In Which Half a Frozen Already-Cooked Pork Roast Comes to the Rescue!

Working a lot these days and the menu planning thing has fallen by the wayside. I typically finish up about 6 and am often cooking while watching my laptop for IMs and emails. Several clients are in heavy-duty push mode. Last night was one of my brain-dead nights. Hungry children were doing homework and I was staring in the frig and pantry, thinking. I can also do burritos or chicken quesadillas and everyone's happy. I thought I might quickly cook up some chicken, but remembered the half a pork roast I had in the freezer and decided to make chili verde. Cheater Chili Verde since I start with already-cooked pork.

I put the roast in the microwave on defrost and set about gathering everything else. From the pantry I pulled out a can of green chilies and a can of refried beans and grabbed half a bottle of green salsa from the frig.

Once the roast was defrosted, I chopped it up into small pieces and set it to simmer with the chilies and green salsa. I filled the bottle of salsa about halfway full of water and shook it to get the last flavor out and dumped that in as well. Sprinkled some garlic salt in it, then some garlic powder and cumin. I left this simmering for 20 minutes or so, maybe 30 minutes. Turned it up a bit at the end to evaporate more of the liquid.

From the refrigerator, I pulled out some cheese, sour cream, flour tortillas, and lettuce.

Heated up the beans, grated the cheese, heated the tortillas and dinner was ready!

They tasted great last night and the leftovers were good for lunch today!

Cuban Roast Pork

I bought a pork roast the other day because they were on sale and have proceeded to make two seemingly similar but very different-tasting dishes.

The roast was a bone-in cut. I wanted half it to make pork carnitas again, so cut the roast roughly in half. They came out as delicious as always. I served them with corn tortillas, diced avocado, refried beans, cheese, diced red onion, lettuce, and sour cream. Mmmm.... Had some of the leftovers for lunch today and they were fantastic!

I wasn't sure what to do with the other half of the roast. I browsed through a few cookbooks. I also remembered that a while back I asked for ideas about what to with a pork roast and got a ton of great-sounding recipes from readers. I eventually settled on this recipe for Cuban Pork Roast, partly because my oranges are in full swing right now and I'm always looking for ways to use some up. This is from The Complete Meat Cookbook. I had a neighbor over for a glass of wine on New Year's Eve and it turns out she knows Denis Kelly, one of the authors, so the book was sitting out ready to catch my eye!

I did marinate this for a day and a half, which I'm sure had something to do with the totally fantastic flavor! I did not serve it with black beans and fried plantains. I made some brown rice and some green beans with garlic, one of my favorites. So I essentially had the same meat for lunch and dinner but it sure didn't taste the same!

Marinade:
2 Tbs minced garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 cup rum (recipe called for dark; I only had light)
3/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lime juice
3 Tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp black pepper (recipe called for 1 tsp and next time I'll do that.)

1 pork roast, bone-in or boneless, 4-6 pounds (but I just did half a roast)

Mix up the marinade. and marinate your roast overnight. I like to use gallon-sized bags to marinade meat like that. You can also freeze meats in the freezer bags with the marinade. Just pull the meat out of the freezer to defrost the night or two before you want to cook it. This is a great way to take advantage of some of the deals at the warehouse stores.

If you remember, pull the roast out of the frig an hour or so before you start cooking. I forgot to do this so added a bit of time to the cooking.

Preheat the oven to 325 or 350. (The recipe calls for 325. I forgot to pull the meat out AND it was going to be a late dinner so I cooked it at 350 and it came out great.)

Put the roast on a rack in a roast pan and pour the marinade over it. Bake 1.5 to 2 hours, basting now and then. If the juices in the bottom of the pan evaporate, add a cup of water. Check with a meat themometer and pull the roast out when it hits 150 degrees F. Cover with a foil and let it sit for 15 minutes or so, while you cook up your side dishes, set the table, etc. Carve the meat into slices.

My youngest could not get enough of this. The eldest liked it as well, just not quite so intensely. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll stop by the store for some good sandwich rolls and try the next recipe in this book, Cuban Roast Pork Sandwich with Mojo Sauce, essentially olive oil, garlic, orange juice, and cumin. How could you go wrong? Pork, prosciuto (which I'll leave out), Swiss or Fontina cheese, red onion, and dill pickles. Mmmm.