This Little Piggy

28 April 2007

I’ve grown accustomed to specifics. Not that I need blow-by-blow and ounce-by-ounce instructions, but enough at least to know I’m heading in the right direction. Which is why I was both intrigued and annoyed by the recipe for Mario Batali’s porchettain the April 2007 issue of Esquire. After spending paragraphs extolling the virtues of bone-in pork shoulder cooked over low heat for hour upon hour, the editors published a recipe for boneless pork shoulder cooked at standard heat for only 120 minutes. Teases.

The impetus for my need, an upcoming dinner party. Some dear friends of ours recently resurrected their movable feast dinner party, in which each couple brings somehing exquisite to contribute to a lovely meal. I wanted to make a roast. Mario’s roast. The one that cooks overnight and fills the house with the scents of rosemary, garlic, and pork. But google as I might, I couldn’t find any guidance past the brief narrative in the magazine. So I adapted a prep treatment from Barbara Kafka’s Roasting. Then there was the question of cooling and storing the pork, which is meant to be cooked overnight, cooled through the day, and then reheated for dinner—placing it into the fridge would be a one-way ticket to congealed toughness. I placed pork consultation call to friend and business partner Michael, and we hatched a plan.

Judith proclaimed the pork a success (very high praise in my book). Here’s the recipe:

• One 8 lb. bone-in pork shoulder roast
• Two tablespoons of fennel seeds
• One tablespoon of salt
• Two tablespoons of freshly ground pepper
• Eight cloves of garlic
• Four sprigs of fresh rosemary
• One tablespoon of olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Place salt, pepper, fennel seeds, garlic, oil, and rosemary into food processor and blend into a paste.
3. Score the fat side of the pork, careful not to slice into the actual meat.
4. Rub pork with the paste.
5. Place in oven and cook for 8.5 hours.
6. Remove from oven and allow to cool. If you’ve made the pork overnight and are serving it for dinner, store the pork, tightly covered, in a cool place, until dinner (I used our garage).
7. Roughly 45 minutes before serving, reheat uncovered in a 250-degree oven to warm. The pork won’t be hot, but it will be succulently warm and delicious.

The rest of the meal was exquisite as well—a tian of vegetables that I’m going to try to replicate for Sunday dinner, a roasted beet and goat cheese salad with fried capers, fresh bread, homemade spumoni, and pistacchio cookies from a terrific new bakery in Andersonville, Pasticceria Natalina. Here’s to friends who are wonderful chefs and to friends with wine cellars.