What’s good for a pre-spring happy luscious meal? That’s right, a pork loin roast! Normally I wouldn’t have mentioned it (yeah right), but I hear so little about this cut. Heck, I don’t even see it in the grocery store that often, if at all. Rick the butcher always has one on hand, which is why we love our butchers, don’t we? Yessir.

This may sound a bit much for a Wednesday evening meal, after work. But it wasn’t that big of a deal to make. I can tell you though, it was a delight to eat. Quite moist, very juicy and you get to chew on bones for the good stuff! mmmmMMMMmmm bones …
First you need a good hunk of meat. Try your local butcher and ask for a 3 or 4 lb pork loin roast. Take it home and wash it with cool refreshing water, they like that a lot. Pat dry with a paper towel. Rub it with the best olive oil you have. For this one chose to sprinkle on some of Michael Chiparillo’s Grey Salt (gag cough). Fresh ground black pepper. Make sure all these spices & herbs make it into all the slices of the pork loin roast as well, not just the outside. For herbs I reached for a tin of Dean & Deluca’s Herbs For Meat. This blend contains thyme, savory, rosemary and marjoram. Normally I’m a little hesitant about buying herbs in metal cans on a shelf in a nice grocery store. I have to say though, when I popped open the tin a very bright waft of herbal life leaped forth. Dang, that’s nice.
Once your meat is glistening with love set it aside.
You’ll need one of those rectangular baking dishes large enough for your meat and enough to cook all the vegies.
I did up a load of carrots, sliced onion, several handfuls of crimini mushrooms, and an entire head of smooshed garlic. Add enough good chicken broth and water to bring it up about halfway or more up the side of the baking dish. Feel free to add some dry white wine if you have it. Take some more salt and sprinkle over all. Don’t forget some grinds of pepper as well. I suppose you could add some more herbs to this if you wanted to. I chose not to because I wanted the meat to be the center piece and not get confused with the lowly vegies swimming below. Install your metal rack or use the vegies (carrots are good for this) to hold the meat out of the juice. We don’t want boiled pork do we? No, we don’t.
I will usually simmer the concoction first before I put it into the oven. Again, this is done on a week night and we don’t have all afternoon to get this done.
With the baking dish’s first simmer bubbles install the meat (fat side up) and pop the sucker into a preheated 350 degree oven.
Pull at one hour and test the internal temperature of the meat. Mine took another 45 minutes to reach 150. Once it does, pull it, tent it with foil and let it sit for 15 minutes.
Now we need to thicken up your “sauce” a bit. I grabbed 3 teaspoons (or do 2 if you like a thinner sauce) of corn starch and disolved it in a bit of cold water. Add to your vegies and bring to a simmer. It’ll thicken right up.
As for starches, you are on your own. I chose Couscous because it doesn’t take any time and we love it bunches. Easy.

Here we are. Not bad for a Wednesday night meal eh? No sir.