Consisting of two bone-in pork loin roasts tied together in a round, a crown roast offers plenty of meat for a holiday crowd and a dramatic presentation, but its unique shape presents serious challenges to even cooking. The standard method (seasoning, brushing with oil, and roasting in a moderate oven) yields roasts that are overcooked around the outer perimeter and undercooked around the inner circle of the crown. For even cooking, we turned the roast upside down and started at a higher temperature, which allowed more air to circulate through the hard-to-cook center of the crown and better exposed the thickest part of the roast to the oven’s heat. Stuffing is a popular addition, but it was a major impediment to even cooking, so we opted for potatoes, shallots, and apples roasted in the pan alongside the meat. The apples came out of the oven too soft to serve, but we liked the fruity flavor they imparted to our pan sauce. Pureeing the apples into the sauce gave us both fruity flavor and a perfectly thick consistency.