With the “arista” we can also prepare monumental sandwiches. It is worth trying your skills!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 6€ pp with organic pork)
- Salt
- 800 g pork loin
- 4 large garlic cloves, cut in slices
- EV olive oil (if it is light and neutral) otherwise EV sunflower oil
- 2 tbsp of lard or other pork fat (from pancetta or guanciale)
- Fresh rosemary, chopped
- Fresh sage, chopped
- Coarse black pepper
- 800 g potatoes for roasting
“Arista – Arista” (which in Greek means “Perfect – Perfect”), shouted, according to the culinary legend, the orthodox bishop Vassilios Vissarion, who had gone to Florence shortly after the schism to negotiate with the catholic counterparts, in order to avoid the separation of the Christian church. He had just tasted the awesome Tuscan pork in the oven with herbs and garlic.
So “Arista al forno”, as this way of preparation is called in Italian, is nothing more than the pork loin slow roasted in the oven.
When making “arista al forno”, it is very important to:
- pre-salt the meat the night before in order to keep it juicy
- leave the loin with the external fat.
- prepare the potatoes in a different baking sheet in order to obtain the …….. “arista” point of roasting.
We start by the meat.
The day after, we first wash and pat dry the loin. We then make with a knife small holes in its surface and we push inside chopped fresh herbs.
We lightly grease the meat with neutral oil, we stick some more herbs on it and then we tie it with twine (so that it maintains a uniform shape and does not “open” during the process of cooking). There is no specific way to tie the meat, just be sure to make it tight enough to grab all sides.
In our favorite Dutch Oven, we heat some oil together with the lard and we brown the meat on all sides.
Then we add a few tablespoons of water and half the amount of garlic, we half-cover the Dutch oven with the lid, we set the temperature to minimum and we leave it until the loin is completely soft, about 2 hours and a half, maybe more.
We check the humidity of the meat every 15 min. If we see that the preparation gets dry, we add a few more tablespoons of hot water.
When the meat is ready, we remove it from the DO and we let it rest for at least 30 minutes, covered with foil (as an exception to the general rule, since in this dish we are not interested in having a crispy texture on the outside).
Meanwhile we prepare the roasted potatoes.
I have the stable opinion that roasted potatoes need pre-boiling for two reasons:
- In order to “salt” them perfectly, as the salt doesn´t dilute well in fat
- To provoke a too tender, creamy flesh with a totally different texture to the crunchy exterior.
Especially for this dish, I suggest you to cut the potatoes lengthwise, as the Tuscans usually do.
So, we pοur COLD salted water in a casserole, we add the potatoes and then we bring it to boil. We simmer the potatoes till tender, we turn the heat off and we let them for 5 more min in the water. We take the potatoes out of the water and we let them strain well.
We preheat the oven at the maximum temperature.
We take half of the oil-liquid of the meat and we put it in a sheet along with neutral oil. We add the potatoes, we salt them lightly (as they are already salted) with coarse salt and we roast them till crispy. The last 5 minutes we add herbs (rosemary and sage) and the rest of garlic slices.
We cut the twine and immediately after we slice the loin. The pork must be moist and juicy, the moisture must be visible when we cut it, otherwise something went wrong.
We pour a little stock (or hot water) into the DO and with a wooden spoon we try to dissolve in it the concentrated proteins that have stuck to the bottom, creating this way a “sauce”. Once the “sauce” is ready, we pour it over the pork slices together with a little coarse salt.
We put in plates and we add some coarse pepper.
