French-Style Pot-Roasted Pork Loin (Enchaud Perigordine)

Just in time for Super Bowl, we  finally upgraded our television to be a Flat-Screen HDTV.

Good times.  At the same time, I allowed our local cable company to talk me into their new DVR with all kinds of promised new features.  What they didn't tell me (and I didn't think about it) is that my old DVR box had precious saved recorded TV shows.

I realized this when the cable guy was long gone, and I couldn't find my recorded shows.  I'll skip past the melodramatics that ensued...the frantics calls to get my cable box back.  Not gonna happen.
That meant, I had to set up all of my shows, that I don't want to miss, all over again.  (Downton Abbey, come back soon, please.)

I found the America's Test Kitchen show in HD, and I set up to record the series.  I gotta tell you-- I can fully appreciate how much better food looks in High-Def.  This could be dangerous.  Had I seen this recipe in a cookbook, I might have flipped right past the pages.

Rather, as I watched how easy it was to butterfly a pork loin, then rub it with sugar and thinly sliced garlic that is cooked in butter-- I was not hitting the DVR fast forward. I was hooked.


I'm committed to emptying out my hoard of frozen food in our upright freezer.  (Am I waiting for the Apocalypse?)  Why do I store so much?  As luck would have it, I remembered that I had  pork loin roast waiting to thawed. Perfect!

It's been a while since I've made a Butterflied Pork loin, stuffed with Fig Jam, Spinach and Feta.  This time, I found that the instructions made butterflying very easy to do, myself! (Patting self on back.)  The golden brown, buttery, garlic slices are spread inside the pork loin. Yum.

Tying the roast was easy, and I loved the tip of looping the string twice, before pulling. It's much easier to do, this way (though photographing and holding string with one hand is a challenge). I must be easily amused, because I found this whole process to be fun-- butterfly, pound, fill, fold, tie. It didn't feel like "work".

To season the pork, you want to use Herbes de Provence.  These herbs can include savory, fennel, basil, thyme and lavender. You can make your own, but I can easily find this at grocery stores. I use this to season roasted potatoes, pork, chicken and vegetables. Delicious!

Hello, lovely pork roast!

To build flavor, the roast is seared on all three sidesk. Three? Why, yes. There is no reason to sear the bottom of the roast, because it's going to roast quite nicely in the oven. This is about 5 to 8 minutes total work.  The roast is removed, and it's time to build a delicious au jus.

Apples, onion and garlic. I'm in! To build more flavor, we add white wine (I used Sauvignon Blanc), bay leaves and fresh thyme. So very "French".

The roast is snuggled into the apples and onion...

... then covered with foil and covered with a tight fitting lid.  It's then slow-roasted at 225F for about 50-90 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 140F.  (My roast took about 50 minutes, because it was just under 2 pounds.

The aroma of wine, onion, garlic and apples... mouth-watering.

Chicken stock is added to the pan sauce to equal 1-1/4 cups. I actually had plenty of sauce.

To finish up the sauce, the "secret" ingredient is unflavored gelatin that has been bloomed with a little chicken stock. Apparently this mimics the flavor that the French derive by adding a pig's foot. I think I like this better, no?  For silkiness unsalted butter is added and finished off with freshly chopped parsley.

The pork is super moist and juicy. The technique of roasting the pork in a very low-heat oven was successful.

TASTING NOTES:  This dish is perfect to serve to company. One adjustment I will make, next time, is to increase the amount of garlic that is rolled into the roast.  I would have liked more garlic flavor-- but that's my own preference.  The sauce was very flavorful and not too rich.  Once again, America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated has developed a recipe that looks fancy, but isn't too hard to make. The instructions were very clear.  If I had red cabbage on hand, I would have enjoyed this with Braised Red Cabbage. Yum!

As always, a printable recipe card is at the end of this post. (If you are using an older version of Window's Explorer, you might have trouble viewing it. Please email me at foodiewife@gmail.com if you can't view the recipe card.