A Seedy Piece of Pig

Friday 1 Sept.
We had Lynne and Tom over for dinner. Since we were just back, we hadn't had a chance to go shopping, so we needed to do the householders' equivalent of the CIA (the good CIA) paper-bag test, i.e., see what's in the freezer. Rummaging around produced a pork loin. Life in Cincinnati features a lotta pork.

Lynne and Tom are old friends and old Rome hands so I thought about doing Marcella Hazan's pork loin in milk (the good folk up Bologna way seem to favor meat and milk; see "Kid Seethed in its Mother's Milk" in the "Abominations" section of The Fear and Loathing Cookbook). Turns out they've already done it, with great success.

Nu, so anyway. I wanted to do a recipe I'd seen in the new edition of Joy of Cooking (hereinafter just Joy). Still dairy, but basically you marinate the loin in tzatziki: yogurt, garlic, mustard powder, lemon juice, pepper and kosher salt (oh, the irony, the bitter, bitter irony). Then after about six hours, pat on a crust of bread crumbs and either ground almonds or, in this case, mixed seeds: mustard, fennel, poppy, coriander, and sesame. I would have thrown in cumin as well, but we were out (Holt grew up in Albuquerque, so he tends to throw cumin, coriander, and chili--La Santa Trinidad--into just about everything).
Joy says 10 minutes at 450º then 45 at 250º, but in fact, even for a fairly flattish loin (and you know how that can hurt), it took closer to an hour and a half. Nice and tender and the crust does keep it moist. Just a salad on the side. (Did we mention the green beans?)

Lynne and Tom had brought a lovely bottle of dessert wine (Muscat) which went very well with Graeter's vanilla topped with strawberries in rum (from my sister JoDee) and cinnamon-flavored pears in wine (from our colleague Michael's own trees).

N.B. Graeter's is the best ice cream on the planet--and we're eaten our way systematically though the gelaterias of Italy and I've even tasted the unspeakable Blue Ice Cream of Tbilisi.