I hope I don't kill us from undercooked pork

I wanted a pork roast for dinner tonight. I had this great recipe in Gourmet Magazine for an awesome looking roast but it was for a bone-in roast which my local market didn't carry this morning. So I got a boneless roast instead and came up with something on the fly. It's in the oven right now and it smells pretty good. I am a little worried about the cooking time since I'm not too familiar with cooking pork roasts. And I don't want us to die from undercooked pork.

Guess I'd better fire up my search engine.

Recipe (more like a road map since I made it up as I went along) and results to follow.

* * * * *

I'm back, it's now after dinner. The table's been cleared and everything washed and put away and so far we're not dead.

The internet tells me that for pork roasts you want to cook until the inside temperature reaches 150-160 degrees. I had cooked this roast for nearly two hours and the meat thermometer was still hanging out at 140. I had this similar problem with the Thanksgiving bird. But I had to give up that night because M and I were both starving to death. And if there is a choice between starving to death and death from a really good albeit undercooked meal, M and I are the type of people who would choose to die on a full stomach. That's just us.

But here's the thing. I'm wondering if maybe my meat thermometer is off because the turkey was cooked fine. Just like tonight's roast was cooked fine. No suspicious bloody juices or anything. The meat was all firm and juicy in the yummy not deathly way. And we're also bad about letting our meat "rest" after pulling it out of the oven. When I get more experienced with cooking roasts I think I'll be able to time the cooking better. And I'll include the resting time too. But for now, I am just going to hope that we live through this experiment. I mean experience.

So here you go.

Pistachio and Spice Stuffed Boneless Pork Roast

1 organic boneless pork roast about 2.25 lbs
half cup of golden raisins chopped
half cup of chopped pistachios
1 tbsp of oregano
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/4 tsp of nutmeg
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp honey
drizzle of olive oil
1-2 cloves minced garlic (I used one regular sized one and one fat one and I think it was just a hair too much so next time I will use just one fat one or two regular sized ones)
salt & ground black pepper
pinch of white pepper
kitchen twine
1/4 cup dry white wine

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium sized bowl, combine all the ingredients except the pork and wine and mix well. I got the pork roast already trussed up in bakers twine, but I wanted to stuff it so I cut apart the strings and found that the roast was actually two pieces of meat tied up together to look like a much larger roast. No matter.

My goal was to cut away parts of the meat so that the cut bit was still attached to the rest of the roast. Then evenly spread the stuffing so that the meat can be folded back over itself. It will effectively become a cinnamon bun sort of swirl of pork and stuffing. The pictures tell it better than I have words for right now.

Then I spread the stuffing over one half of the meat and then place the two halves together and tie up with twine. I placed the trussed up roast into a baking dish and drizzled a little more olive oil over the top and added more salt and pepper.

I basted the meat a few times and cooked it for about an hour and a half to two hours. Or until the meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat read 150 degrees. Then I poured the wine over the meat and let it sit in the oven for another 5 minutes so that the wine can cook down a bit.

Remove from oven and let meat sit for 10 minutes (really) before cutting. Cut into slices and serve.

I served it with brussels sprouts (I can't get enough of 'em) and corn mush because I thought I had polenta and the internet told me that cornmeal was a finer grind of polenta so I gave it a go.

Tomorrow I'll write about some of my leftover turkey recipes, if I'm not dead that is.

The end.