Oven Roasted Stuffed Porchetta

Sorry I've been gone for so long! I keep thinking I'll write up this recipe or that recipe. But it all seems boring. I know there have been a million people that wrote up their recipe for gyoza or lasagna. How is mine special? This time I'll write something great ... something everyone will look up. I know ... Porchetta!!!!

So our group of school friend decided to have a holiday party with gift exchange this year. And of course I think of this as my opportunity to try a new recipe! And since one of my girlfriends was going on and on about how she wants a porchetta recipe, I decided, why not? Everything is findable on the internet. But not really ... I found maybe two recipes online (in English, I bet there are a ton in Italian!). Everyone was reviewing the famous place in the East Village, NYC called Porchetta ... But no one really making it. Its pretty expensive to buy ... $10 for a sandwich. Luckily the meat used for this roast is an inexpensive cut. These guys are making a killing! I should open a porchetta store ... though somehow I don't think a Japanese making porchetta would be considered authentic to any of my potential customers!


Our holiday dinner was a feast as always!

Oven Roasted Stuffed Porchetta Recipe

Serves 18

1 T butter or olive oil

1/3 fennel bulb, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 shallot, chopped

1 head garlic, chopped

1/4 pound ground pork

1/3 pound chicken livers, soaked in milk 2 hrs, veins removed, chopped fine*

1 bunch sage leaves, chopped

1/2 bunch rosemary, minced

1/3 cup currents

splash of white wine

salt and pepper to taste but should be aggressive

13 pound pork shoulder, bones removed and butterflied with skin in tact

salt

pepper

kitchen twine

2-3 days before planning to roast the porchetta, make the stuffing. Saute fennel, onion, shallot, and garlic over medium high heat until translucent but not browned. Add ground pork and chicken livers and continue cooking until everything is cooked, but not browned. Turn heat to low and mix in sage, rosemary, currents, and white wine until incorporated and not too wet. Salt and pepper this mixture. The flavor should be aggressive. Set aside and allow the mixture to cool.

Take the pork shoulder and score the skin and fat so it is easy to cut the cracklings when it is done roasting. Turn the roast over, and aggressively salt and pepper the inside of the roast, massaging the seasoning into the pork. Then place the stuffing in a nice even layer, leaving a one inch margin so the roast can easily be rolled and tied without the stuffing falling out. Roll the roast up. Using kitchen twine, tie up the roast. Starting from the center, very tightly tie up the roast. Then tie up a couple more times on either side of the center. Additionally tie up the length of the roast.

Allow the roast to marinate for 2-3 days in the in the frig.

The day you are roasting the porchetta, remove the pork from the frig two hours prior to roasting. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place porchetta in oven, skin side up. Allow to roast for approximately 30 minutes per pound (weight after the bones have been removed) until it reaches an internal temperature of at least 160-165F. It could take less time with a large roast such as my approximately 10 pound final weight pork shoulder. It took about 4 1/2 hours, so please periodically check the temperature of your roast. It does not need basting, since there is a large fat layer around the pork and the crackling skin needs to be dry to harden and crisp up. Remove the roast from the oven when it reaches the proper temperature of 160F and allow it to rest at least 30 minutes to let it redistribute all the juices. To slice, remove crackling first, and slice extremely thin. The thinner the better!


*Before this party, I had a bit of a dilemma with the roast. Originally got a much smaller roast, so I told my friend I'd make chicken liver pate so we'd have an appetizer. She answered "ew! I'm so not going to eat it!" I told her she's be surprised, she might like chicken livers and not know it. Most people just don't prepare chicken livers properly. Anyways, at the party she was going on and on about how much she loved the stuffing. I snickered and told her the stuffing is half chicken liver! She doesn't like being proven wrong!

Butter~~~~ (NYC Butter Sale)

Let's be honest, I love butter. Not just love, but LOVE!!! butter. (I sound like Paula Deen don't I?) Its the MSG of real chefs, it really does make food taste better! As Anthony Bourdain mentions in his book Kitchen Confidential, to make your food taste and look like restaurant quality, use such ingredients as shallots, garlic, fresh herbs, garnish your plate, and use BUTTER! He even says that Italian chefs throw butter into their marinara! Believe me, I tried it ... butter makes your marinara taste better. It mellows out the acidity in marinara, I was quite amazed ... and converted!

Okay another confession ... Being a poor starving student, I am very careful with my money. People can call me frugal. But you try living off my grad student stipend, in NYC, while still wanting to go out and party with your friends, or your BF's friends, who have real jobs that make real money!

Borrowed from: "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

My family didn't raise me to be in debt. Its just against my nature. I'll be in my mid 30s when I finish grad school, who wants to crawl out of debt at that age? I walk over a mile one way to work to save subway fare (unless its raining or I'm very late), cuz it seriously cuts into my budget. So how do I eat the way I do? Honestly, I watch the supermarket sales, and stock up when prices are down. I don't coupon cuz New York Times weekend edition is $4, I'm not sure if I'll get enough coupons to recover my losses, so if you know of other newspapers in NYC that you can get coupons for cheaper, let me know! Anyways, so butter, my love, when its on sale in NYC, its $1.99 a pound, sometimes $1.79, and the cheapest I've seen it, but only once, $1.49. Its not the good stuff like Purga ... But for everyday cooking, buttering the pan for eggs or chocolate chips cookies, generic butter is fine. Though I guess if you want really good butter for cheaper, you can shake heavy cream until it makes butter ... or "overwhip it" in your KitchenAid Mixer.

Time to stock up on butter for all that Holiday baking and cooking! Just throw it in your freezer to keep it fresh if you decide to stock up!

Butter is currently on sale at the following stores in NYC for $1.99 a pound.
The Met Supermarket until Saturday, November 7, 2009
C-Town Supermarket until Thursday, November 5, 2009
Morton Williams Supermarket until Thursday, November 5, 2009