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Cooking Our Favorite Restaurant Dishes at Home
There will be times when our weekly ‘Eating In’ post may stray from our restaurant obsession to focus on special occasion food experiences that must be shared with fellow Gothamist foodies.
This is one of those times.
A Cuban-American friend of ours recently invited Gothamist to his family’s home in West Palm Beach for a traditional Cuban style pig roast. This has always been something that we’ve wanted to do, so we jumped on a plane to, well, get our pig on.
Our Cuban friends usually relied on the traditional technique of digging a pit and slow roasting the pig over coals. But a family friend by the name of Pastor had turned his backyard into a temple for year round pig roasting (he also grew the largest avocados Gothamist has ever seen). Pastor, being the pig genius that he is, installed two – yes two – permanent tile lined Caja China boxes in his yard, along with a pig prep/seasoning area and an outdoor kitchen for making the traditional accompaniments to the pork. The boxes coal roast a whole pig to a crunchy moistness in about five hours. Pastor buys and cleans the pig himself, seasons it with salt, pepper and lime and lets it roast away.
After stopping by to check out the roasting during the day, we returned five hours later to pick up our 60 pound pig, buttery yuca garlic mash, and black beans and rice. The final piece that took it over the top was a garlicky, herbal mojo that we watched our friend’s mother prepare in a mortar and pestle. We slathered it over evey piece of pork – from the crunchy skin, to our favorite part, the juicy ribs.
Since we haven’t figured out how to install a Caja China into our one bedroom apartment, we’ll just stick to spreading that brilliant mojo on the seared and roasted pork from our tiny oven...for now.
Cuban Style Roasted Pork Loin
with traditional mojo and creamy yuca
Like the traditional pig roast, this pork is best when marinated in the mojo at least three hours before cooking. Take the extra time to do this – it makes a big difference in the results. Other than the marinade, the only other time consuming aspect of this dish is boiling the yuca…however, it’s all very low stress. This is a great dish to make on a lazy Sunday night.
Ingredient Shopping List
Recipe serves two people
2 medium sized yucas (at Latin American grocers, also at fairway and fresh direct)
extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
Unsalted butter
1 bunch cilantro
1 lemon, 2 limes
1 head of garlic
1 pint whole milk
1.5 lb pork loin
Estimated cost of ingredients: $17 at Fairway
Special Materials:
- large resealable plastic bag
- mortar and pestle or food processor
Make the Mojo
Finely chop all of the leaves from the whole bunch of cleaned cilantro. Rough chop 6 medium/large cloves of the garlic. Place the garlic in a heavy based mortar (you can combine all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse only a few times). Add a healthy pinch of salt. Begin vigorously mashing the garlic with the pestle for a few minutes. Add the cilantro and mash again for a few minutes. Add a :02 pour of olive oil to the mixture and mash again. Finally, pour in enough olive oil to cover ingredients, then add a few more glugs of oil – should be an inch of oil over where the ingredients stop. Mash and mix again and let rest.
Marinate the Pork
Peel all of the green rind off of the lime, without the white pith. Chop rind finely. In a sealable plastic bag, combine pork, all but about 7-8 tablespoons of mojo and lime rind. Seal bag, pressing out excess air. Marinate pork, chilled, 3 hours or overnight.
Make the Yuca
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil about 1hour before dinner. Trim ends from fresh yuca and peel remainder, removing all waxy brown skin and pinkish layer underneath.
Cut yuca into 3-inch-thick pieces. Boil yuca in water until tender and starting to fall apart, about 40 minutes.
Make the Pork
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Drain pork, discarding marinade, and pat dry and season both sides with salt and pepper. In an oven proof heavy skillet, add one glug of olive oil to the pan and place over high heat. When very hot but not smoking, place pork in pan. Sear for 3 minutes without turning and flip. Sear again for three minutes and place in oven for about 10-12 minutes. Transfer pork to cutting board and let rest for about 10 minutes, covered with foil. Do not carve it before resting or the juices will run out. After checking the doneness, you can pop it back into the oven to cook for another minute or two.
While the pan is still hot, squeeze lemon and lime juice into pan and scrape the brown bits from the bottom. Reserve.
Finish the Yuca
Drain yuca from water and return yuca to pot with 1/2 cup milk, 2 tablespoon butter, salt, pepper and lime juice squeezed from one whole lime. Whip and mash the yuca with a whisk, adding additional milk if desired.
Finish the Dish
Place a pile of the yuca on the bottom of the plate. Slice the pork and fan on top of the yuca. Spoon some of the pan juices onto the pork. Garnish the pork and plate with the reserve mojo.
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did the actual meat fall off the grocery list? which cut of pork is best?
Eric, under the first photo in the article, it says "pork loin".
yes, it's a 1.5 lb pork loin for two.
Just two quick time-saving suggestions:
You can substitute naranja agria (sour orange juice) for the lemon and limes in the mojo. It’s pretty easy to find bottled in most supermarkets in the area, and it’s just a little easier than chopping lime rinds. I actually prefer the taste of naranja agria, and most mojos are made with it.
And normally I wouldn’t advocate buying frozen over fresh, but the bark on the yuca is so incredibly difficult to peel that I never thought it was worth the effort. You’re supposed to slice the bark lengthwise and then carefully peel it in chunks around the vegetable, but I never really succeeded at this. After slicing my fingers a few times, I’d given up on making it until I discovered Goya’s frozen and peeled yuca. So basically I’d recommend trying it fresh, but if you, like me, are a complete and utter klutz, head for the frozen food section. You can barely tell the difference.
i used the oxo slicer, with the comfortable black grip..it worked very well and really found peeling the yuca very easy.
i also don't find chopping rind very difficult - literally takes a minute.
yum
You really should use a meat thermometer. Pork is VERY, VERY unsafe to eat if not cooked thoroughly. Cuban Pork is usually cooked for many, many hours, Not minutes. I know I am Cuban.
at what temp and how long would i roast a 5 to 6 lb pork butt roast that I have marinated overnight? Thanks!
Arelene,
I don't know about your cuban pork, my I know about most american pork....Really you should be fine with
any quality pork from the states, it simply needs to be 137 degrees to kill worms and it is reccomended to be heated to 160....Thats still in the medium to medium well category......
The (U.S.) National Pork Board, which has led a very aggressive on-farm food safety research program since 1994, addresses the presence of parasites in "the Other White Meat:"
"Because of modern feeding practices, trichinosis is a no longer a concern. Although trichina is virtually nonexistent in pork, if it were present, it would be killed at 137 degrees F. That's well below the recommended end cooking temperature for pork, which is 160 degrees F."