{Sauce #62}

SE Asian adjacent pork loin and other good things

The kids were disappointed that I woke relatively early on Father’s Day, despite a late-ish night at a friend’s 40th. This meant they couldn't, as planned, jump on my head at 8 o’clock, almost certainly causing minor injury and major rage at just the moment one is supposed to be feeling most grateful for being the father of two such wonderful creatures.

We were in a cabin in the woods near the excellently named village of Thimbleby, Rosie having decided to take me away for a Father’s Day surprise. It’s a good spot, tucked away in the Cleveland Hills a few miles north of Thirsk and east of Northallerton (where many years ago I passed my driver’s test at the third time of asking). Keen walkers and cyclists and pub-goers will find themselves very well catered for. Special mention to the Golden Lion in Osmotherley which comes as close to the platonic ideal of a country pub as anywhere in Yorkshire.

At any rate, there we were, which meant the first part of FD (after a very fine breakfast courtesy of the long-suffering) was spent packing up the cabin. Then Rosie took the kids swimming and I, as a treat, was allowed to walk the dog up and down Northallerton high street for an hour rather than endure the so-called Fun Swim. It’s an odd quirk of Father’s Day that the main gift is being given guilt-free time away from your children. Or at least it is in our house. I couldn’t help noticing the number of kids mooching about with their dads. I began to feel guilty.

The other quirk of Father’s Day (and again, this might just be egotistical old me) is that it can be all too easy to forget one’s own father. I have similar problems when it comes to birthdays. You would think that, as bizarre coincidence would have it, having a son and father who share a birthday, and a wife and mother who also share a birthday, would mean you always remember your parents’ birthdays. Not the case.

This time around I did at least manage to get in there before my siblings with the family WhatsApp group message of doting adoration for the old boy, coupling it with an open invitation for everyone to come for an early evening barbecue. Which they duly accepted.

So I scooped up the niece and took her and my two kids to the shops to stock up, readying myself for the looks of admiration from my fellow supermarket shoppers. Look at this amazing father, doing the weekly shop, three kids in tow all behaving beautifully.

In the event I conducted the shop mostly alone, as the kids scattered around the aisles, whooping and hollering and returning sporadically to dump ice creams and bagels and other assorted E-numbers into the trolley. It’s possible I swore at them once or twice. An example to parents everywhere.

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There are few culinary things more dispiriting than finding a dish you fancy serving that day, shopping for it, then reading the recipe and finding the instruction to ‘marinate overnight’. But in all honesty this pork loin might benefit from overnight marination. I only gave it a couple of hours, but, in an ideal world, do it overnight.

More importantly, perhaps, is a real sense of restraint and gentleness when it comes to barbecuing. Make sure you build the coals on one side of the barbecue, so that you have a cooler side which is where your joint will spend most of its time.

I was distracted by an extremely competitive game of Kubb and the pork rind saw a little too much flame, but nonetheless spent the majority of the cooking time away from the coals. It took a full hour and a half to reach an inner temperature of 58C, which with a further 30 minutes resting got it to about the perfect medium/medium-well doneness for pork. I thoroughly recommend you get a meat thermometer. They’re not crazy expensive and take out much of the guesswork.

Anyway, here. This was real good. Barbecued pork loin, green tahini sauce, bbq pineapple and tomato salad.

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