Roasted Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin

This is part 3 of the Post Project Food Blog - What's Next? Series. Other posts in this series: Why Boston Rescue Mission, Boston Rescue Mission: Sunday Community Dinner

This bacon wrapped oven roasted pork loin is the home version of a dish that I make (with lots of help, of course!) for > 100 people at the Boston Rescue Mission during their Sunday Community Dinner.

The nice thing about making just a single serving at home (as opposed to making 10 times the amount in commercial ovens), is that I can actually cook the pork a lot less (compared to at the shelter, where we essentially have to cook everything well done). Here, I decided to cook it to a perfect medium, just slightly pink in the middle.

It was juicy, tender, and absolutely fantastic.

Why, if given the choice, would anyone cook pork any more than this?

First, rub minced garlic, salt, and pepper all over the pork loin.
Wrap bacon around the loin so that every inch is covered. You may want to experiment and use different kinds of bacon if you wish (e.g., maple bacon, or black forest?).
Sprinkle with crushed fresh (if possible) rosemary leaves.
Bake in the oven at high heat (450 °F) for 15 minutes to crisp up the bacon. Then reduce heat to 375 °F and cook for another hour or so (until internal temperature reaches something with which you are comfortable. I was pretty risky and I think I took it out even before it reached 150°F internal temperature).

Let rest for about 10-15 minutes.

Slice and enjoy! Bryan loves slightly undercooked meat, so he was thrilled with the results. This pork loin is juicy, tender, yet flavorful especially due to the bacon, garlic, and rosemary.


Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin
Adapted from The Hungry Mouse
Serves 6-8

1 pork loin, about 4 lbs.
7 cloves garlic, mashed
7-8 slices bacon
kosher salt
optional freshly cracked black pepper
2 tsp. rosemary

1. Rub the pork loin all over with minced garlic, salt, and pepper.

2. Wrap bacon slices around the pork loin until completely covered.

3. Sprinkle the loin with crushed fresh (if possible) rosemary leaves.

4. Bake in the oven at high heat (450 °F) for 15 minutes to crisp up the bacon. Then reduce heat to 375 °F and cook for another hour or so (until internal temperature reaches 150°C.

5. Tent with foil and let rest for about 10-15 minutes.

6. Slice and enjoy!

Boston Rescue Mission: Sunday Community Dinner

This is part 2 of the Post Project Food Blog - What's Next? Series. Other posts in this series: Why Boston Rescue Mission?

Have you ever cooked for 150 people?

Welcome to the Sunday Community Dinner at the Boston Rescue Mission.

Every Sunday afternoon, the Boston Rescue Mission invites volunteers to provide a special meal for both the residents at the Mission as well as hungry people on the streets. Volunteers have free reign of the entire meal, everything from designing the menu, shopping for the ingredients, to executing and serving the meal. All in the span of about 3 hours!

It's challenging, laborious, and stressful at times. However, it's also super fun and tremendously rewarding. There's something really special about being able to personally serve the hungry people who come here looking for a hot meal. Many of the diners are very gracious and personally thank the volunteers for their efforts as well as the delicious meal.

Here's an inside look at the flurry of activity (sometimes mildly chaotic!) that happens in the 3 hours preceding one of these crazy meals!

Sunday afternoon right after church, around 12:45PM, we drive over to Costco to shop for groceries. We know that it takes about half an hour to drive to the Boston Rescue Mission, so we usually split up into two "shopping teams" to speed up the process. If we have time, we'll grab a quick bite to eat at Costco.

2:30PM Arrive at the Boston Rescue Mission, ready to cook!
We only have 2 hours to execute food to feed over 100 people, so usually we get right to work!

2:45PM: Prep Meat and Vegetables
The Boston Rescue Mission is located right in the heart of Boston, where real estate is scarce. As a result, it has a pretty tiny urban kitchen too! In fact, it's so crowded inside the kitchen that volunteers spill out into the eating area in order to find room to slice, dice, and chop!

There's tons of prep work to do - everything from cutting potatoes to seasoning and wrapping bacon around the pork loins.
3:30PM: Start Baking Pork Loins
We've stuck to the one recipe that we've executed successfully on large scale - bacon wrapped pork loin. The bacon protects the pork from drying out and also adds a nice boost of flavor! Plus, you can cook this on large scale pretty easily.  Check out the full recipe here!

