Although I do not eat out all that often, I like to keep an eye on the restaurant scene here in Toronto and a new comer, Porchetta & Co recently caught my attention. Not surprisingly they specialize in porchetta and with all of the rave reviews they were getting I had to pay them a visit and try out their porchetta sandwich. Porchetta is an Italian style of roast pork that is seasoned with spices and slowly roasted until tender. Fattier cuts of pork are often used for porchetta and it is common to wrap everything up in a pork belly. All of this fat does two things for the roast, the first being that it keeps the roast nice and moist even through all of the roasting and it adds a ton of flavour. The final component of the porchetta is that the outer part of the pork belly gets nice and crispy and it is referred to as the crackling. Porchetta & Co definitely have their porchetta down and the sandwich was amazing! This of course inspired me to try making porchetta at home.
Luckily Porchetta & Co describe their porchetta pretty well so all that was required was coming up with the amounts in the recipe and getting to roasting. Well, before we get to roasting we actually want to marinate the pork shoulder and apply a dry rub to the pork belly and let to develop their flavours for at least 24 hours. Once the pork has had a chance build up some flavour the roast is assembled and thrown into the oven, first at a high temperature to get the outside nice and crispy and then low and slow until the roast is fully cooked. This was actually my first time working with a pork belly and I have to say that I am quite pleased with the results. The porchetta certainly did come out nice and moist and tender and full of flavour. I served the porchetta with a dollop of grainy mustard and a side of braised rapini or broccoli rabe. Now I am definitely looking forward to some porchetta sandwiches and enjoying the leftovers in other ways!
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