Rotisserie Pork Loin

Few things say summer more than cooking outdoors. All winter long I look forward to the scent of meat sizzling over a charcoal fire. The combination of a rotisserie ring and weber kettle is an invitation to create meals that are at once simple and yet deeply satisfying. Add a side of pinto beans and a green salad and it's dinner time.

Rotisserie Pork Loin

Dry brining, pioneered by Judy Rogers is an easy way to add flavour and moisture without the drawback of odd texture promoted by wet brining. Simply sprinkle the meat with 1 Tbsp of kosher salt per 5 pounds of meat. Place meat in a large ziplock back (or just a couple plastic bags if it doesn't fit) and refrigerate turning ever 12-24 hours for up to 4 days. This technique is absolutely fantastic for your holiday turkey.

This would be even better with a boneless pork shoulder although with a shoulder you would want to roast to an internal temperature of 160F. You can use a gas barbecue but you will need to add some wood chips to generate smoke flavour. 



Recipe

The pork

1 pork loin, preferable with as much fat as possible
Dry rub (recipe follows)

When ready to cook set up your rotisserie for indirect heat with a drip pan below the meat. For a weber kettle build a charcoal fire on either side and place a foil drip pan directly below and in line with the rotisserie spit. Regulate the heat to 375- 400F.

Dry brine the pork loin for 3 to 4 days using 1 Tbsp of kosher salt per 5 pounds of meat. Remove from refrigerator and rub liberally with the dry rub. Thread the rotisserie spit through the meat lengthwise and spit roast until the internal temperature of the pork loin reaches 135F. Remove from your BBQ and let rest 15 minutes. You can make a simple board sauce with the drippings if you like.


The dry rub

2 Tbsp butcher's pepper (medium coarse black pepper)
1 Tbsp pure mild chill powder (New Mexican or Ancho) 
2 tsp paprika

Do not use "chill" powder from the grocery store spice aisle. That stuff is a mix of god knows what spices. You want a pure chili powder.

Board sauce

This is a simple technique for grilled meat that gives you a little bit of sauce to serve and you can do it right on your cutting board. Simply mix the board drippings with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Depending on what you are roasting you can also add a bit of fresh lemon juice or some finely chopped herbs. Really, it's up to your imagination.

Indirect heat so you don't have to worry about flareups.

Let rest for 15 to 20 minutes and use the drippings to create a board sauce

In his natural habitat

My buddy Matt has a waterproof camera. He's the one that took the picture of Munch swimming that serves as the backdrop of this blog. Last summer he patiently floated off the end of the dock to try to get an airborne picture - never managed to get a clear shot airborne  but he got this one...

The shed is done

We've been neglecting our little blog horribly these last couple years but that doesn't mean we have not been busy. We finished off the shed a couple summers ago. There wasn't much left to do to the shed itself but we added a couple steps into it and put some flagstone down leading up to it. We got the flagstone at a quarry nearby and the nice people would just laugh at my BMW loaded up with flagstone and wave me through without charging me. Looking back we probably should have just paid to have some delivered but we were broke with all the renovations...

This is the shed when we arrived

And this is the shed today

Sunset at Crosby Lake

As shot with a Panasonic GX1.

Home made tonic recipe

I know it's the dead of winter but this idea came about during one of many late night chats on Crosby Lake and we will be serving many of these this coming summer and summers to come. I tried making the Imbibe Magazine tonic recipe. Straining it was absolute hell. I tried coffee filters and that just plain didn't work. I finally came up with the idea of using my fine mesh French chinois. That worked pretty well but it was still pretty cloudy.

Jeffrey Morganthaler's recipe calls for cut chinchona rather than powdered (basically it's the bark broken into very small pieces). That makes a huge difference in straining. What was impossible becomes dead easy. I also found that the large amounts of zest called for in many recipes resulted in a slightly stewed flavour that I didn't think was particularly pleasing. To that end, I've tried a more basic approach and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I will continue tinkering but this is what I have so far (maybe try a bit of lemon grass or try a cold infusion of lime zest). A simplified Jeffrey Morganthaler recipe that works quite well if (and this is important) you take the time to squeeze a lime wedge into the drink.

4 cups water
1/4 cup cut chinchona bark
1/4 cup citric acid
1 tsp whole all spice berries
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3 cups white sugar

Combine all the ingredients except the sugar in a non-reactive saucepan (for the citric acid). Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Cool slightly and strain. I used my chinois but I bet a french coffee press like a bodum would work pretty well. A regular fairly fine strainer followed by a pass through a coffee filter would work probably work as well. Straining before adding sugar makes this whole process a lot easier.

After straining return the clear infusion to the rinsed pan and add 3 cups sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. It should look like this.

Syrupy but not cloudy. 

I store it in a 1 litre mason jar. Lasts quite a while. 

