)

 

Reduction:

Juices from cooking pork

1/2 C port

In the morning or night before: Rub pork with garlic and spices. Sear in olive oil. Place in Instant Pot with broth (and cherries) and cook at high pressure for 50 minutes, natural release. Shred the pork and press into cups of muffin tin until full. Place another muffin tin on top of first pan, so cups of the top one are pressing into the filled cups of the bottom one. Place in refrigerator and put heavy items on top to weigh down the pan, the heavier the better, to press the pork. Keep in fridge minimum of six hours, can wait until the next evening.

30 minutes before serving. Preheat oven to 375.

Put the pork juices in a pan and add the port (and 12 more cherries if desired). Boil rapidly to reduce.

Carefully remove the pressed pork from the muffin tin. It should all come out in one piece, like a pork muffin. Heat oil in pan and fry the pressed pork until one side is browned. This will be the top of the served pork. Arrange the pork on a pan and heat for ten minutes in oven. Top with reduction sauce and serve.

And we had a celebratory homemade fettuccine dinner when I reached my diet goal. Seems counter intuitive to reward yourself with food when the point of the occasion was successfully limiting food intake. But it was a one off treat, Prawn Fra Diavolo. 

I’m looking forward to a loosening of the rules, when we are allowed to share meals like this with those who are not part of our every day household.