3:30PM: Put Potatoes in the Oven!
They have these huge commercial ovens that can cook trays and trays of potatoes at once!
Here's all the pork loin, stacked up ready to be baked.
4:15PM Take pork out of oven and start slicing
As the 4:30 deadline draws closer and closer, you can feel the energy rise inside the tiny kitchen. Is the buttered corn on the stove? YES! Is the salad ready? YES! Make sure to check the pork loin to see if it's done! Can someone lay out the cookies?  
4:30 - Dinnertime for BRM Residents
And then suddenly - BAM! - it's 4:30PM, and the first wave of diners start pouring in. For confidentiality reasons, I can't show any pictures of the diners, many of whom are undergoing various treatment programs at BRM. However, here's a picture of the volunteers passing out the meal we made.

5:00PM - Doors open to the public
After the 4:30PM crowd leaves, the shelter opens the door to the public. Any homeless person can come off the streets to enjoy a nice, warm meal.

This is the largest crowd of the night (usually around 60-80 people). Many of these people are quite hungry. It was both eye opening and humbling to serve them.

We had a rule that no one could get seconds until everyone had been served at least once. The diners were all very, very respectful of the rule. So respectful, in fact, that I almost thought they didn't want seconds.

Boy, was I wrong! The moment we announced, "we are serving seconds now," the ENTIRE room jumped up and got back into line.

People were hungry, yet polite and respectful of their fellow diners.

I was both touched and saddened, realizing how often I take food for granted.

Here's the average plate we served: maple bacon wrapped roasted pork loin, buttered corn, oven roasted potatoes, and mixed salad greens. Good, hearty, and warm food that was delicious, satisfying, and reasonably easy (for amateurs!) to execute on large scale.
 
Observations
It's quite eye opening to serve at a homeless shelter. Though some of the visitors may resemble the disheveled look that we associate with "the homeless", most of the people who come look absolutely normal. They are clean, well-shaven, polite, and intelligent. Some have just had a string of bad luck in their lives. Many are super friendly, and totally happy to chat about all sorts of topics.

Every time I've served there, diners have come up to us and thanked us for the wonderful meal. They are appreciative, polite, and friendly. Of course, there's the occasional complainer, but then, you find those sorts of people in all walks of life.

I've also learned a bit about cooking large scale. Forget trying to achieve a gorgeous crust on all the potatoes or a lovely medium cooked pork. It's just not going to happen. You have to execute everything in two hours and then keep it warm in order to serve people from 4:30PM all the way to 7:00PM. Of course the pork is going to be well done. Of course the potatoes will eventually starts to "steam" and lose their crispiness.  

But don't worry about such trifle things! It's really OK!

For many of these people, this Sunday meal is probably the best meal they are having all week.

As you may know, I'm currently trying to help the Boston Rescue Mission raise money for their various program. If you would like to help support this great organization, please click on the image below and check the 2011 Tiny Urban Kitchen Fundraiser box.

Attention Boston Bloggers!
 If you are a Boston blogger and you're interested in coming to serve with me at BRM sometime in the next few months, please email me at jen{at}tinyurbankitchen{dot}com. I'm organizing a team!

Thanks!

Totoro Cookies

This post is part of a larger series: An Asian Twist on a Traditional Holiday Meal. Other posts in this series include Chinese Oven Roasted Duck, and Keroppi Cookies.

I've always been a sucker for matcha (green tea) cookies.

Until now, I never even considered trying to make them myself. Instead, I would purchase them at specialty bakeries, usually Japanese or Taiwanese.

However, when Foodbuzz's Tastemaker Program called for bloggers to participate in the GLAD Cookies for Kids Cancer cookie exchange, I decided it was time to challenge myself and try my hand at baking these cookies myself.

Of course, I couldn't just make any ordinary cookies.

Not if I'm going to give them away.

Alas, Totoro Matcha cookies were born.


Matcha is finely milled green tea often used in sweets such as green tea flavored ice cream, cakes, and cookies. Because matcha is made from high quality tea buds and requires more time for grinding, it is usually more expensive than other teas. For example, the little 1.0 oz tin that I bought costs $12.

