hoisin pork roast with rice and sesame broccoli

I'm a little obsessed with my slow cooker (known around my house as the silver bullet, although I'm not sure if I can continue calling it that now that my friend Teddy has pointed out what the term "silver bullet" means around her own establishment...). I just got it 2 months ago, so I'm still in that phase of wanting to try everything at least once. If you put a slow cooker recipe in front of me, I'm compelled to make it.

This one I saw in a Rachael Ray magazine. It turned out well enough, but I'm personally not as big a fan of hoisin sauce as I thought. I think I'll try this recipe again but with a sweeter sauce. Or, like I do with barbeque pork ribs in the silver bullet, make a batch of fresh sauce when the cooking is done. This one calls for the sauce left in the cooker to be reused, and maybe that just grossed me out a bit?

Here's the recipe: tie up one big (2-3#) pork loin roast (it won't look like it needs to be tied when it's raw, but trust me, it will fall completely apart when it starts to cook if you don't tie it at least a couple of times), the put in the slow cooker. Mix sauce in a bowl: 1 bottle (10 oz) hoisin sauce or duck sauce -- I'll have to try the duck sauce next time, bet it's sweeter -- plus 3 smashed garlic cloves, 2 T grated fresh ginger, 1 T chili paste, 1 T rice wine vinegar, 1 T soy sauce, 2 tsp dark sesame oil, 4 tsp cornstarch. Pour this over the meat, set the cooker for 8 hours on low.

When it's done, you take the roast out and set on a platter for a few minutes to rest, then slice it, sprinkle with a little chopped scallions and cilantro, serve over jasmine rice w/extra sauce.

I also made a simple recipe for broccoli from the Moosewood cookbook -- steam a bunch of broccoli florets, then toss with a simple dressing made of 2 parts rice wine vinegar + 1 part dark sesame oil. Salt, pepper, a few red pepper flakes, and shake some sesame seeds on top = nice new way to have broccoli.

(Here's a pic of the silver bullet. What a beautiful baby.)