You will need to tinker with the proportions you like but as a rough starting point try 2 parts gin, 1 part syrup and 2-3 parts soda water (we use a soda stream).

This is what a decent gin and tonic looks like. Can't wait to have one by the lake!

Interior renos

We had a bit of a crazy summer so I'm way behind in posting progress. This summer, after the kitchen, we tackled the ceiling and painting. We are still desperately in need of art but we will get to that next year. 

We sourced the v-groove pine from the Home Hardware building centre in Westport. Those guys are great. I was told I would have to live with random lengths (which is only fair) but when it arrived I had a nice selection of mostly 12-16 foot boards. Pulling down the ceiling was a messy job - shingle residue everywhere and about a million staples and small nails. 

We were a bit torn on which way to run the ceiling. Our natural inclination was to have the ceiling run parallel to the floor. The concern was that the kitchen dining room area is already extremely long and fairly narrow and we were worried we would get a bowling alley effect. Also the furring for the previous ceiling ran in a way that to do it the other way would have required completely re-furring the ceiling...

The before shots...

The after shots...

Benjamin Moore Cloud White on the walls.

Notice the hutch is now a sideboard. Opens the space up nicely. Also, painting out the trim around the windows and removing the blinds opened the space visually. You now focus on the lake, not the window...

Munch in a rare at rest moment

We were at a bit of a loss to come up with a way to light the bedrooms. We decided the best visually would be ceiling fans. We like the look but more importantly it allows us to control airflow. Cross ventilation is pretty good already but the fans help when there's no wind (pretty rare on Crosby lake) but in the spring and fall the fans really help move the air around when heating with the wood stove. 

Before... 

After...

Our neighbour Dawn came up with the great idea of taking the upper portion of the hutch that came to the cottage as a bookshelf in the second bedroom. Sheila painted the both portions using Benjamin Moore Aura self priming paint. 

Painting Kitchen Cabinets

The kitchen was pretty rough when we got it. Cabinets were solid but it was that old brown oak cabinets you see in houses from the 60s. It was a prime candidate for a makeover.

This was a picture from the listing website. It wasn't exactly like this when we took possession but you get the idea.

I surfed a fair bit to try to figure out the best way to paint the cabinets. I really struggled but in the end I found an excellent description on younghouselove.com. 

First thing I did was take the doors off and bring them home to work on them. I found a super degreaser called XIM Gon. Nasty stuff but it worked super well. Stripped off 40 years of grease in no time. I sanded 120 grit to rough up the finish and remove some of the varnish. 

Oak is an open pore wood and I didn't want to see the pores in the paint surface. I found an excellent product called Timbermate wood filler http://www.timbermate.com.au/products/Timbermate+WaterBased+Wood+Filler.aspx

I mixed it with water to create a slurry and painted the surface of the doors with a foam brush. I let it dry and then sanded through 120 then 180 grit.

I also used it to fill the holes left by the old cabinet hardware. We liked the knobs themselves but not the ornate fixtures that came with them. We kept the hinges as well. They did look pretty good with the knobs.

After that it was a matter of priming and then painting. After one coat of primer I used 0000 steel wool to really smooth down the doors. A quick vacuum and once over with a tack cloth and I was ready to paint. 

 I used Benjamin Moore's Advance for the finish coat. It's a waterborne alkyd and it's claim to fame is excellent self levelling properties. It worked quite well. Three coats with steel wool/vacuum/tack cloth between each coat and I got a pretty impressive finish. You really have to move fast though. I brushed the details, used a roller for the flat surfaces and backbrushed to eliminate any bubbles. I had 18 doors to do but only enough flat surface in my home shop to do 9 at a time so the entire process took 10 days.

The colour we wanted was the famous French Grey from Farrow and Ball. Turns out Kilkarney from Benjamin Moore is exactly the same colour. I used their Pearl finish which was the lowest sheen available. 

For the cabinets I followed exactly the same procedure. A little trickier because I was working vertically but it turned out fine.

I didn't even have to empty the cupboards:-)

I used Ikea wood countertop to fill in the corner left by the position of the old stove. There was a baseboard heater that prevented moving the cabinets to the left of the new stove so we had to remove that but other than that there was very little electrical work needed. I got the drawer pulls from Lee Valley. I got a jig from Home Depot but unfortunately Lee Valley spacing is metric and the Home Depot jig is imperial so I had to drill my own holes. Bit of a pain and it took two jigs to get the spacing right as I missed on my first try. 

The other very pleasant surprise was how easy it was to replace the faucet. The plug and play setups they sell these days make it painless. Literally - no blood and no swearing:-)

All in all we have what I think we wound up with a well laid out kitchen with some pretty good cottage style. Still needs paint and a new ceiling but that's another post. 

Romain