February 25 - Purple and Porchetta

So fancy.

Corporate America likes to business lunch. In this spirit, my department went out to Purple Cafe and Wine Bar to welcome a new girl to the team. Sweet. Purple has been a place I've wanted to check out for a while now.

We started out with the cheese platter, which was awesome. I didn't take a picture of it because I felt weird photographing my food in front of my co-workers, but the cheeses were lovely. The waiter described the best one as "like frosting, only it's cheese." This was oddly accurate. I couldn't describe it any better. It's weird, I know. I think it was delice de bourgogne, but I'm not totally sure. It kinda looked like this:

I ordered the pork loin lunch special - a pork loin with broccolini and cranberry relish. I don't know why they add the -ni to the broccoli, it didn't make it taste any different from regular-type. The cranberry stuff was a little intense on its own, but overall the flavors came together pretty nicely. And yes, I did take a picture of my food. And yes, I got made fun of.

Mmmm. . pork.

Because pork is delicious, I decided to try my hand at porchetta - which I think is just oven roasted pork. I picked up a pork shoulder roast and some sweet potatoes for dinner. My first step was to butterfly the roast and remove the bone, which was surprisingly easy.

I guess it kind of looks like a butterfly. . .

Then I added some seasoning - salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic, anise, and just a touch of cayenne pepper.

Herbacious.

Then I tied it all up with kitchen twine.

Tied up too tight.

I put it fatty side up on a foil-lined pan in a 400 degree oven, with the potatoes, which I had poked with a fork, coated in vegetable oil and sprinkled with Kosher salt.

It was kind of awesome, because everything finished at the same time. Apparently a 2.5 pound pork roast and giant sweet potatoes will cook in about an hour and fifteen minutes. I used a probe thermometer to tell me when my pork had reached an internal temperature of 160 degree Fahrenheit. Otherwise known as the temperature of no intestinal parasites.

Golden brown and delicious.

When I removed the twine and sliced the pork and I was pleased to find that it had cooked up all moist and tender. The flavors were nicely incorporated throughout the pork since I had cut it apart and seasoned it before rolling it back up. The potatoes were totally awesome - crisp and salted on the outside while llight and fluffy on the inside and delectably sweet. With butter, of course!

Dinner is served!

The coolest part about all this (besides being crazy delicious) is that 2.5 pounds of pork roast and two giant sweet potatoes fed me and my boy two meals each for a grand total cost of about $5. Cooking at home rules.

I'm going to close with a picture of the lunch I packed for work last week. Because I think it's cute and my mom would be pleased at how balanced and healthy it is: broiled salmon onigiri (in a cute wrapper I bought at Daiso!), tasty fat blueberries, cucumbers with ranch, and jasmine tea.

Adorable and tasty!