Fancy Pork Roast

     The thing about pork is, it's cheap -- and it's good, especially if you can cook it low and slow.  The grocer had Boston Butt, a nice size for roasting, and I had ideas.  I bought one and when Sunday turned out partly sunny and cold, I put my plans into action.

     I almost didn't.  It's a nice skill to start a charcoal fire with a single match.  It's a lot more difficult on a windy day and it took me six matches before I got one to burn long enough to catch the kindling.  That may be a record for me.

     The meat got marinated (not long) in about a half-cup of cider vinegar with a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce and Worcestershire, a couple tablespoons of hot dog relish and a couple of tablespoons of spicy brown mustard, plus a little black pepper, Bragg's herb mixture, dash of curry powder and smoked paprika and some parsley.  That's not a lot of marinade -- a large ziplock freezer bag with air squeezed out makes the most of it, and I poured the marinade into the pan when I set the meat on the rack.

     Once the coals were smoldering, I spared them into two piles along the sides of the grill and loaded the meat onto a rack in my oval roasting pan, with a box of chicken-mushroom broth almost up to the rack level.  I covered it with foil (the lid is too high to fit the grill) and let it get started while I peeled a turnip and a Cosmic Crisp apple and cut them into thick slices and quartered them, with a little more paprika and oregano on the turnips and garam masala on the apple (it smells like apple-pie spice, but has a little more zing on the palate).  The meat was going to get an hour per pound, about three hours and twenty minutes.

     I added the turnip and apple after the roast had been cooking for about a half-hour; you want the apple to cook right down and turnips are slow-cooking.  Next up, about an hour and a half in, was a layer of sliced spring onions, parsnips, carrots and fennel bulb.  The parsnips need a light peeling and are cut into good-size sections; the carrots I buy are peeled and cut into sections an inch and a half long, ready to go.  I washed, sliced and cut up the fennel bulb, adding a few of the feathery fronds.  The stalks are woody, better cooked in a mesh bag to add flavor and removed, but I didn't mess with that.  I added the vegetables and covered the pan back up.  By then it was bubbling and starting to smell pretty good.

     Tam had picked up a basket of assorted exotic mushrooms -- a big King, clusters of gray oyster and hen-of-the-woods or maitake.  I washed and cut them up, and added them to the pan with a little over an hour of cooking time left.

     The end result was moist pork that was falling-apart tender with lots of flavor, and the vegetables were wonderful -- Tam went back for seconds of the veggies.  It didn't need any seasoning except for the least pinch of salt, and that wasn't really necessary.  Savory, earthy and with just a hint of apple-sweetness, I think it turned out as good as any of my pork roasts.

     Most of the cooking consists of just letting the grill do the work.  I ran a weed-trimmer along part of the back yard fence between prepping and adding vegetables, a chance to spend a little outdoor time while staying active enough to keep warm.