Typed this up just now for a chef friend of mine from my chef days, figured might as well update this thread with it…
I made maybe the best pork loin of my life this evening. Brine included a bunch of garlic cloves, five or six chile de arbol, some sliced ginger. Brined for 48 hours. Took the pork outta the brine and rinsed, reserved the solids from the brine. Toasted some guajillo peppers. Removed quajillos from cast iron, added a bunch of olive oil. Softened the solids from the brine in the oil, adding the toasted guajillos, chopped up. Let it cook a bit, removed, let cool, then mini cuisinart they went. So I made a garlic-ginger-chile oil. Put the loin, salted and peppered, in hot oil, browning all sides. Then into a 425 oven, basted first with the garlic-ginger-chile oil, turning & basting every 10 minutes. While those loins were in the oven I made a gravy. Into the big cast iron that I browned the loins in I added rough chopped onion, cooking the onion in the remaining oil and rendered fat from the loins. Deglazed with chicken stock and white wine and a touch of bourbon, because I was sipping bourbon. Wait, forgot. Before deglazing I added some tart cherry preserves and some brown sugar, let that cook down a bit, then deglazed. Removed, let cool, then into the cuisinart that went. Then made a roux and returned that blended pan-dripping-onion-cherry sauce into the roux for a deep, sweet gravy with a touch of heat to it.
The pork was sliced, served with some leftover mashed sweet potatoes (has caramelized onions and poblano peppers in it), creamed kale also leftover, spooned gravy over it, then a drizzle of the garlic-ginger-chile oil over it all.
Crazy thing is that after eating this I returned to the kitchen to clean up. The oven pan with the remaining loin (I cooked two full loins) still had its drippings to consider. So I added the drippings to the garlic-ginger-chile oil and puréed. That oil is now even more ridiculous.
/csb