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**RECIPE, SERVES 6-8**
1 3-4 lb (1.4-1.8 kb) pork loin roast (NOT tenderloin), ideally the longest, thinnest piece you can get
1 lb (.5 kg) Italian sausage, sweet or hot, no casings
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
approx. 1/2 cup (50 g) breadcrumbs
lemons (at least one, but it's nice to roast as many as will fit in your roasting pan)
white wine (about half a bottle)
butter
olive oil
salt
pepper
Cut the stalks off the fennel and reserve. Finely chop the bulb and get it cooking in a little olive oil in a wide pan on medium-high heat. Peel and chop the onion finely, and get it cooking with the fennel. After the veg has cooked about 5 min, put in the sausage, and stir aggressively with a wooden spoon to break everything up.
Keep cooking, stirring, and scraping the pan for about 20 minutes, until everything is very brown and the fond on the bottom of the pan is about to burn. Deglaze with just enough white wine to clean the pan. (If you don't want to use wine, use water or stock plus a glug of vinegar.) Turn off the heat, and mix in just enough breadcrumbs to soak up any loose liquid and get you a dry, crumbly texture. Mix in the zest of one lemon, and leave the stuffing to cool.
Get the oven heating to 375ºF (190ºC) convection, or 400ºF (200ºC) conventional.
Butterfly the pork loin (I don't know how to describe this, just watch the video) then pound it out as flat as possible with a smooth meat mallet, taking care to not make any holes. Lay the stuffing onto the cut-side of the pork, as smooth, thin and flat as possible, leaving a small bare strip on the end of the pork that has the fat cap on the opposite side. Roll up the pork so that the fat cap is on the outside, on top.
Tie the roast (again, just watch the video) and put it in your roasting pan. You can re-use the pan in which you made the stuff, but first wipe out any chunks in the pan that might burn in the oven. Coat the roast in olive oil, salt and pepper. Cut the lemon(s) in half and position them cut-side down in the pan - it's nice to have a few, if you have room for them.
Roast until the internal temperature is 140ºF (60ºC). If you baste it every now and then, the outside will be browner and more succulent. If you don't baste it, the outside will be drier and crispier. Both ways are good, IMHO. Consider changing the oven temperature as it's getting close to done if the outside is looking too brown or not brown enough.
Remove the roast and lemons to a cutting board and let it rest. Bring the roasting pan to a boil on high heat and deglaze with about half a bottle of white wine (or water/stock with a big glug of vinegar). Boil until it just starts to look syrupy, then turn off the heat. When the boiling has stopped, mix in a knob of cold butter.
Carve the roast into approx. 1 inch (2.5 cm) slices and put them on a plate. Drizzle the wine jus over top, garnish with the reserved fennel fronds, and serve with the roasted lemons for squeezing.
26 сен 2024
