Gremlin Grill

In honor of the maple cream walls, I made a maple bacon pork roast yesterday. No, really. Go the recipe from Gourmet. Brine a pork loin, smear it with sage, garlic and maple syrup, wrap the whole thing in bacon and roast the hell out of it. A quick brush of cider vinegar & maple syrup mixed about 15 minutes before it’s done, then serve it up with the pan juices thickened a bit. It was much easier than it sounds. And it was excellent.

I rarely follow Gourmet recipes to the letter. Sorry, but I’m not going to track down Turkish bay leaf when I have whatever the hell kind of bay leaf already in the cupboard. And no, I’m not going to buy a bottle of fancy-pants, grade whatever, special color, blah blah blah maple syrup for a recipe that calls for four tablespoons of the stuff. I have cheap-but-real maple syrup in the fridge. Not Mrs. Butterworth, either, real maple syrup. But don’t dis Mrs. Butterworth. She’d flip you like a pancake, pal.

I digress. I followed the recipe, with a couple minor substitutions, to the letter, and it was amazing. It was tender and juicy, sweet and savory, and not nearly dry or tough enough for the missus. Can’t win.

I also made jambalaya last week, or a reasonable facsimile. There weren’t no crawdads at HyVee. I used shrimp and it just wasn’t as good. I needed them crawdad heads and the fat therein.

But none of that matters because it’s going to be close to 80 this week. Perfect smoking weather. I’m going to try the maple bacon pork roast recipe on the smoker. Problem is, our pork is already championship quality. Why mess with it? Because I’m hungry, that’s why.