Happy New Year!!!!

We are 17 days into the new year. Chinese New Year is Sunday, February 10. So, in my little world, I have almost 2 months to celebrate, to make whatever changes I need to and of course, to share with you my New Years Day Dinner! Try to hold back on your enthusiasm...it takes a while to prepare but in the end, it's an amazing meal...but because it has so many components and takes quite a while to cook, it may be good that it's a once a year ordeal.....

Every year, our family's tradition for New Years Eve was pizza and popcorn. Sometimes we all stayed awake, sometimes, not so much, but after sleeping in the next morning from all the craziness we would all pile into the car and go to Grandma's house for pork and sauerkraut. It's a pretty traditional New Years Day mean and we never missed a new years day without eating pork....It's bad luck, you know. So we'd pile our plates high with food then all pass out on the couch watching TV (like most holidays at grandma's). Later the bread would come out and sandwiches were made before heading back home. This recipe is a homage to those days.

Stuffed Pork Roast with Dumplings and Sauerkraut

There are 4 components to this recipe. Let's begin with the stuffing. It's my grandmother's recipe. It's the simplest of bread stuffing and can be expanded upon and tailored to include as many add-ons and herbs or as little as you'd like. In this recipe, I added dried cranberries and sage.

Grandma's Stuffing

As with many recipes that get handed down through generations, this recipe has no exact measurements. The stuffing can be a little tricky as far as flavor goes, since it uses no stock. It gets it's flavor from the meat drippings (whether it be turkey, chicken, or in this case, pork.) and from the herbs.

Ingredients

A cubed loaf of Italian bread left to sit out overnight

1 onion diced

2 or 3 stalks of celery, diced

2 eggs

fresh parsley chopped

fresh sage chopped (optional)

dried cranberries (optional)

Season the celery and onion with salt and pepper and saute with a bit of butter and olive oil.

Mix everything together with your hands. If mixture is too dry, keep adding very small amounts of water until you get the right consistency. You still want to be able to feel some staleness in the bread so your stuffing doesn't end up too soggy.  That's why it's important to use your hands...you sometimes need to feel your way through a recipe.

The Pork Roast

The Pork Roast! (I used a 5-6 lb pork shoulder)

parsley

sage

salt/pepper
olive oil

twine

Preheat oven to 350.
Prepare pork roast as pictured...

Roast at 350 for an hour to 1 1/2, then add potatoes for the last hour. Roast until the internal temperature reaches 165

then, the gravy...

Pour drippings into a 2 or 3 quart pot, add flour and make a roux

Deglaze the roasting pan with a little white wine

Add to the roux along with broth or stock. I use whatever I have on hand. Taste and season with salt and pepper

And, there you have it....Roast  Stuffed Pork!

Tomorrow's post....the rest of the meal....dumplings and sauerkraut....until then...

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