The Best Roast Ever

First things first, the credit for this recipe goes to my lovely Mother-in-Law. So, obrigada. I will put both her original recipe and my 'modified' one ie. what I actually made. The modifications were not intentional but as I said in an earlier post, due to me simply forgetting to buy some ingredients. 

I used a non-marinated piece of pork weighing about a kilo. There were six people eating from that but if you think you'll be cooking for a seriously hungry crowd, buy more. In the original recipe the meat comes pre-stuffed with plums from the butcher, but unfortunately that is not available here so I just made some incisions with  a sharp knife and stuffed the dried plums inside myself. I was using an old Portuguese clay dish but you can use any oven dish. First I poured some (this means a lot) olive oil on the bottom of the dish and then dumped the meat in there. Next I peeled some potatoes and chopped them into smalled pieces and spread them around the meat. Then a couple of onions, cut into wedges and off to the dish as well. Add a copious amount on chopped garlic as well.  Then I took some salt and rubbed in on the meat. After that, dried rosemary, which I also rubbed on the meat and spread on top of the potatoes and onion. Then more garlic which I also rubbed on the meat. You can make it more or less garlicky and salty according to your preferences. Finally I threw in some pickled onions on top of everything.

The original recipe calls for dark beer to be used at this point. We had none so I used Portuguese red wine instead. Seemed to work fine. :) So pour the beer, or wine, on top of everything, and on top of that, more olive oil. Someone once said to me that the best way of putting olive oil is to hold the bottle above the dish, close your eyes and pour. I put the roast in an oven at 175C where it stayed for about an hour. This obviously depends on how cooked you want you meat to be, ours was well cooked. While the roast is doing it's roasting in the oven, don't forget to ever so often pour the sauce that is accumulating around it on top of the meat. 

I believe this is an easy and tasty way of cooking a roast. It uses a lot of the ingredients that are generally used in Portuguese cooking, and trust me, if a fishveggie such as myself can make this dish, so can you.