Wild Rice-Stuffed Pork Loin — The Table Still Knows How to Feed Everyone

Sophie's daughter Ingrid is one year old this season. The Kenwood kitchen has a high chair again. The high chair is a thirty-five-year-old artifact pulled from the basement and scrubbed clean and assembled at the same kitchen table where Anna and Peter and Elsa once sat in it. Ingrid sits in it now. Ingrid eats the same applesauce and the same banana bread and the same baby version of meatballs. The kitchen receives the new generation without comment, the way the kitchen has always received everyone. Anna had a small surgery. She is fine. I drove to Minneapolis for two weeks to help. I cooked. I cleaned. I cared. Anna said: "Mom, I had forgotten you were a nurse." I said: "I haven't." The thirty-five years at St. Mary's are not the kind of thing that fades. The skills come back at the first request. The hands remember how to take a pulse. The eyes remember how to read a face for pain. The role is permanent. Elsa and Tom came for the weekend. Tom helped me move the heavy planters in the garden — the big terracotta ones I bought at a yard sale in 1995 that I cannot lift anymore. He did not ask. He just did it. He is the quiet kind of man Paul was. I see why Elsa loves him. The quiet men are not the loudest in the room, but they are usually the most useful. Paul taught me this by example. Tom is teaching it by repetition. I cooked Roasted root vegetables this week. Carrots, parsnips, beets, sweet potatoes, onion. Tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme. Roasted at 425 until edges char. Served warm or cold. Eaten in handfuls when no one is watching. Damiano Thursday: soup. The crowd was the usual size — about a hundred and twenty plates served between five and seven. Gerald and I worked side by side without talking. The not-talking was the friendship. The work has its own rhythm: ladle, hand, smile, ladle, hand, smile. The rhythm carries us through. I sat in the kitchen at 11 PM with a glass of wine and Paul's photograph. I did not cry. I just sat. The not-crying is its own form of being with him. We did not need to talk all the time when he was alive. We do not need to talk all the time now. The companionable silence has carried over. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. Paul used to say that the difference between a place and a home was that a home was a place where you knew, from any room, what was happening in any other room. I knew, from the kitchen, when he was reading in the living room. I knew, from the bedroom, when he was getting coffee in the kitchen. The Kenwood house is still that kind of home. From the kitchen I know that Sven is asleep on his bed in the dining room (the small specific snore). From the kitchen I know what time the radio in the living room is set to come on. The home is the body of knowledge of itself. I still live inside that body of knowledge, even though Paul is not the one creating most of the data anymore. It is enough.

The roasted vegetables carried me through the week on their own terms — simple, unfussy, honest — but when Elsa and Tom stayed for the weekend and the table needed something with more weight to it, I turned to this pork loin. There is something about a stuffed roast that says the same thing a full table says: that the effort was worth making, that the people sitting down are worth feeding properly. Wild rice and pork together have a kind of northern gravity to them, the way Paul’s family always cooked, the way my own mother cooked, and it felt right to put that on the table the same week Ingrid sat in the high chair for the first time.

Wild Rice-Stuffed Pork Loin

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 1 hr 15 min | Total Time: 1 hr 40 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 boneless pork loin roast (3 to 4 lbs)
• 1 cup wild rice, rinsed
• 2 1/2 cups chicken broth, divided
• 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans, lightly toasted
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Kitchen twine for tying

Instructions

1. Cook the wild rice. Combine wild rice and 2 cups chicken broth in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 45 minutes or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
2. Make the stuffing. In a skillet over medium heat, melt butter and sauté onion until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more. Remove from heat and stir in cooked wild rice, cranberries, pecans, thyme, sage, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning.
3. Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Pat the pork loin dry with paper towels.
4. Butterfly the pork. Place the roast fat-side down on a cutting board. Starting at one long side, cut horizontally through the center of the meat, stopping about 1 inch from the opposite edge. Open the loin like a book and press flat. If needed, cover with plastic wrap and pound gently with a mallet to an even 1/2-inch thickness.
5. Fill and roll. Spread the wild rice stuffing evenly over the open pork loin, leaving a 1-inch border on all sides. Starting from one short end, roll the loin tightly back into a log. Tie with kitchen twine at 2-inch intervals to hold its shape. Season the outside generously with salt and pepper.
6. Sear the roast. Heat olive oil in a large oven-safe skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Sear the tied roast on all sides until evenly browned, about 8 to 10 minutes total.
7. Roast to temperature. Pour remaining 1/2 cup chicken broth into the pan. Transfer to the oven and roast uncovered until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part reads 145°F, about 55 to 65 minutes.
8. Rest and slice. Transfer roast to a cutting board, tent loosely with foil, and let rest 10 minutes. Remove twine, slice into 3/4-inch rounds, and serve warm with pan juices spooned over the top.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 36g | Fat: 17g | Carbs: 24g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 310mg