Ever since Italian immigrants moved to Minnesota to work on the Iron Range, Minnesotans have been in love with porchetta.
The traditional Italian porchetta is a large roast, often consisting of a pork loin wrapped in a large piece of pork belly, flavored for days with a powerhouse combination of herbs, spices, garlic and salt, and cooked until the inside is juicy and tender and the outside skin is crackly.
The combination of porkiness, crispiness and juiciness is irresistible on a plate, served with potatoes or pasta, or as a sandwich with purple cabbage slaw or pickled vegetable with a slathering of aioli for good measure. No matter how you serve it, you'll want to eat every delicious morsel.
As wonderful as a big, beautiful porchetta is, making it can be a commitment. The sheer size of it can be daunting. We're talking about 10-plus pounds of pork that could feed 15 hungry people. Not to mention the time commitment, which can take days.
If you're like me, I'm happy to make that kind of effort for a special occasion, but I love these flavors on a more regular basis, so I've come up with a way to have my porchetta any day of the week.
It starts with a pork loin, although a couple of pork tenderloins will work, too. The loin is smeared with an herb paste, which I make in my mortar and pestle. I know it seems a bit medieval, but a mortar and pestle works well for anything you're trying to grind into a paste.
Still, I recognize that most people don't own this primitive tool, so I've also made this in my food processor or with a sharp knife, chopping until the mixture is finely minced.
I slice the pork down the middle, lengthwise, almost all the way through, leaving just enough margin to keep the pork together. Then I rub the mixture all over the inside and out of the pork, which I close back up to its original form and wrap in pancetta, the Italian version of bacon.
The pork roasts in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. In the end, you get a beautifully fragrant and juicy roast, covered in crispy bacon. Not exactly the same as those Italian immigrants were making in their kitchens, but it's close and a lot quicker and easier.
Meredith Deeds is a cookbook author and food writer from Edina. Reach her at meredith@meredithdeeds.com. Follow her on Twitter at @meredithdeeds.
