Part of complex pork dish can easily be done at home

Many times a recipe shared by a chef is more aspirational than practical. To pull it off at home you’d need a prep cook, a prodigious food budget and more time than is normally available on a weeknight. Not to mention skills.

But complex dishes often have a component that’s not at all difficult, with a key technique that takes it above the ordinary. I found one of those last weekend.

Chef Wade Ueoka of MW Restaurant won the award for best tasting dish Saturday at the Battle of the Chefs competition that kicked off the Hawaii Food Manufacturers Association Taste Awards. Ueoka went up against two other chefs in the creation of an appetizer using local ingredients, and the range of creativity had them tapping the potential of everything from shrimp chips to rum.

Ueoka’s dish used Shinsato pork, Kau coffee, local sea salts, macadamia nuts, shiitake mushrooms and microgreens. At its heart was a roasted pork loin coated with a rub made of ground coffee, herbs and spices. It was topped with a macadamia nut pesto and a foam made with foie gras, with a mound of shiitake mushrooms and caramelized onions on the side. Not to mention the balsamic reduction that was part of one component and the coffee reduction that was part of another.

For most of us common folk, the full dish falls in the "don’t try this at home" category. But the pork roast — that’s something anyone with basic skills could manage. It’s only a little more complicated than covering a chunk of pork in salt and pepper, for results certain to impress.

Coffee perks up a slab o’ meat, just as it wakes you up in the morning, adding some serious deep flavor.

Ueoka provided the formula for his rub, and beyond that if you can turn on an oven, you’re on your way.

ROAST PORK LOIN WITH COFFEE RUB

3-4 pounds pork loin
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

» Coffee rub:
2 ounces ground coffee (Kau coffee preferred), a little less than 1 cup
1 tablespoon ground coriander
2-1/4 teaspoons ground cumin
1-1/2 teaspoons ground oregano
3/4 teaspoon chili pepper flakes

Combine rub ingredients. Press rub all over outside of pork loin. Refrigerate overnight.

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Heat oil in skillet over high heat; sear pork on all sides. Move to roasting pan and roast 60-80 minutes, to an internal temperature of 145-160 degrees.

Let rest 5 minutes, then slice. Serves 6-8.

Nutritional information unavailable.

Write "By Request," Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813; or email requests to bshimabukuro@staradvertiser.com.