Apple Cranberry Stuffed Pork Roast

Are you familiar with Cook's Illustrated? It's a magazine and a website from the same people who create the PBS show America's Test Kitchen. It's the only cooking show we watch with any regularity, and we read each issue of the magazine from cover to cover. What I love about the magazine is that they go into great deal of detail about the how's and why's of various cooking methods; I always learn something new. (What I don't love about the magazine is that they tend to overcomplicate things, just for that n-th degree of perfection.)

This apple cranberry stuffed pork roast recipe is based on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated (Sept 07). We absolutely loved it; I've been eating the leftovers for days. The filling is essentially a sweet sour chutney, made with brown sugar, vinegar, dried apples and cranberries. Though pretty much any chutney would work in this recipe. The roast is "double butterflied", filling applied, meat rolled up and roasted. The acidity of the chutney-ish filling tenderizes the pork roast from the inside. The original recipe calls for grilling the roast with soaked wood chips but you can easily make this roast in the oven. The recipe also uses dried apples, which can be a little hard to find. I think next time we may try making this with peeled, diced, fresh apples.

Grandma's Zucchini Cake

Rummaging through my mother's old recipe file recently, I stumbled upon a photocopy of a handwritten recipe for zucchini cake. The recipe is in my grandmother's hand, my dad's mom. She was the baker in the family (a title now passed on to my father). She moved from St. Paul to live with us in Los Angeles when I was four. Mom, being rather busy with all the kids (6 kids in 8 years!) and working as a head start teacher, didn't have much time for crafts or baking. It was grandma who taught me to sew, to knit and crochet, and to bake. She made cherry pies, angel food cakes, apricot jam, and the best oatmeal raisin cookies. We fought for the rights to lick the batter bowl of whatever cake she happened to be making. When we moved to Sacramento, she would send my mother recipe clippings and notes. I think that's how we must have ended up with this recipe for zucchini cake. It's a lot like zucchini bread, moist and somewhat crumbly, but in sheet cake form, with more egg and sugar, and with a cream cheese frosting. Great for summer potlucks.

Zucchini Bread

I still remember the first time I encountered zucchini bread as a teenager. I had a hard time getting my mind around the concept. At the time, zucchini was something my mom made me eat, and not anything you would bake into something sweet. Fortunately, the pathway into my naturally resistant-to-new-foods teenage mind had already been cut with carrot cake. Heck, if you could get something that good out of carrots, why not zucchini? After one bite, I was sold forever. Grated zucchini, mixed into the batter, brings moisture and tender texture to what is essentially a spice cake.

Here are two favorite, tried-and-true zucchini bread recipes. The first couldn't be easier; you don't need a mixer and can make the whole thing in one bowl. It's basically our zucchini muffin recipe in a bread form. The second recipe is adapted from one in an old issue of Sunset Magazine (September 1974) and is the recipe I used to follow as a teenager to make zucchini bread. The pineapple, walnuts, and raisins (my substitute, the original recipe called for currants) make the bread even more interesting.