Porchetta

They love their pork here in Italy. The ultimate pork dish surely has to be porchetta. I had heard many enthusing; however, in my ignorance I had thought it was the Italian way with roast pork, just with more herbs. How wrong can you be.

In summary you take pork belly with the rind on. You rub it with a herb mix. Then you use it to wrap a fillet and tie the parcel together. That's slow cooked for hours, then zapped at a high heat to get a glorious golden crispy finish. Want to try it? I started with a recipe from the excellent Giallo Zafferano (Yellow Saffron) website. If you're looking for an Italian recipe it's an excellent place to start, and it does have an English translation; however, it suggested that you got the meat up to 78°C, which is too hot, so I looked elsewhere.

For best results you really do need a meat thermometer for this.

Ingredients

2.5kg pork belly, rind on; 600g pork fillet, trimmed of any sinew; 6 bay leaves; 2 sprigs of rosemary (leaves removed from the twigs; 1 small bunch of parsley; 2 cloves garlic; 30 black peppercorns; 5 sage leaves; 25g salt; 25g sugar; 30ml olive oil (extra virgin, of course)

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Put the pork belly on a board, rind side down. Make a series of cuts in the flesh, being careful not to go through to the rind. Blitz the herbs, salt, sugar and oil in a blender to make a paste. It doesn't have to be too smooth. Massage the mixture into the pork. Put the fillet in the middle, then roll up the belly tightly and tie with butcher's twine, both cross ways and length ways.

Wrap up the parcel tightly and put in the fridge for 6 hours to allow the flavour to develop.

Set the oven to 130°C. Put the meat on a rack, roll side down, with a tin underneath. The next stage is critical. My recipe says cover with parchment paper. You might be tempted to use foil instead, but consider the science. Porchetta relies on high heat at the very end of cooking to turn the outer pork skin (cotenna) into hard, bubbly, crisp crackling. Parchment paper is ideal because it traps enough moisture to keep the inner meat juicy while allowing excess steam to escape so the skin doesn't get completely waterlogged and rubbery.

If you were to wrap the meat tightly in foil, this would trap in the moisture. The skin would become waterlogged, and waterlogged skin will never crispen in a month of Sundays. You can use foil but use it to form a tent not touching the meat.

For the slow cook stage you will need somewhere between 3 and 4.5 hours. But forget time, and focus on temperature. Your aim is an internal temperature of 68°C to 70°C. Check after two hours and regularly thereafter.

Once it hits that target temperature, remove the parchment/foil tent completely and increase the heat to 220°C for an additional 20 to 35 minutes to blister the skin into perfect, loud crackling. Allow to rest before carving (as if you wouldn't). You could of course chuck in some par boiled tatties for the last hour to get the benefit of the dripping pork loveliness.

I have never made porchetta nor eaten it, but I plan to remedy both omissions soon.