Joe Hrabovsky, a chef at the Wood County Committee on Aging’s Production Kitchen, is seen with a pork loin with dijion sauce. (Photos: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

Wood County’s seniors could set sail on a yacht.
They could make reservations for a fancy supper club.
Or they could just relax and wait for home-delivered meals to arrive at their front door, courtesy of the
Wood County Committee on Aging Production Kitchen.
With Joe Hrabovsky manning the stove controls, they’ve got all three possibilities combined in one man.

That’s because Hrabovsky, who joined WCCOA as a staff cook last summer, has a long and impressive resume
that includes past stints as a chef for a yacht club and a supper club, not to mention one of the
fanciest hotel chains in the world.
Today’s recipe for roast pork loin Dijonnaise reflects that elevated culinary pedigree.
"I came up with it myself when I was working at the (Toledo) Yacht Club."
Founded in 1865, it’s among the oldest yacht clubs in America.
During his eight years working there, he prepared the dish often. "It was a favorite; a pretty good
seller."
Hrabovsky hails from Oregon and is a Clay High graduate.
He got into food preparation after taking a five-month adult continuing education course as a certified
cook at Penta Career Center in Rossford.
Once bitten by the bug, he was hooked.
"Two years later I took a six-week course at the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y.
It’s a course for people who had already been in the field for awhile; they truncated their six-month
course. They’re assuming you already know a lot of the stuff, so they go through it a lot quicker."

That was the mid-1980s.
"The first job I had was at Chris’ Supper Club – as sous chef.
"Chris really let me go crazy there," Hrabovsky says of the popular 1980s Northwood restaurant
connected to a huge Christmas store. "I really learned a lot at Berman’s. That was when we did the
salmon covered with the chaude foid, a lot of vegetable and fruit carvings."
Hrabovsky’s next job was at the Hotel Sofitel in downtown Toledo, one of perhaps six North American
locations in the French luxury hotel chain at the time.
"I was there one year – until Sofitel was kicked out of the building. Then I went to the yacht
club," where he enjoyed an eight-year run.
Most of the yacht club’s clientele were "very nice" and Hrabovsky enjoyed the location because
like Chris Berman’s, it rewarded his creative juices.
"I got to do whatever I wanted there, really.

They had a lot of special functions there," among them a Madrigal dinner held the week before
Christmas, for which he would create an authentic Renaissance-style menu, and the gala New Year’s Eve
party.
"Kids of members would get married there, so we got to do meals" for their wedding receptions.

And then there’s the annual Mills Trophy Race, which involved "100 sailboats going out for their
regatta so we had a huge party the night before. We’d have a grill going outside. They’d leave from
there and go over and race to Put-in-Bay.
"I got to create a lot of really nice menus for them."
Hrabovsky left the yacht club 17 years ago and spent the next four years at Clarion Hotel in Toledo.
"Then I went to St. Charles Hospital, where I was for the last almost 13 years."
It was his wife of 30 years, who commutes from their Oregon home to her job at Wood County Job and Family
Services, who encouraged Hrabovsky to look toward Bowling Green as well.
Hrabovsky finds producing meals for the seven senior centers around Wood County, as well as all the WCCOA
home-delivered meal clients, a congenial fit.
"It’s kind of familiar from working at the hospital" in terms of "the way you’re cooking,
the clientele you’re cooking for. You have to be more careful about the ingredients you use, low
salt" recipes and the like.
"And of course it’s big volume, the same as the hospital.
"I actually did the Meals on Wheels for all of Toledo for like eight years." Its meals were
produced out of St. Charles.
Hrabovsky has not yet unveiled his pork loin Dijonnaise entree for Wood County’s seniors.
"I’d like to do it for ’em. We might be able to do a form of it," he muses.
Certainly, it tastes and looks like a special-occasion entree, but it’s not actually that hard to make.

"I would say a 4 or 5 on a 10-scale. It’s pretty easy."
And happily, it’s not going to break the bank like some cuts of beef will.
"It was $2.69 a pound, so the whole thing was a little over $10. So it’s pretty inexpensive."

The main thing is to avoid overcooking it.
Also, once the dish is out of the oven, "make sure you let it sit. If you carve it right away, all
the juices will just run right out of it. Then it’s not tender and moist anymore."
Hrabovsky finds the flavors in the entree work perfectly together.
"Any type of pork – Dijon is just a flavor that goes well."
To create a romantic dinner, he’d pair the pork with roasted garlic redskins, "and probably glazed
baby carrots. That’s a nice color."
Roast pork loin Dijonnaise
4 Bone, Bone on center-cut Pork Loins, (2 ½ to 2 ¾ lbs) chine bone removed, top frenched*
¼ tsp. Fresh Chopped Garlic
2 Tbl. Heavy Cream
2 Tbl. Country Dijon Mustard
1 ½ cup Chicken Broth
2 Tbl. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
5 leaves Fresh Rosemary, chopped fine
Coarse Kosher Salt — to taste
Fresh Cracked Black Peppercorns — to taste
¼ cup Butter
½ cup All Purpose Flour
* This can be cut for you at a butcher store. It is important to have the chine bone removed so it is
easy to cut the roast into portions when ready to serve.
——-
Cut a couple of shallow cross marks into the meat of the roast.
Chop the garlic and 5 fresh rosemary leaves very fine.
Rub the pork loin with the olive oil and rub with ¼ tsp. chopped garlic and rosemary, sprinkle with salt
and pepper. ( You can let it sit for a few hours in the refrigerator to develop more flavor.)
Pre-heat oven to 325 (275 if using a convection oven)
Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a medium size saute pan and heat. Brown all sides and both
ends of the roast.
Place in oven in a small roasting pan.
De-glaze the saute pan with broth ( bring chicken broth to boil in the pan to remove dripping from the
pan). Set liquid aside in a small sauce pan and keep warm.
Melt butter in a small saute pan the mix in the flour and brown roux lightly on low heat.
Bring liquid to a simmer. Add Dijon mustard and add roux, a small amount at a time until thickened to a
thin gravy consistency. Simmer at a very low heat for 15 min. Finish with 2 tablespoons of heavy cream,
and hold hot.
Cook roast to an internal temperature of 155 degrees (approximately 1 hour and 20 min. ) If it starts to
get too brown, tent aluminum foil over it.
When done, remove from oven and let rest with aluminum tent over it for 15 to 20 minutes. This allows the
juices in the pork to re-circulate. If you don’t do this, when you cut the pork loin all the juices will
run out.
To serve, cut between the bones, place on a plate, and ladle sauce over it. Garnish plate with a fresh
rosemary sprig.
Serve with your choice of sides. Serves 4.