Large Plates
Elegant Pork Rib Roast with Sautéed Apples
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork,
reminds me of my mother.
Maya Angelou
Modern pig farming has given the lowly hog a bad wrap. Raised to be leaner and healthier, most supermarket pork cuts in the U.S. are engineered tasteless and rubbery textured pieces of meat. However, if you choose the cut carefully, and cook it to just barely pink, pork can be elegant enough to serve at a dinner party. The rib roast provides a thick layer of fat that helps maintain juicy flesh. To boot, it makes for an impressive dinner centerpiece looking almost too pretty to slice. There is no comparison to eating the pork from pigs raised in pasture, where they are free to root and wallow, and forage, and industrially-farmed not really worth eating pork. Small producers are more likely to raise their pigs humanely with plenty of access to the great outdoors. Factory-farmed pig are often raised on cement -floored barns and produce a bland, pale meat. Do a bit of research, ask a local farmer questions about his or her pig raising philosophy. Chances are, the small producers are in harmony with the environment and treat their animals with respect rather than as a commodity traded for the sole purpose of increasing bank.
