Rosie Makes A Pork Roulade.

It's that time of year again.

I'm getting close to Christmas baking.

That means, I have to clean out a couple of shelves

in the utility room freezer.

For Christmas Goody storage.

Throughout the year,

Mr. Hawthorne searches for every sale possible

and buys viand voraciously.

I have recognized in him certain hoarding tendencies,

especially of late.

I do not like it.

I know he's not the youngest child

amongst 9 other siblings,

worrying about where his next morsel is coming from,

picking up droppings from the floor,

so I wonder why he's like this.

All of which brings me back to this:

cleaning out the freezer,

one step at a time.

Today, I pulled out a center cut pork loin.
I'm making a pork roulade.

I surrounded the meat with plastic wrap

and pounded away,

starting in the middle and working my way outward.

Salt and pepper.

Today, I'm using a cup of cranberries,

juice of 1 orange, plus some pulp,

peeled and diced green apple,

little box of raisins,

handful of walnuts,

maybe 1/4 cup+ of honey + some comb

In a small saucepan,

combine cranberries, orange juice and some pulp,

honey and some comb.

Needs more honey.

Cook over low heat for about 5 minutes.

Dice apple.

Add in apples.

Raisins.

Handful of walnuts.

Cook over low for 5 more minutes.

Oh, yeah.

Cranberry Delight done.

Set aside and tend to the pork.

I trimmed that little bit of fat off.

Left some on for flavor.

Seasoned both sides with salt and pepper.

I put a layer of prosciutto down ...

... and laid the pounded loin on top the prosciutto.

 Salt and pepper this side.

Place rosemary leaves gaily about.

Gather the players:

pounded pork center cut chop

rosemary

Cranberry a la Hawthorne

Spread a thin layer of the cranberry mixture.

Roll up.

Beautiful.

Mooey beautiful!

Deftly tie the roulade.

I seared this roulade over high heat

for about 4 minutes.

Sear all over,

then it goes into a 350 degree oven

for about 12 minutes.

(Internal temperature of 160 degrees.)

Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

Juicy pork with a fun surprise in the middle.

And those corn muffins were something else.
Recipe for the corn muffins coming next.

Celine. Day Two. Rosie Makes The Pig Roulade.

I must say that the French Laundry instructions for Braised Stuffed Pig Head with Sauce Gribiche were sketchy at best. Two paragraphs of instructions about the preparation and cutting of the head, a one-sentence paragraph telling me to braise the tongue and referring me to another page for braised veal tongue, one short paragraph about rolling the roulade in cheesecloth, another one-sentence paragraph telling me to suspend the cheesecloth-wrapped roulade overnight in the fridge, one paragraph for the assembly, and the recipe for Sauce Gribiche.

And, no pictures. What kind of whack job would even attempt something like this? Oh yeah. Me.

This is Day 2 of my little project and I'm all set to get my pig meat out, wrap it up, roll it up, and braise it. First the aromatics for my braising liquid: celery, carrots, leek, parsley, thyme. I coarse chopped the veggies and left the parsley and thyme whole.

First, I must deal with the ears.

I didn't get all the hairs off by shaving, so I did a quick sear.

The French Laundry said to just dice the pig ear. It didn't say to do what I'm doing here, which is scraping the skin off the cartilage. I didn't see how it would be edible with the cartilage on so I made the executive decision to remove it.

Then I diced the pig ear.

I got out my different cuts of head meat. Those are the butterflied cheeks on top of a "porkier" looking slice of meat.

Some diced pig ear.

To quote from The French Laundry: "Arrange batons of cooked tongue, sweetbreads, and diced pig's ear."

Crap. I put the tongue on whole. And this is also ambiguous. Is the "cooked" a general "cook" and modifies the sweetbreads and the ear? I like to think it only refers to the tongue. One would hope the writer of the recipe meant that since nowhere did it say to cook other parts. I'm sure sweetbreads were in there, but I think I could only identify one and that was iffy. Now. Isn't everybody thinking about another head part? Go ahead. You can say it. B.R.A.I.N. Let me go on record as saying I never saw any brain. I never even thought about brain until Good Neighbor Bobby called last night and asked about pork brains. Well, the pork brains were still inside the skull when I boiled the head and skin for my stock, which, by the way, was a heady, porkish/bacony/layered, deep broth. I can't wait to make a nice bean soup on a cold winter night. Fireplace going. Snow gusting and drifting. And that was a fantasy. That doesn't happen here. But it did one night, make that 2-3 days of snow, about 20 years ago. It was Christmas Eve and I was delivering my cookies and it started snowing. And then it started snowing a whole lot. And it was sticking. I got home and the snow was being blown horizontally. It didn't come down. It came across. I couldn't see the houses across the canal from me. It was glorious. On Christmas Eve, Mr. Hawthorne went out to buy batteries for all the Santa gifts. He got turned back three miles up the road where the airstrip is. The drifts were huge and impenetrable. He was turned back by police and we were batteryless on Christmas day. I had my very first White Christmas. Daughter Hawthorne was 4 and Middle Hawthorne was 2. And they couldn't even play in the snow. On the day after Christmas, I took both to the doctor. Pneumonia.

Here's the roulade tied up in cheese cloth ready for the aromatics.

Chicken stock went in to cover.

I also added the aromatics from the braising liquid of the tongue.

A little white wine never hurts.

More chicken stock.

And we're ready for 6 hours in a 300 degree oven.

While the roulade was braising, I pulled the pork stock out of the fridge and scraped the top layer of fat off. I reheated the stock, skimming the impurities off the top.

Then I poured the stock through multiple layers of cheesecloth.

I ended up with a quart of stock.

I had a few sips and it was very, very good. Rich, complex, porky, slightly bacony, layered flavors.

Nothing went to waste.

These are the ear cartilages which I baked along with the roulade for several hours.

The doggies are going to love these.

Back to the roulade.

Here it is after 6 hours of braising.

I'm letting it drain for a while before I unwrap it and rewrap it back up in more cheesecloth.

I refrigerated the braising liquid and will deal with that tomorrow. More stock.

Everything is done for now. I'll leave it hanging for at least 24 hours, then the plan is to slice the roulade into medallions and saute them. Now that part really has me worried since I don't know whether everything is just going to fall apart when I try to slice it or if it will actually slice cleanly. We shall see.