Festive Porchetta By Jan Hendrik
Ingredients for the filling
- 100 g (110 ml) butter
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 10 ml fennel seeds
- 250 g chicken livers, roughly chopped
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 5 slices honey and oats bread
- 5 Cape sage leaves, chopped
Ingredients to complete the porchetta
- 1 x 2 kg deboned Eskort pork belly
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 x 350 g Eskort pork fillet
- 125 g Eskort Double Smoked Ham
- olive oil
- 1 lemon, halved
- coarse salt
Method for the filling
- Melt the butter in a saucepan. It may seem like a lot of butter, but once you add the breadcrumbs it will make sense. Add the onion and garlic and fry until soft and translucent.
- Add the fennel seeds and fry for 3 minutes. Then, add the chopped livers and fry for 2 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
- Place the bread in a food processor and pulse until breadcrumbs form, then add the breadcrumbs and sage to the butter and onion mixture. The breadcrumbs will now absorb all the butter.
- Take mixture off the heat and let it cool to room temperature.
Method to complete the porchetta
- Heat the oven to 180 °C.
- Make sure your pork belly is scored vertically (you can ask your Eskort butcher do that for you).
- Lay your pork belly out, skin-side down, and butterfly the meat from the centre outwards on one side to separate meat from the skin without cutting all the way through, then open up to one, large piece.
- Season the meat and spread evenly with ¾ of the stuffing. Fold closed and spread the rest of the stuffing on top. Season the fillet with salt and pepper. Place the fillet on the one side of the belly.
- Arrange the ham on top and roll the porchetta closed before tying the porchetta with butcher’s twine.
- Drizzle a little olive oil into an oven-roasting dish. Rub the skin with the lemon and sprinkle salt on top.
- Place in the oven for 2 hours when the skin will form a lovely crackling.
- If the skin is not crispy, increase the oven’s heat to 200 °C, and roast it further until the skin is crispy and crackly.
- Take out of the oven and let it rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.
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