I took a simple butter cookie recipe from The Joy of Cooking (my go-to basics book!) and modified it by adding matcha (Thanks Talida for the inspiration!).

In order to make Totoros, you need two different types of cookie dough: a green matcha one for his exterior, and a white one for his belly.
 
I did not have a Totoro cookie cutter, bit I found a rabbit egg mold that sort of resembled Totoro's shape. It wasn't perfect, so I still had to use a knife to cut out the ears. However, it was useful to have the mold as a guide, keeping all the Totoros roughly the same size.

Since I don't usually bake, I don't have a lot of the normal baking supplies that a baker would have. In order to cut out the belly, I found a plastic spray bottle cap to punch out a belly hole in the green Totoros. I also used the same cap to punch out the white belly, which I then inserted into the hole.

Frankly, a tiny circular cookie cutter would have been A LOT easier. The circular cut-out periodically got stuck inside the plastic cap, and I constantly found myself trying to pry it out with a chopstick. Overall, though, it made perfect circles that were just the right size for Totoro's belly.

Here they are, all ready to be baked! Before baking, I placed a large black sprinkle in the center as Totoro's nose (not pictured in this batch!).

Bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until the edge of the ears (the thinnest part!) start to brown. Though the cookies taste better when they are slightly browned, they look better if they are not browned because the ears stay green.

At this point, I was really wishing I had bought some candy eyes.  Since I had not, I melted some white chocolate chips over a boiling water bath. I then gingerly used a chopstick to dip tiny eyes onto each Totoro. Using tweezers, I put a black nonpareil on each chocolate piece as the eyeball. As a last step, I melted chocolate chips in the microwave and used a sharp object (toothpick is perfect), to "paint" his little belly markings.

It's painstakingly slow and takes a ton of patience, but the results are so worth it!
Aren't they super cute?

As a participating blogger in the Cookies for Kids' Cancer cookie exchange, I received a bunch of GLAD containers in which to give my lovely cookies away! They also sent other awesome baking supplies, such as a gorgeous nonstick cookie sheet (I don't own one, so I was thrilled!), various holiday themed cookie cutters and decorative elements, as well as other cool baking tools (frosting deco pen anyone?).

Having all this cool baking stuff makes me want to try my hand at baking some more!

I hosted the exchange at my house over Thanksgiving (where we also enjoyed lots of other yummy food). I sent my sister's family home with a GLAD container full of Totoros and Keroppis. In exchange, I was rewarded with these lovely whole wheat chocolate chip cookies.

If you want to help GLAD raise money for GLAD will donate $.10 to Cookies for Kids' Cancer for each virtual cookie sold, exchanged or given this November and December 2011 – up to $100,000! Check out their website here for more details.

Enjoy!



Totoro Green Tea (Matcha) Cookies
dry ingredients
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

wet ingredients
20 T (2 1/2 sticks) butter (softened!)
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 T milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 T matcha powder

1. whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add egg, milk, and vanilla to the "wet ingredients" bowl. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until everything is well blended and smooth.

3. Divide the dough in two sections, with one section roughly twice as large as the other section. Mix in matcha powder into the larger section. Place each section between two sheets of parchment or wax paper and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thickness. Refrigerate until cold, at least 30 minutes.

4. Position oven rack to the center and preheat oven to 375. Grease cookie sheets if they are not nonstick!

5. Peel away the wax paper for one portion and put the dough between fresh sheets of wax paper. [Note, since this is a labor intensive cookie, I would cut the chilled dough in half and leave the other half in the refrigerator until you are ready to cut that one too. The dough becomes harder to handle once it's warm]

6. Cut the cookies with a cookie cutter. Roll the dough scraps together and continue cutting out cookies. If it gets too soft, just re-roll it out, chill in the refrigerator, and cut once it's cold.

7. Make Totoros according to the detailed instructions above. Decorate accordingly.

8. Bake until cookies are slightly golden brown at the edges, around 10-15 minutes depending on how large the cookie is.

 

Keroppi Cookies

This post is part of a larger series: An Asian Twist on a Traditional Holiday Meal. Other posts in this series include Chinese Oven Roasted Duck, and Totoro Cookies.

I was obsessed with Keroppi when I was in school.

