Rösti Toasty!

So I haven’t posted in two weeks and for that I sincerely apologize! I have failed all of you, and will try to make it up to you with my witty witticisms and… something. You’ll also notice that rosti is sometimes spelled here with an umlaut, and sometimes not. The reason for this is I am lazy. Screw you.

Anyways, the sad part here is that I haven’t done a huge amount of proper cooking in the past while anyways, and so not only is the post two weeks late, but it’s also a two week old meal. It was a pretty good one, though!

The day was Sunday, December 2nd. It was a different, simple time for us. We were but young and innocent. Tracy’s father and mother had been invited out to a delicious dinner, with Tracy’s father promising to fix a couple of our light fixtures. As our place is a rancid shithole, the light fixtures were a welcome addition, and it gave me an excuse to try and prepare something proper in our kitchen.

The meal tonight is as follows:

Sage Stuffed Pork Loin
Leek and Gruyere Rosti
Creamed Corn

These items were exactingly picked out in order to please Tracy’s Dad. Gary is a good, old fashioned trucker and likes good, old fashioned trucker food. I’m pretty sure he considers pasta and rice to be foreign food. He likes his corn, he likes potatoes, and he definitely likes pork roast. Ideally, this will give Tracy’s parents something new and kind of fun to try without inflicting anything too extreme on them.

For the recipes, I’m doing my typical dela with the rosti and creamed corn, which is looking up around fifty recipes online and then making up my own. With the pork loin, I’m actually taking one from Gordon Ramsay. Eighty billion Michelin stars can’t be wrong!

If you watch this video, make note that he says that pork is best pink. That’s right. MEDIUM. To all of you who overcook your pork because you’re scared of trichinosis, screw you. Pigs are raised under such controlled conditions that trichinosis is simply not an issue. Has anyone even HEARD of someone getting trichinosis? EIther way people, pork is best medium, which is around 165 or so. So no to dry meat!

Anyways, I followed my darling sister’s advice and prepped a whole DAY in advance, that’s right.

As per usual, I couldn’t find a nice looking pork loin like in the video, but I found a decent one, enough for four people. It lacked the lovely fat on the outside to make cracklin because people somehow think that fat on a roast is bad, despite the fact they’ll eat at McDonald’s three times a week. Whatever, it’s still a pork loin. My troubles compound when pull off the string to stuff it, and discover it is in fact two halves jammed together with string.

Ohhhkay.

Whatever, I open them up, douse the insides with parsley, sage, tons of thinly sliced garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, string it back up, cover it in kosher salt, fresh pepper, and olive oil, wrap it in cling wrap, and throw it in the fridge.

Now, rösti is a delicious swiss potato cake made from shredded potatoes pressed together and shaped in a skillet. Easy enough. Two schools of thought exist – one claims you use day old boiled potatoes, one claims you use raw. Day old seems less hassle, so I cooked up a good five or so yukon gold potatoes, boiling them in their skins. These also went into the fridge until the next day.

Finally, as a tasty addition to the rösti, I fry up some bacon and make bacon bits to throw in the rosti! Good bacon from the deli, too. Mmmm.

So, next day it’s time to get everything together. Roast is first. Oven at 400, roast goes in. Done. I should have around forty or so minutes. Next come the potatoes, which I quickly grate into a big pile.

First, I start on the creamed corn. The idea is to simmer some veggies in butter, add flour for a roux, add milk and cream, and then simmer until corn is creamy. I used onions to start it off and simmered those for quite a while in the butter before mixing int he corn and cooking until the corn started to colour. Then went in the flour, followed by some table cream and milk. As I had fresh sage leaves left over, those went in to. On second thought, I should have just stuck with dried basil, but whatever. Salt and white pepper as well to taste. I find white pepper adds a nicer flavour with creamy dishes like this.

Here’s a shot of all of my prep at this point:

The corn is happily simmering away, and it’s time for the rösti. As the corn was going, I started leeks my lucky cast iron pan, cooking in buter. After the leeks had simmered for a while, I threw them, the bacon bits from the night before, and salt and pepper in with the potatoes, and folded them in with a spatula. Then, with some butter and olive oil in the pan, I press half of it in. The trick is simply to cook it until the underside forms a brown crust, and flip it onto a plate. Sounds easy, right?

Well…. no.

See, there’s no way to TELL when the underside is cooked without disturbing the lovely rosti.

So I’m poking, prodding, think I see some brown, and decide it’s time for the flip. Naturally the middle portion simply sticks to the pan which I should have freaking seasoned beforehand, and I get a rosti mess on the plate when I flip it over. Irritated, I simply press the potatoes back into the pan and let them cook some more before coating them with gruyere and setting on a plate.

I start the second rosti, and as it’s going… I notice that these two would look pretty badass if they were layered and stacked like a cake. So I decide to get REALLY stupid, and cover the first rosti in a little more cheese, and then a layer of parsley to lighten it up and add colour. If I can simply throw the other rosti on top, we’ll get a layer cake of potato-y goodness!

Naturally, the second fucking rosti sticks to the pan as well, and fails to flip on the first even after a lot of prodding. In the end, it looks looks very patchwork, with browned and not-so-browned potatoes poking out all over, but it at least looks edible and will probably taste good.

At this point, the roast is done! Oven thermometer shows it to be medium and so I pull it out, and it doesn’t look too bad, and hasn’t spilled stuffing all over! Looks a little warped, but oh well.

I get out my nice new white dishes, get ready to plate, and then proceed to toss an assload of gruyere over the corn. Here’s an almost-done-corn shot.

I then cut into the roast, after letting it rest longer than the last one. Not quite enough so I still spill more juice than I’d like, but whatever.

As per usual, my plating job looks miserable, but the plate shows off the food well enough for me to only complain so much.

The Verdict:

Creamed Corn:

This was the highlight of the night for pretty much everyone. Absolutely delicious and Gary vacuumed it up in seconds. Considering it was the vegetable dish, I consider that a point of pride. Of course, it was also made with butter, cream, and gruyere cheese. ANYTHING made with that many heavy fat dairy products is going to taste good.

The Pork Roast:

I missed on adding the lemon zest Ramsay added, and I think that actually would have benefited it. I found the stuffing a little too powerful tasting for me, and it didn’t infuse the rest of the meat like I hoped it would – very likely because the roast was just two roasts strung together. Still, it was tasty enough as roasts go and everyone liked it.

The Rosti:

The texture was all off since it was basically it was inside-out and mixed up. The texture on this dish should be everything, so oh well. Still, it was good yukon gold potatoes, leeks, cheese, and bacon, and so the flavour of it all was quite nice.

All in all, this is one of the better full meals I’ve made for several people, everything matched each other, and even though the rösti was an admitted screwup, I will still claim victory!