1. I decided a few days ago that I wanted to see if I could give a picnic pork roast the royal treatment and cook it up really special for today's Sunday family dinner. As an online subscriber to America's Test Kitchen, I found both a video and a recipe for Cider-Braised Pork Roast and it looked to me like the perfect recipe to stretch myself a bit and possibly make a really tasty dinner.
I started thawing the roast about last Wednesday. On Saturday, I unwrapped the roast, cut a crosshatch pattern in its fat cap, and rubbed the entire roast with a brown sugar and salt combination. I double wrapped the roast in plastic wrap and returned it to the fridge where it sat for the next 24 hours or so.
Today, Sunday, I unwrapped the roast and seared in all sides and then scattered slices of onion and crushed garlic around the meat and let it heat up for a couple of minutes until fragrant. Meanwhile, I combined apple cider, thyme, cinnamon, and bay leaves to make the braising liquid, poured it into the Dutch oven, brought it to a simmer, and put it in the oven at 275 degrees.
I thought the roast would be cooked in about 2 hours and 45 minutes, but it took longer, possibly because the roast was bigger than the one used in the recipe.
2. For a side, I chopped up these round zucchini things that popped up in the Deke's raised bed and boiled some baby potatoes until they were about half cooked. I combined the potatoes and zucchini in a bowl, poured olive oil over them and seasoned them with Montreal seasoning. Later, I fried this combination in garlic butter and when nearly done, after I removed the roast from the oven, I put the vegetables in the oven at a low temperature to stay warm.
When the roast came out and while it rested for well over a half an hour, I made Honey Crisp apple slices, salt and peppered them, and cooked them in the fat of the braising liquid.
I put the apple slices aside under a foil tent and made a sauce with braising liquid, apple butter, apple cider, corn starch, and a little cider vinegar. While it simmered, I took the bone out and sliced the roast and soon we had a delicious dinner of cider-braised pork roast with apple sauce and browned sliced apples and a mess of baby potatoes and zucchini fried in garlic butter.
Unless you get blocked by the America's Test Kitchen firewall, the recipe is here. If it's a recipe you want and this link doesn't work, if you can get a hold of me, do so, and I can email you the recipe as an attachment.
3. I admit it. I thought Tiger Woods was washed up. I thought his deteriorating physical health had betrayed him forever and that he'd never play elite level golf again.
I was wrong.
Today, Tiger Woods won the season-ending Tour Championship tournament. Tiger astonished me all four days of the tournament with his brilliant scoring. I don't know how he will perform in the Ryder Cup and I don't have any predictions about whether he will win another major tournament, but by winning today, he capped a comeback from multiple back surgeries and recklessness away from the golf course, a comeback that I never thought the world of golf would see.
I was so wrong.
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