Porchetta with your {bits & pieces}
The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
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For the feast of St. Francis I decided to make an Umbrian specialty that we tasted when we visited friends in Italy a couple of years ago — Porchetta!!*
*This is pronounced porketta fyi.
I love the people in the meat section of my grocery store. We always have a good chat about the things I’m thinking of making. You think they are just wrapping things up in plastic, but actually they make all the things and have great ideas! “I use pork butt for porchetta — I’ll get you a big one, bone it, and butterfly it for you.”
So the thing with porchetta, besides the amazing flavors, is the wonderful crackling on top that comes from a long slow cooking. Don’t forget to give everyone a bit to enjoy with their slice. The reviews were that this was the best pork they had ever had.
Here’s what you need (I followed this recipe in the New York Times and modified it as one does) (I’m having issues with my camera-computer interface, so pardon the phone picture here!):
A nice fatty cut of pork. You can use a big pork loin, but then you need to put some olive oil or bacon grease in with the herbs. My pork butt here came in at 10 lbs. It was nicely butterflied so that I could rub the herbs all inside as well as outside. Chopping everything up in the food processor goes really quickly, but of course you can do it all by hand as well.
For the herb mix:
A bulb of fennel (anise) with the dark green fronds attached. You want to cut those fronds. You can use the bulb later — slice it up and roast it with some root vegetables like beets and carrots — serve with balsamic vinegar and salt.
Some sprigs of fresh rosemary and fresh sage. These grow in my garden very well. I also have lemon thyme in my herb garden, so I used about a teaspoon of that as well.
5 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup scallions or chives
1 tsp. fennel seed (the small kind if you have a choice)
Grated rind of a lemon or 1 tablespoon of pickled lemon — we happen to have this in the fridge courtesy of Deirdre, so that adds a lovely note
Small pinch of red pepper flakes
Black pepper
Salt
Process these things until finely chopped. If you have a lean cut of pork (which will be neater and slice up nicely later when it’s cold), add some olive oil or bacon fat. If you are using the butt, you don’t need any added fat.
Open up your meat, keeping the layer of fat on top intact. Butterflying just means cutting into it so that it opens like a book or at least so that the layers are of an even thickness (the butt is all uneven, whereas the loin can be nicely cut open so that it spirals up).
Rub 2/3 of the herb mixture over the insides of the meat. Roll the meat up again and secure with skewers underneath. Score the fat on top with a sharp knife and rub the rest of the herbs on top and into the cuts.
Wrap securely with kitchen twine, set in your roasting pan, and roast at 350° for 40 minutes, turning down to 325° until the thermometer registers 170° for the loin (about 1 – 1 1/2 hours) or 190º for the butt (about 3 hours or more, depending on the weight).
Let the roast cool for about 10 minutes and remove the string and skewers carefully, making sure not to pull of the gloriously crunchy bits on top.
Slice as neatly as you can so that the spirals of herbs remain intact.
This will be lovely served cold on a platter another day, with pasta or in sandwiches!
On to our links!
Wow, wow — so many old cookbooks and home ec books all online!
An older talk given by Hadley Arkes, but still relevant today as we consider nominees for the Supreme Court: how does natural law relate to our jurisprudence? A Natural Law Manifesto. It’s very long, but very readable, and I’d suggest it for your high schooler who is doing the Constitution and constitutional law.
“But as I’ve had the occasion to explain many times over, this notion of agreement or disagreement is built upon one of those things the philosophers understand as a “self-refuting proposition.” For it reduces to this claim: “that the very presence of disagreement on any matter of moral consequence indicates the absence of truth.” But all I have to do is record my own disagreement with that proposition and that should be enough, on its own terms, to establish its falsity.”
A good solid primer from Msgr. Pope on the lie of nominalism and how to combat it (hint: tell the truth, have common sense). You could read this one first, before the Arkes one!!
Sometimes there’s a tipping point for an idea — and it’s so frustrating when you’ve seen a problem for years and decades and it really does seem like no one cares. Then for some reason, people do start to notice… maybe it’s just a case of a journalist experiencing the problem! I hope things change: A sick or hurt person in the hospital (not to even mention a healthy mom who just gave birth) needs to sleep.
Today is the feast of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians. The Carthusians live the strictest of strict monastic lives; no one gets to visit them… until they invited my husband, Phil, to report on their ways in honor of the 900th anniversary of the death (birth into heavenly life!) of St. Bruno! He wrote about his trip to the charter house in Vermont — a once-in-forever opportunity.
From the archives:
The Reasonably Clean House. You can do it.
I mock myself for this “casual” (read: totally overthought) dinner with friends; but I think I will make that butternut squash lasagna (sans sausage) for tonight with my leftover porchetta.
Do you have trouble getting up in the morning? I have a method…
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