I thought I’d do a little shopping at Whole Foods to see if it would be possible to shop cheaply there. Great produce, great seafood and meat, but shopping for a meal under $5 is close to impossible. I looked around first, trying to decide on dinner, and found one of their cheapest cuts of meat was a pork shoulder roast at 2.99 a lb. So I got a $7 roast, 3 pears, some brussel sprouts, 3 yukon potatoes, some bean thread noodles, and a package of fresh tarragon. Total – a little over $19. I tried to buy the cheapest things in the store – for example – I really wanted asian pears for this dish, but at 2.99 each, they weren’t going to help my goal of eating well cheaply.
While the $19 did cover 2 meals, it proved my theory that you just can’t shop cheaply there.
If I had time, I would have brined the roast, But I just browned it in a big skillet, covered it with pear slices, some of the fresh tarragon and some ginger, then threw it in a 350F oven until my thermometer read 155 inside the roast – about an hour.
While the roast cooked, I boiled the potatoes, then riced them in a ricer (with the skin on) into some muffin tin cups, and put them into the oven during the last 20 minutes. When the roast came out to rest for 5 minutes, I steamed a few brussel sprouts. The muffin tin came out, and was flipped over on a plate so the potatoes looked nice, and topped with sliced sprouts and goat cheese. The roast got sliced, and plated with the pear slices, now nicely carmelized after roasting. I had also roasted some cayote squash slices, but I didn’t really make them fit in with this dish.