The pork roast I used billed itself as a loin roast. Now, I am a simple man and really don't know much about pigs, but I am sure there must be a difference between a pork loin roast and a pork tender loin. I know what a pork tender loin is and if the roast I cooked was a tender loin, then the pig it came from was 13 feet tall and 20 long. But here is the good part about the recipe, the marinade and resulting sauce is the good part. What meat, if meat at all, you use is relatively unimportant.

So, since the best part is really the marinade, here is the recipe for that.

1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup shoyu soy sauce, less if you use tarmari or that La Choy stuff.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic
1 teaspoon fresh ginger
1 bunch chopped scallions
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 teaspoon Asian chili paste
2 to 3 drops hot chili oil
Here are a few notes about the recipe.

The best soy sauce to use is Shoyu (not a brand, but a type). I think Tarmari would be too strong. When the recipe calls for chili oil, it means hot sesame seed oil. The 5 spice, chili paste and chili oil are optional, I feel. I really do like the flavor of sesame seed oil, be careful with it though, it can be a little strong. If you don't want to go out a buy chili paste just for the recipe, use red pepper flakes, ground red pepper or tabasco for the heat, or leave it out.

You could substitute the orange juice for another liquid, lemon juice, lime juice, water, chicken stock. Also, you could substitute the OJ concentrate for another sugar, additional honey, brown sugar, maple syrup (!?!).

Don't fiddle fuddle with the garlic, scallions, and ginger too much, you are going to strain them out later. And finally, scale the recipe up or down as you need for what ever you are going to marinate. I scaled it way up (4X), so I would have lots of sauce.

Once you assemble this marinade, you can go to town on what ever you deicide to marinate. For pork or chicken, I would suggest 1 to 4 hours, for seafood, maybe 20 minutes and for vegetables - coat them with the marinade then grill them.

Meanwhile, back to our pork roast

For the pork roast, after you marinate it, reserve the marinade, and pat the roast dry with a paper towels. Pan seer the roast on all sides and finish it off by roasting it, uncovered, in a 450 degree oven until the internal temperature is about 155 degrees. Pull it out of the oven and cover it with foil for carry over cooking. When all is said and done the internal temperature should be about 160. Pork loin is very lean and cooking any longer will dry it out, BUT, if you are freaked out about such things, feel free to dry out the pork by cooking it to 170 degrees.

Take the marinade and put it in a sauce pan and boil it on high, uncovered until the liquid reduces by about 2/3 and coats the back of a spoon. Strain out the ginger, garlic and scallions. Use this as the sauce.

And there you have it. All that is left to do is drink lots of Gin!!!

AE
9:55:03 PM    comment []