Porchetta

200th post!! It's been almost 2 years since I started this blog, and the food has been crazy. I wanted an ambitious project for such an important post, and this was perfect :)

I hadn't heard of the term porchetta until my last Chicago trip, during which a friend recommended that we get the porchetta sandwich at Eataly because "it's the best sandwich I've ever put in my mouth." Unfortunately, they only had it on certain days of the week and we missed it, but it got me really curious about what porchetta is so I looked it up when I got back. Porchetta is a type of Italian pork roast and traditionally they debone an entire pig, season it, then roll it up and roast it for hours. The simpler way to make this for the average person (who lacks a giant oven and the means to purchase/ debone a whole pig) is to to roll a pork tenderloin within a layer of pork belly and roast.

Khoi and I split this project between us -- he was in charge of the roast, and I prepared the other components of the sandwich (he took on the more challenging part). We followed a recipe from one of my favorite blogs and it was incredible.

Khoi's roast, resting fresh out of the oven after five hours.

The spread. I made salsa verde, and brought bread and mustard for the sandwich.

The porchetta was transferred to a cutting board for carving. When we were cutting off the twine, the crunchy pork belly skin made the most succulent crackling noises, oh man.

We cut off the ends, since there's bits of tenderloin sticking out and we wanted only the pieces covered in belly.

Slicing with more crackling noises, yums.

Porchetta on toasted ciabatta, smothered with salsa verde and dijon mustard. I was originally planning for regular sandwiches, but ended up eating mine as an open-faced sandwich since I wanted a greater porchetta to bread ratio. The flavors were so great together -- it was herby, citrusy, spicy, incredible. 

Devourin'

I snagged Book of Mormon tickets for us a few weeks ago, so we headed to Broadway after dins. Best day ever ^^