Whatta hunk! (I heart Italian porchetta) 21 November 2006

 

Porchetta (stuffed rolled pork belly)
Preparation time: 30 mins to 1 hour
Cooking time: 3-4 hours
Serves 10-12 (great for big family gatherings!)

 

See those girly smiles!?

Sorry Yeng, the hunk ain’t you!

November is a month of birthday celebrations for the family and yet another reason to come together … and eat! Since Yeng espied the recipe in Gennaro Contaldo’s Invitation to Italian Cooking, he had simply been waiting for an opportunity to try Italian porchetta.

Porchetta (por-keta) is impressive but surprisingly simple. The hardest part is waiting for it to cook! We started cooking pretty late so we ended up waiting for it until the wee hours of the morning. So around 3 am we were chewing away, oohing and ahhing over the results.

According to Contaldo, in Italy, porchetta is traditionally a whole piglet filled with herbs and slowroasted in a wood oven or outdoors on a spit. Porchetta reminds me of our lechon de leche, but the spices and herbs used are different. Contaldo modified and simplified this is Italian favorite by using pork belly instead of a whole piglet.

This is great straight from the oven. But it is equally good cold, sliced very thinly and eaten like a cold cut! As this was a hit during our gathering, this dish is already a heavy contender for my Lola’s Christmas dinner (instead of the typical hamon). That day we were full to the brim, with leftover porchetta to take home, to boot!

You need:

• 5kg/11lb piece of pork belly - ask the butcher to remove the ribs and trim off the excess fat (we asked this from Monterey and he knew exactly what to do)
• 25g/1oz coarse salt
• leaves from a large branch of fresh thyme
• needles from a large branch of fresh rosemary, roughly chopped
• a large bunch of fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp fennel seeds
• 8 garlic cloves, finely chopped (we upped this to two heads of garlic because we loooove garlic)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 6 tbsp runny honey
• freshly ground black pepper

How to:

1. Preheat the oven to its highest setting. Lay the pork belly skin-side down.

   

2. Sprinkle the salt and coarsely ground black pepper over it, rubbing them well into the meat with your finger.

   

3. Leave to rest for ten minutes so the salt and pepper settle well into the meat. Then sprinkle the herbs, fennel seeds and garlic evenly over it.

   

4. Next tie up the meat. You will need ten pieces of string, each about 30cm/12 inches long. Carefully roll the meat up width-ways and tie it very tightly with string in the middle of the joint. Then tie at either end about 1cm/1⁄2 inch from the edge and keep tying along the joint until you have used up all the string. The filling should be well wrapped, if any excess filling escapes from the sides, push it in.

   

5. With your hands, massage one tablespoon of the olive oil all over the joint. Then rub the remaining salt and some more black pepper over it.
6. Grease a large roasting tin with the remaining olive oil and place the pork in it.
7. Roast for ten minutes, then turn it over. After 15 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 150C/300F/Gas 2 and cover the meat with aluminium foil. (If you like the crackling very crisp, don’t bother with the foil, but remember that the porchetta needs to be sliced thinly and crispy crackling will make this difficult.)

   

8. Roast for three (or more) hours.
9. Remove the joint from the oven and coat with honey, drizzling some of the juices from the roasting tin all over it too.
10. Insert a fork in either side of the joint and lift it on to a wooden board. If you are serving the porchetta immediately, place the roasting tin on the hob and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up all the caramelised bits from the base of the tin, until the juices from the meat reduce and thicken slightly. Slice the joint thinly and serve with the sauce. Alternatively, leave the meat to cool and slice when needed. It will keep for up to a week in the fridge.