In-House Cook

Welcome to Another Episode of

What I Have Been Up To

In My Kitchen

I do apologize for how long it has taken me to post another blog. A month is far too long! I promise, after May, I will be blogging regularly. In the meantime, I want to share with you a couple of delicious dishes I have prepped this week. I have one more after this, but that will be later in the week. I will also post, separately, a surprise! Stay tuned!

I will work backward, and share with you the roasts I made today. They are full of flavor and it is the first time I have bacon wrapped Anything, and I am kicking myself, believe me, as the pork loin roasts I'd wrapped turned out amazingly moist, juicy and enveloped by and dripped with flavor. The spices I chose were very last minute, as I was going to season one with my Mexican spice blend, and the other more bbq style with my homemade Tamarind BBQ sauce. I went a completely different direction and seasoned the roasts with fresh garlic, Moroccan spiced blend and Chappli, a Pakistani kabab spice blend. I love these flavors! I roasted them on a bed of onion and garlic and splashed a little wine into the glass bake ware I used in the oven to offer moisture. I did not do a step-by-step, but it is more than extremely easy to do. Mind you, you can purchase Chappli at most grocery stores, but I purchase mine at a local Pakistani grocery store. The Moroccan spice by McCormick, found at any grocery store in the country.

My starting line up:

2 halved pork loin roasts

salt and fresh cracked black pepper

2 tablespoons Moroccan spice blend per roast

Chappli kabab spice blend, 3 tablespoons per roast

Extra virgin olive oil *

fresh garlic cloves, finely chopped, 3 cloves per roast

Splash of wine, chicken stock or beer (less than a quarter cup)

2 onions, sliced into discs of half crescents, one onion per roast, red or yellow

1 package thick cut bacon

Rub the roasts, top and bottom and sides, with the spices, which I'd mixed in a bowl ahead of time. Add the onion discs or crescents to the baking pan or dish, sprinkle with garlic, and place the roast atop the onion bed. Sprinkle garlic atop the roast. Wrap the roast with bacon and season the top and sides of the bacon. Cover and let sit in the refrigerator over night. Remove the next day and allow the roasts to come to room temperature, at least thirty minutes, as the oven preheats to 400-degrees. Re-cover the roasts with foil and place in the oven for forty-five minutes. Afterward, uncover and allow to crisp at 425-degrees for twenty minutes. With one of the roasts, however, I removed the roast from the glass bake ware with a little bit of the onion bed, which was very soft, placed the roast atop some of the onions in one of my oven-safe skillets and allowed it to roast another twenty minutes alone (the other roast was removed), which sped up the bacon crisping process. To experiment, however, I left the other roast in the glass bake ware and placed it back into the oven after the first roast was done crisping. And, mind you, the internal temperature by that time was just perfect. I do believe I simply lucked-out.

*I did not use extra virgin olive oil to coat the second roast. I had some of my chimichurri compound butter (recipe coming later this week) left over and used that to cover my roast before wrapping it with bacon and seasoning it. That allowed a new and wonderful dimension to the Middle Eastern flavors. Loved it!

Here's some of the photo evidence.....

These two are oven ready!

Roast one uncovered, ready for the crisping process. See below.

This is the one I crisped in the oven-safe skillet.

And the first dish I made with these beauties is....

Kaiser roll with sriracha mayo top and bottom, onion bed on the top and the bottom bun, as well, with two succulent pork roast slices, bacon from atop the roast sprinkled with finely grated parmesan cheese.

Another delectable shot.

This concludes dish one.....Well, two, actually. Dish Two starts here now!!!

This last Friday found me wanting to recreate - in my own way, with what I'd had on hand - my friend, Anne's (pronounced Annie's) herb roasted chicken dinner she'd made on Wednesday. Her chicken had rosemary and lemon and looked perfect! I shared it on my

Facebook In-House Cook blog site; please feel free to check it out! Like my FB blog while you are there, please, and say Hi! Back to business: I had fresh sage and rosemary on hand, along with garlic, which I'd finely chopped and sprinkled over the onion bed and atop the chicken, but no lemons or limes. I love roasting meats on a bed of onion as I love caramelized onions, so, like the pork roasts above, I placed the chicken on a bed of onion crescents, which, to me, are easier to cut.

I melted some of the chimichurri compound butter I'd mentioned in part one of this episode post, and brushed it onto each side of the chicken. It had cilantro, flat leaf Italian parsley, garlic, salt and pepper and extra virgin olive oil. I simply placed skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs atop the bed of onions, topped with fresh chopped garlic, sage leaves and rosemary sprigs, and roasted in a glass bake ware dish at 375-degrees for 50 minutes, covered. I then uncovered the dish and baked another fifteen minutes at 400-degrees to crisp up the skin. This worked out perfectly, internal cooking and temperature-wise. Lucked out twice!

Uncovered and ready to crisp.

Another shot, ready to crisp up.

I HAVE roasted meats that had to go back in the roast just a little longer in my twelve years, now, of learning cooking. I have become quite fascinated by the science of cooking as of this last year. Anyway, I allowed the chicken to rest on a cutting board, minus the cutting, and allowed the onion bed to caramelize a little more in the buttery chicken juices. I then plated one of the thighs atop a pretty bed of onions.