Sirloin pork roast

I did not have an approved sous vide recipe for a pork loin roast. Recipes on several different reputable sites suggested that you could cook a 3-5 pound roast anywhere from 135 to 150 degrees anywhere from 2.5 to 12 hours. Christ.

I settled on a compromise. I am cooking a 2.5 pound roast at 140 degrees for five hours.

Then I'm going to douse it in a butter, apple cider vinegar, herb mixture and roast it at 450 degrees for at least ten minutes, maybe more. We shall see.

Granted, internal temp has to be right, or we may have to roast it for longer at a lower temp... here's hoping. Results to be reported.

Update 1: the bag broke sometime after an hour and a half. I rebagged it, cleaned the sous vide, and got it going again. Don't know how long it was in a hot water bath, but, well, them's the breaks.

Update 2: Followed instructions. Pork came out tough. Okay, but the bone in sirloin was a pain in the ass to cut. Need a new recipe, frankly.

Swordfish Sous Vide

One swordfish half can typically be turned into three or four steaks. For a quick weeknight meal, here's my preparation:

For the marinade and sauce:

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp mirin
3/4 in. ginger piece
garlic clove

microplane the ginger and garlic into the mixture. I typically do this sauce up on the weekend while doing bulk food prep, but it only takes a few minutes.

Cut swordfish, bag it with the sauce, and let it marinate for at least fifteen minutes. Meanwhile,

• Fill pot of water and heat to 128 degrees.
• Toast sesame seeds. 
• Set aside and let the saucier pan cool. 
• Measure out 1 cup of medium or short grained sushi-style rice, prepare 1 1/4 cups water
• Snap the stalks from asparagus, put on a cookie sheet, prep with olive oil, salt and pepper
• heat oven to 425 degrees (you can broil them in the summer time when you don't want to heat up the interior)

Add swordfish, with marinade, to the water when it is properly heated and cook for thirty minutes.

After ten minutes, put asparagus into the oven.

After twenty minutes, start rice.

In saucier, prepare 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp plain rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt. Stir and cook until combined. Set aside.

When swordfish is finished, remove, and pat dry. Put sauce into a small saucepan and prepare to reduce on the stove.

Heat an iron skillet, add one pat of butter and a touch of olive oil, and sear the swordfish for thirty seconds on each side.

Plate the suckers. Then add the asparagus. Then add the rice, after coating it with the vinegar mixture. Drizzle sauce on the fish. DONE.

Blueberry Shrub

We had frozen blueberries, needed to make a cocktail to take to someone's house, and in a panic tried to make a blueberry syrup. The result was pedestrian and unbalanced, something akin to cobbler. But my hosts were, or pretended to be, delighted. They called it a shrub.

So I made a shrub the next time around.

3 cups of frozen blueberries
2 cups of apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. (scant) chile flakes
3 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves

First up, take the blueberries to a food processor with enough apple cider vinegar to keep it moving. Then drop it into a saucepan along with everything else, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for one hour, with the occasional stir.

Take it off heat, put it in a water bath to cool it down. Remove the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.

Put it in the Vitamix.

This part is tricky. The heat from the shrub will make blending it hard. You have to do it with the top off, and you can't turn it up too much. I would really have preferred to put it on high for ten minutes, but we ended up on a middle speed. Oh well.

Strain it back into the saucepan. Simmer and reduce. It took me at least an hour to do this, and in the end I reduced it by 1/3. This gives you, almost a glaze.

Cocktails to try with a shrub:

• Shrub and bourbon. Top with soda water.
• Gin and Shrub. Top with soda water.
• Blueberry soda (just soda water!)
• Tom Collins, just substitute the shrub. 

Those are remarkably uninspired...