Arista di Maiale (p. 432)

There's a neat little story about this dish at the beginning of the recipe, about how it was served at a church council meeting in Florence in 1430 to try to mend differences between the Roman and Greek Churches. The Greek bishops, upon eating it, said "Arista!, Arista!," which means, apparently, "this is really terrific!" 

And it is. 

In English, we would call this Florentine Roast Loin of Pork, and it's roasted pork with a very basic sauce all up in it. The recipe actually calls for a pork loin that has the undercut attached so that it is two similarly sized pieces connected at one side. I couldn't find this, so I cut my piece down the middle leaving one end attached.

Also, the recipe calls for a 4 pound pork loin but two people really don't need that much pork. I bought one about half that size.

I created a rub for the inside of the meat with a lot of garlic, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, and olive oil. It looked and smelled pretty amazing.

This is rubbed all over the inside of the pork roast, and then I closed the two sides back together, tying them with butcher's twine (which I own, incredibly.) Sprigs of rosemary are stuffed underneath the twine, and then the whole of it is brushed down with olive oil and salt. 

Here it is prepped and ready to go into the oven.

The recipe said it would take one and a half to two hours to cook, but since my piece of pork was half the size of what the recipe called for I wanted to be very careful about not overcooking. Instead of going by time, I used a meat thermometer to wait for the internal temperature to reach 160 degrees. Every twenty minutes or so, I basted the meat with dry white wine and its own juices.

It ended up taking about an hour and 20 minutes to reach the correct temperature, and smelled wonderful. The meat was really tender and flavorful, and the skin was nice and crispy around the edges. Matt said this is one of his favorite dishes so far, and that I'll have to make it again.

We have plenty leftover for several days worth of sandwiches, and according to the cookbook the pork is even better the next day. We already have ours cut up in thin slices to take for lunch tomorrow along with homemade bread. Yum.

dry white wine -- $6.99 (only needed a 1/2 cup for basting)

pork roast -- $10.06

Total Cost of Arista di Maiale: $ 17.05