Buying some on-sale shrimp yesterday at the local market and noticed that they had porchetta (por-ket’-ah) roasts in the meat case. I haven’t had porchetta in probably 30 years. My former mother-in-law used to get them during the Christmas holidays, along with some nice finger rolls for making sandwiches. Every butcher in Minnesota has his own recipe for porchetta, it seems.
I asked the butcher about the meat cut and he said it was from the “knuckle”, or hip area. They bone it and remove the nasty tendon material, then pound it flat, cover it with a layer of herbs and spices (fennel, pepper, etc), roll it up and tie it.
He recommended using a slow cooker, but I opted for putting a dry rub on it and a low and slow roast in the oven. It came out tender, if a bit dry, so perhaps he was right. Buttered up a brioche bun, laid on some meat chunks and a few judicious dollops of brown mustard, and nuked it. The butter and mustard helped with the dry meat and the bun was soft. Good stuff, and the spices were just as I remembered.