WITH YOUR WINE

Pot-roasted pork loin

Pork gets short shrift as a roast, which is too bad. It can produce wonderful results. Serve this to celebrate the last cold day of this unending winter, and a Texas wine like the Becker viognier would be a great pairing.

Serves 4-6, takes 3 to 3 1/2 hours

4 lb boneless pork loin

2 onions, sliced

2 Tbsp carraway seeds

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

6 carrots

1/2 head cabbage, sliced

1 c mixed dried fruit

2-3 Tbsp red wine vinegar salt, pepper and red pepper to taste

1/4 tsp dried sage

2 bay leaves

1 bottle fruity red wine

Also may need: olive oil, rice or noodles

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Season the loin with salt and pepper, and brown on all sides in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or oven-proof casserole dish. Remove the loin to a plate.

2. Sauté the onions in the Dutch oven until they start to brown. Add the garlic and carraway seeds, and cook for 30 or 40 seconds, until the garlic is fragrant.

3. Slice the carrots lengthwise to produce 3-inch sticks. Add the carrots, cabbage, dried fruit, sage, bay leaves, and salt and pepper, to taste, to the Dutch oven. Add the wine and red wine vinegar, and bring to a boil.

4.Add the loin (with any accumulated juices) to the Dutch oven. Cover and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. Check after an hour or so. Flip the roast and add liquid if it seems dry.

5.Remove the loin from the Dutch oven, and cook the liquid down for a few minutes if you want. Thinly slice the pork, and serve in a bowl with rice or noodles, the vegetables and dried fruit, and the liquid.

JEFF SIEGEL’SWEEKLYWINE REVIEWS appear every Wednesday on oakcliff.advocatemag.com

TomStephens

Tom Stephens is not supposed to be here.

He should be in jail, or in a coma, maybe. Dead, probably. But not here in this coffee shop on a sunny afternoon.

Decades of drinking and drug abuse gave him brain damage when he was 51. He had contracted hepatitis C from shooting up cocaine. And he was in rehab again, addicted to booze, painkillers and methamphetamines.

“Your only thought is, ‘the best thing I could do is die,’ ” he says with a Buddha-like smile.

Sipping coffee on the patio, Stephens, who is 58, could pass for 10 years younger.

His story starts at 12. That’s when he says he started having suicidal thoughts, and that’s when he started drinking. By 16, he had been kicked out of a Dallas high school and sent to a military boarding school.

By that time, he already was an intravenous drug user and daily drinker. But he finished high school and studied journalism at Stephen F. Austin State University. He graduated and obtained a job in advertising.And he drank every day.

Sometimes, he would sit at home and drink until he passed out. Other times, he would go to a bar, shoot pool, get drunk and “drive home with one hand over my eye”. He says he slept with women he doesn’t remember. He lied to his family and made excuses to his wife and daughter when they woke him up on the kitchen floor.

He started smoking methamphetamines, and he became addicted to painkillers — vicodin and oxycontin.

The behavior went on for decades, he says. “I never expected to live,” continued on page 19