I loved going to Sanrio stores to see what cool new Keroppi stuff I could buy. My sister and I owned dozens of plush green Keroppis, along with T-shirts, totes, pens, notebooks, etc.

When Bryan first met me in college, he even told me I looked like Keroppi because of the huge glasses that I wore at the time. Hmm . . . looking back, was that really a compliment?

Sadly, Keroppi seems to have fallen out of favor these days. Hello Kitty, who is actually older than Keroppi, is still going strong as ever.  Keroppi, on the other hand, can hardly be found. These days I'm thrilled if I even see one or two Keroppi items in the Sanrio stores.

As a nod to those characters we loved as kids, I decided to bake Keroppi cookies for the GLAD Cookies for Kids Cancer cookie exchange, offered by Foodbuzz's Tastemakers Program.



Keroppi is green, so a matcha (green tea powder) seemed like the perfect type of cookie to make.

Matcha is finely milled green tea often used in sweets such as green tea flavored ice cream, cakes, and cookies. Because matcha is made from high quality tea buds and requires more time for grinding, it is usually more expensive than other teas. For example, the little 1.0 oz tin that I bought costs $12.
I took a simple butter cookie recipe from The Joy of Cooking (my go-to basics book!) and modified it by adding matcha (Thanks Talida for the inspiration!).
Similar to the Totoros, you also need two "colors" of dough - a green tea matcha one and a plain white one.

If you have concentric circular cookie cutters, you should be able to make these Keroppis pretty easily by picking out the right sizes. Since I didn't have any of that, I used portions of random cookie cutters I had in order to cut out a rough circle. I used a spray bottle cap to cut out white eye balls as well as cut out half-circles from the green dough. Keroppi is not exactly round, so I usually reshape each one by hand a bit to get it to the right shape.

All assembled!

Using black round sprinkles or nonpareils, place one at the center of each eye ball. You can use tweezers if necessary.

Using something small and flat, make indentations to draw out the characteristic V-shaped mouth. Of course, feel free to give Keroppi any sort of expression you desire. I made just one of my Keroppis sad - can you find him?

Finally, add a tiny bit of red food coloring to a tiny piece of cookie dough. Roll tiny little pink balls and manually pressed them onto each Keroppi. 
Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies seem to be done and let cool on a wire rack. I did not want the Keroppi cookies to brown (since I didn't think it would look good if their eye balls were singed), so I took the cookies out a bit earlier to ensure they would stay green.
Hee hee, aren't they cute?

These were a lot easier to make than the Totoros, maybe because I didn't have to make such small eyes!

I hosted the cookie exchange at my house over Thanksgiving (where we also enjoyed lots of other yummy food). I sent my sister's family home with a GLAD container full of Totoros and Keroppis. In exchange, I was rewarded with lovely whole wheat chocolate chip cookies.

If you want to help GLAD raise money for GLAD will donate $.10 to Cookies for Kids' Cancer for each virtual cookie sold, exchanged or given this November and December 2011 – up to $100,000! Check out their website here for more details.

Enjoy!

Keroppi Green Tea (Matcha) Cookies
dry ingredients
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

wet ingredients
20 T (2 1/2 sticks) butter (softened!)
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 T milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 T matcha powder

1. whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add egg, milk, and vanilla to the "wet ingredients" bowl. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until everything is well blended and smooth.

3. Divide the dough in two sections, with one section roughly twice as large as the other section. Mix in matcha powder into the larger section. Place each section between two sheets of parchment or wax paper and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thickness. Refrigerate until cold, at least 30 minutes.

4. Position oven rack to the center and preheat oven to 375. Grease cookie sheets if they are not nonstick!

5. Peel away the wax paper for one portion and put the dough between fresh sheets of wax paper. [Note, since this is a labor intensive cookie, I would cut the chilled dough in half and leave the other half in the refrigerator until you are ready to cut that one too. The dough becomes harder to handle once it's warm]

6. Cut the cookies with a cookie cutter. Roll the dough scraps together and continue cutting out cookies. If it gets too soft, just re-roll it out, chill in the refrigerator, and cut once it's cold.

7. Make Keroppis according to the detailed instructions above. Decorate accordingly.

8. Bake until cookies are just done, around 10 minutes depending on how large the cookie is. Try to avoid any browning of the edges, since it won't look very good.