Musings

True porchetta may just be the holy grail of all pork-loving foodies (a term which is probably redundant), and for years, I’ve dreamed of making it at home. Traditionally, porchetta refers to a gutted and boned whole pig that’s boldly seasoned with wild fennel, herbs and garlic, tied up, and spit-roasted over an open fire. In Italy, porchetta is festival food, but you can also find porchetta sandwiches (slices of this insanely delicious pork tucked into crusty rolls) sold by street vendors and market stalls.

Here, the best porchetta I’ve ever tasted comes from Sara Jenkins’s amazing New York City restaurant/lunch counter called, quite appropriately, Porchettta. Up until my pilgrimage to Porchetta last fall, I had always imagined the homemade porchetta of my dreams would involve a whole pig and an outdoor fire, but that’s not the way Jenkins does it. Waiting in line for my sandwich at this always-busy little place, I watched the woman behind the counter slice meat from a single roast, not a whole pig. But it was a pork roast like none I’d ever seen. There was a large eye of juicy meat in the center, surrounded by layers of melting fat, and all encased in a crackling skin. Brilliant!

Back at home, I researched and found a New York magazine article explaining the method. “She [Jenkins] uses boned-out pork loins from contented, free-rooting Hampshire hogs, wraps them in pork bellies, and seasons them with a heady paste of wild-fennel pollen, thyme, sage, rosemary, garlic, and an aggressive dose of salt and pepper. These substantial specimens are tied up with string and oven-roasted until the meat is remarkably tender and the skin has turned to something like the color and consistency of a delicate peanut brittle.” I also found a similar recipe in Bruce Aidells’s wonderful Complete Book of Pork (he calls his David’s Porchetta: Belly-Wrapped Pork Loin).

For my porchetta, I decided I didn’t want to buy a separate belly and pork loin, but I wanted to use a loin that was butchered in such a way that the belly flap remained in tact. Without going into a full exposition on pork butchery here, picture that the loin comes from the back of the piggy – it’s that big thick muscle running along either side of the spine – and the belly comes from the other side. So if the butcher bones out the loin without separating the belly flap from the back top loin, you’ll have a pork loin with a long flap of streaky belly (fresh bacon) that you can warp around. (I’ve heard that the British refer to this cut as a “long middle”, which makes certain sense as it comes from the middle of the pig, and, well, it’s long.)

Chances are you won’t find this cut of pork at a standard supermarket. I’m lucky enough to know Cole Ward, the butcher at Sweet Clover Market in Essex, Vermont. I explained to Cole what I was looking for, and just like that, he cut it for me (from a pig raised on North Hollow Farm in Rochester, Vermont). Two days before roasting, I unrolled the roast, rubbed it with ground fennel seed, garlic, rosemary, sage, and plenty of salt and pepper, and rolled it back up. To roast, I cranked the oven up to 475 for the first 25 minutes to get the skin crackling, and then turned it down to 325 so the meat would gently cook, bathed in all that luscious fat, for a full 3 hours. Then, as the meat rested (that’s what it’s doing in the photo), I tossed some potatoes in the all the glorious drippings and returned them to the oven to roast up.

A dream realized

My porchetta

In the end, my porchetta was everything I’d ever dreamed it would be – and best of all, it won’t be a once in a lifetime experience. I will be making this again – and when I do, I’ll write up a recipe for it. I promise.

On the first day of spring, I headed to the Bay Area to cook dinner for 9 people. Now, why in the world would this consummate Yankee be invited to fly all the way across the continent to prepare dinner in a town where there are more great cooks per capita than perhaps anywhere on earth? Well, long story short, it had to do with an auction for charity run by my sister and her bright idea that it would be fun to plan a party 2000 miles away. In the end, it was a blast – and dinner turned out beautifully! (I did, however, make my sister come along, to help schlep and prep, which only added to the fun.)

For starters, I travel to San Francisco fairly often and whenever I do, I head to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market  to ooooh and ahhh over all the amazing produce, meats, cheeses, dried beans, flowers, breads, and so on.

Spring at the Ferry Plaza Market

It’s a cook’s paradise, but normally, I behave like a tourist and have to refrain from buying anything beyond a cup of Blue Bottle coffee and an Acme Bakery pastry because I’m staying in a hotel with nowhere to cook. But this time, I arrived with my market bags and loaded up on pea shoots, fat asparagus, the tiniest French breakfast radishes, bundles of tender spring carrots, feathery curly cress, spicy arugula flowers, plump little all-white salad turnips, green garlic, spring onions, two amazing baskets of the earliest – and sweetest – strawberries ever, herbs galore, three kinds of mushrooms, salad greens, eggs, and, oh yeah, a cup of that Blue Bottle coffee.

At the market, I met up with my friend Daphne Zepos of Essex Street Cheese who had selected three perfect cheeses for the after-dinner cheese course. Then, we headed down to Avedano’s Meats in Holly Park Market for a few pounds of heritage pork that they had just got in. The butcher pounded slices of fresh ham into cutlets that I was planned to bread and panfry to make a sort of pork schnitzel.

By the time we arrived at the host house it was early afternoon. Over sandwiches, we planned our attack, and then set to work transforming the ingredients into a lavish dinner.

Making mushroom-onion tarts

The menu went like this:
Hors d’oeuvres
Deviled eggs with chives and lime
Vietnamese spring rolls with shrimp and mint
Roasted asparagus wrapped in prosciutto

Mushroom and spring onion tart with herb and arugula flower salad

Heritage pork schnitzel with turnips, carrots, pea shoots and Parmesan pudding

An assortment of artisan cheeses

Chocolate stout cake with chocolate glaze and a perfect bowl of strawberries

Now that’s the way to celebrate the arrival of spring!

As we rounded the corner into March last weekend, I realized that time was running out on my New Year’s resolution to add a blog to my website. I’ve dragged my feet on getting started for all the obvious reasons – time, commitment and, most of all, my belief that the world really doesn’t need yet another blogger.  But, in spite of these valid reasons, on this blustery, cold March afternoon, I’ve decided to make good on my resolution and get started.

My intention is simple. From time to time, I intend to update this site with ideas, inspiration and musings. I can’t promise how often I’ll post; that all depends on what’s happening in my kitchen and in my world. For instance, in January, I took an amazing 4 day trip to Tunisia to visit Moulin Majhoub, a family-run company growing, producing and packaging a superb range of agricultural products from extra-virgin olive oil to harissa, olive paste, artichoke spread and sun-dried tomatoes. In addition to watching the olive harvest and pressing, I spent 2 days in a home kitchen learning over 20 traditional Tunisian recipes. The Majhoub family has been making olive oil for generations, and their commitment to the traditional methods is impressive. In the coming weeks, I hope to share with you some of the recipes I learned in Tunisia – once I have a chance to test them here at home and make sure they’ll turn out for you in your kitchens.

In addition to my recent travels, I am mostly at home working on a cookbook on roasting. It’s an exciting project, and I look forward to sharing my recipes and techniques as I get closer to completing the manuscript – sometime this summer.

My other resolution is that I’ll keep these posts reasonably short – or at least I’ll try.