Pork shoulder was on sale for $1.99 a pound, so I picked up a two pound roast. I thought about making a cardamom or barbecue pulled pork, an easy option with pork shoulder, but decided I wanted a simple roast instead. I rubbed salt, pepper and garlic powder into the raw roast and put it a 325° oven to cook. Then I fed my cat and watched last night’s So You Think You Can Dance episode. I let it roast until it reached 145° on the meat thermometer. I always use a thermometer because I don’t like overcooked meat. If you cook to 145° and let it rest for 5 minutes before slicing, you can get tender, juicy pork roast from cheap cuts.
Pork loves fruit and nothing makes a cheap cut of pork feel like a million dollar entree than a fruit sauce. I picked up some cherries at the grocery store and figured a cherry and balsamic sauce would be tasty. I put 1 TBSP of olive oil in a sauce pan and put it on medium heat. I took a small leek and cut it lengthwise about 1 inch twice so it was in quarters, but still on the leek – this makes for easy cutting. I then sliced it very narrowly so that I had tiny slices of leek and tossed them in the oil As they softened, I added 2 TBSP of balsamic vinegar and 2 TBSP of white wine and let them simmer. I added 1 tsp of dry mustard and 1 tsp of thyme. While they simmered I pitted a dozen fresh cherries. Note to Self: Pit cherries in advance. I really had to rush to get them pitted before the sauce cooked too much. I don’t like rushing! I finished them in time, though, and tossed them in and let them simmer a couple minutes.
I put a quarter of the Patatas Aioli I had in the fridge on a plate and reheated for 1.5 minutes in the microwave. I sliced some pork and poured some cherry balsamic sauce on the pork. I don’t like it when sauces run onto foods I don’t want sauce on, but the cherry sauce ran onto the patatas aioli and guess what, it was incredible. I have to think about how I can make a dish with potatoes, cherries, balsamic and aioli. Just putting some sauce on the patatas would look messy, so this will take some thinking.
I added the last of my cucumber salad.
Single Servings 