Five Spice Pork Loin With Oranges and Prunes

Friends, I am entering new territory here.  I don't think I've ever done this before, but there's a first time for everything, right?  I am going to blog about something that I didn't make.  It was made for me, but it was just so delicious that I cannot keep it to myself.   

On Tuesday night Jordan made me this simple but absolutely scrumptious pork loin, that combines several of my favorite flavors.  First, 5 spice powder is one of those ingredients that I often forget about, which is sad, because it lends a wonderful slightly exotic but not overpowering flavor that I adore.  You can never go wrong with onions, which also bulk up the sauce, and orange juice and prunes lend a sweet fruitiness that I absolutely cannot resist.  (Prune skeptics, just stop.  Prunes aren't just for old people anymore.  Have you not seen Sunsweet's aggressive marketing campaign?  They're delicious, and that's all there is to it,)

Combine spices, rub meat, brown, add liquid, cover, braise.  So easy.  The result is deliciously tender pork, and a sauce that becomes rich and thick with caramelized onions, sweet, sticky prunes and zesty orange flavor.  I couldn't get enough of it.  (I was eating it out of the pan by the end!)   We tweaked this recipe a little, upping each of the sauce ingredients, because in this case, more is more (delicious sauce).  

It's no glamour shot, but check out that sauce!  God, it was good.

[Heart] Sausage

 

Once again, I'm holding out on recipes on your guys.  Sorry about that.  I just wanted to say that (well made) homemade sausage is AMAZING. 

 Meat Grinding

Today we made sausage with Jamie Bissonnette, chef/owner of Boston's Toro and Coppa, both fantastic restaurants in the South End.  My sister Ali and I had a great dinner at Coppa in January, and I haven't been to Toro yet, but it has been highly recommended to me by multiple sources. The only reason I haven't been yet is because I hear the lines are out the door, and it's too cold right now to wait!

  Cleaning the casing.  I think these were pig intestines?

Jamie showed us how to make a bunch of different meaty things, with each group tackling 2 different projects.  Of all the thing that we made, my favorites were the Italian-style pork sausage and the Southeast Asian-influenced chicken and pork sausage patties.  Other dishes included a chicken liver mousse, salt cod fritters, Merguez, which is a Spanish/north African lamb and pork sausage, and Rillette an interesting cooked pork and vegetable spread, which truthfully I found a little bizarre.  The process was actually far less gross than I was expecting (at least I can guarantee that our sausages do not contain any suspect animal parts), and the taste and texture, particularly of the Italian sausage, was beyond compare.  

Squeezing out the sausage

Anyway, I'm not giving you recipes for 2 reasons:  1) I don't actually have them.  We just kind of winged everything (and by we, I mean, Jamie told us how to wing it, and we did what he said, and 2) I'm pretty sure that you don't have the equipment that needed (meat grinder, sausage stuffer), or access to the supplies (multiple pounds of meat, intestines for casings, etc.)  Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to recreate this lesson, at least on the scale that we did it, at home for the aforementioned reasons, but I'm glad I got to try it once!

 Surveying our creations.  In the foreground are the chicken 

sausage patties, then the Italian sausage, casserole full of Rillette, 

bread with chicken liver mousse, duck leg confit, and the Spanish/

North African Merguez sausages all the way at the end!