Recipe 11- Main Course - Spiral Stuffed Pork Loin

This one I am particularly proud of. An awful lot of what I have been working on came together for this meal. First, I was inspired by yesterday's blog item, Steven Raichlen's Tapenade Pork Loin. In the midst of the recipe he provided in his HOW TO GRILL book, he suggests to let your imagination run away with you. Well, I knew I was going to do Stephen's Tapenade recipe, but I was also pondering an additional recipe for loin. I am not that big a fan of olives.

So, as I already discussed, last weekend we ventured out to the big city fresh farmer's market! I spent the morning looking for inspiration, and I certainly found it...

Assorted peppers, a wonderful package of Chorizo sausage, some green onions, some sweet candy onions and finally a package of my favorite provolone cheese made their way to my bags! the pork loin came from a sale at my local grocery store. 2 pound Hormel pork loins were on sale for only $3.99. I bought 10, and wish I had bought 20 (God bless my freezer for saving money).

OK, start Julian cutting the peppers and onions. Slice the cheese into strips and I had to cut the casings off the sausage. Then I started spiral cutting the loin. It is easier if you cut the loin in half and cut each half spiral. Use a good sharp medium size knife and cut as thin as you can. Once you have a long flat piece of pork, start alternating your fillings... like this



leave about 3 inches blank at the end. As you roll the loin up, that end will need to flap over to make a good seal. So, start rolling. As tight as you can, stretching the pork as you go, so it looks like this...

I put a couple toothpicks in to help hold everything together during the next step. I was going to smoke these in my smoker. I prefer to have a rub on anything I smoke. It adds flavor, plus it helps to seal the meat up and retain moisture during the long, slow and low cooking process.

So, here they are with the rub added.

I made my own!!!

I combined a cup of ground coffee (coffee makes a great rub base. forms an excellent bark around the meat, and any juices the start to leak out are absorbed by the beans),
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of Cajun spices
1/4 cup of ground mustard seeds
2 heaping tablespoons of smoked paprika
2 heaping tablespoons of cracked red pepper

I put everything in a plastic bag and
shake shake shake
(pause pause pause)
shake shake shake...
(pause pause pause)
shake my bootee and bag.

Rub all the exposed parts of the meat. Finally, I wrapped some bacon slices around the meat so I could remove the toothpicks and the meat still had something holding it together.

Low and slow... 225 degrees, for 4 hours. I then took them off the heat and wrapped each in tin foil. Prior to sealing, I poured a quarter cup of the previously blogged about Pomegranate BBQ sauce I made a couple weeks ago on each, and poured a couple of tablespoons of honey on each before I sealed them in the foil. This technique is called the Texas Cheat, and it insures that your finished product will be moist and tasty. I highly recommend you do this with anything coming out of a smoker. I leave these in a cooler (no ice) for a couple hours. When I start to cut them, they are still plenty hot.

And it looks like this...

cut into 1/2 inch slices and wait for the applause!

I served these with the Tapenade pork loin I blogged about yesterday (pictured below), offering my guests a choice of two vastly different tasting items.

A big success, that combined the skills I am learning with pairing items, layering tastes, making my own rub and sauce and adding a bit of Panache with the spiral cut.



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