Last Sunday my friend Grant (who happens to love cooking and that’s why I love him. hehe) cooked a massive Italian feast. Because I can’t cook to save my life, I really appreciate home cooked meals.  It sure as hell beats my cereal or toast dinners I have at home.

The main attraction was without a doubt this baby:

Boom!

That’s right folks, that’s practically a whole pig.  Luckily it didn’t have the head on – but still, looking at it did make me feel somewhat guilty.  Luckily once we dug in I was like “how could something this good be bad?”    I’m going to be looking at those piggies people keep as pets now in a whole different light…

The dish is called Stuffed Porchetta and Grant has been nice enough to let me share the recipe with you guys.  First off, he recommends you have a look at these 3 video’s to get a good feel for what exactly Porchetta is:

Making Porchetta – Part 1
Making Porchetta – Part 2
Making Porchetta – Part 3

The recipe is a mix venture between Jamie Oliver and his mentor Gennaro. You don’t really have to measure anything, you should get a feel for how much to use.  But if you’re like me, you’ll want some specifics, so here goes:

For the stuffing, you’ll need:

• 6 large cloves of garlic (finely diced)
• 2 inches of ginger (finely diced)
• Half a loaf of stale brown bread diced in a blender, don’t be shy, you want lots of stuffing
• Lemon juice
• Lemon zest (about 2 large lemons is ok)
• Good handful of sage and parsley
• +/- 100g of raisins
• Some fatty bacon finely chopped
• 2 onions
• A generous amount of salt and pepper

For the pork marinade:

• Generous amount of salt and pepper
• Mulled white wine  (sorry guys – you can’t buy this stuff – you have to make it from scratch as well.  Check out this recipe from Rachael Ray – it sounds pretty simple)
• 20 stalks of thyme
• 20 stalks of rosemary
• Fennel (and LOTS of it)
• Olive oil

Then other bits that will come in handy:

• Bottle of red wine
• Carrots or butternut
• Salami – 20 pieces

Grant prefers pork belly but you can use a shoulder if you want, 2.5kg is the ideal size.

Butterfly the pork, DO NOT cut into the meat, cut along the fat until opened enough. Rub with salt and pepper, pour over mulled white wine and massage thoroughly, add thyme and rosemary and close up butterflied pieces then fold again and leave to marinade for an hour. Do the stuffing while you wait.

Stuffing – Fry the bacon till almost crispy (instead of bacon you can do pork mince or chicken livers) in it’s own fat, don’t add anything. Add into a bowl. Mix in the garlic and ginger, add in the bread crumbs / sage / parsley / raisins / onions / salt and pepper. Mix well then throw in the lemon zest and lemon juice to bind. The idea here is to not saturate the mixture with lemon juice so put the juice of 1 lemon in at first. You want the stuffing to absorb the juices of the pork as it slowly cooks so a dryer stuffing is preferred.

Open pork and fill with stuffing mixture, don’t be shy.  Pat down and add salami on top of stuffing, then add a generous amount of fennel on top of that, take some string and tie up pork into a roll, be sure to tie the ends well too. Rub skin with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, this gives the crackling a good taste and the olive oil will get the crackling going nicely.

Heat your oven to max, as soon as you put the pork in turn down to 170 degrees celcius and you’re going to be cooking it for about 5 hours in total.  At the end the skin should just fall off and leave the meat exposed when you untie it.  If you use a convection oven I suggest not using the fan, this tends to dry the meat out.  Using the normal element is fine.

First off, put the belly slit side down (skin on top so make sure it’s tied up nicely) onto either the carrots or butternut, it must be about 2cm off the base of the dish. Throw in random vegetables around the sides if you have space and empty in half the bottle of red wine.  Then cook for 3 hours.  Throw in the rest of the wine and then cook for another 2 hours.

Once cooked leave to rest for about 15 minutes and open then slice into pieces – have a cricket bat ready for those people who try to pick off pieces.  And finally… enjoy!

It was soooooooo amazing!  I know it sounds like a lot of work, but trust me, you’re going to seriously impress with this one.

Now, I did my bit by offering to do a homemade Tiramisu for dessert (figured it sounded easy enough for even me to pull off).  I used the Classic Tiramisu recipe from www.allrecipes.com which got a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. Impressive.  You’ll need the following:

1. Combine egg yolks and sugar in the top of a double boiler, over boiling water. Reduce heat to low, and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and whip yolks until thick and lemon colored.
   ** I must admit, when I read “double boiler” I was like what the hell is that!?  It sounded super complicated, so I decided to have a short nap to revitalise. hehe.  When I woke up, I Googled it and luckily found that if you don’t have a proper one you can make one by simply placing a glass bowl over a pot.  OK right, I was back on track **
2. Add mascarpone to whipped yolks. Beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whip cream to stiff peaks. Gently fold into yolk mixture and set aside.
3. Split the lady fingers in half, and line the bottom and sides of a large glass bowl. Brush with coffee liqueur. Spoon half of the cream filling over the lady fingers. Repeat ladyfingers, coffee liqueur and filling layers. Garnish with cocoa and chocolate curls. Refrigerate several hours or overnight.
   ** Just a note:  I know they say “brush with coffee liqueur” – but I’d say rather dip the biscuits in the liqueur, otherwise you don’t get enough of that yummy coffee taste **
4. To make the chocolate curls, use a vegetable peeler and run it down the edge of the chocolate bar.

And the end result should look a little something like this:

Ta da!

Seriously, If I can rock that out – anybody can.  And I’m very happy to report that nobody died or was hurt in the eating of this dessert.  I even got some great reviews.  A big relief for everyone involved.

So anybody hungry after reading all that?

xxx