Porchetta, slow-roasted pork shoulder with Fennel Pollen, and a visit to Robert De Niro’s Locanda Verde

You need to enlist help from a butcher and order a boneless pork shoulder with the skin on.  (Mine cost 4.99 lb.) You also cannot make this without something called Wild Fennel pollen. Fortunately, I recently joined a Facebook group called “Fennel Friday Cooking Club” which hooked me onto Pollen Ranch www.pollenranch.com which sells this magic powder.  When I say magic, I mean a mere dusting of this sweet anise flavoring adds remarkable flavor to everything it touches.  And if you enter the code Fennel Friday you get 10 percent off your purchase. Their pricing is excellent. I’d scoped out Fennel Pollen before at a local cookshop and found it at $22.00.  

Not to be outdone, www.zingermans.com scandalously priced theirs at $30.00 a tin or way over what I paid for the pork itself!  I felt like a winner with Pollen Ranch’s version which is hand-picked from the flowers of the Fennel plant and USDA certified organic.  Do not skip the fennel pollen in this dish! It is worth it just to open it and take a wonderful whiff of the intense anise aroma.  And oh what it does for the pork!  I served this as a summer dinner party menu with some simple parmesan smashed potatoes and a watermelon and tomato salad.  It went over extremely well. Here is the recipe:

 

Recipe for Porchetta, slow-roasted pork shoulder.

20 fresh sage leaves

3 fresh thyme sprigs, leaves only

3 fresh rosemary sprigs, leaves only

2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

2  tablespoons wild fennel pollen (see above)

1 1/2  teaspoons medium-coarse sea salt

1 1/2  teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper

1 (3 3/4- to 4-pound) boneless pork shoulder (with skin, not tied)

2  tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup dry white or red wine 

Pre Heat oven to 250º.

Finely chop sage, thyme, rosemary and garlic together (you can do this by pulsing in a food processor or by hand). Place mixture in a small bowl, add fennel pollen, salt and pepper, and stir together well.

With a sharp knife, score pork skin in a crosshatch diamond pattern, making ⅛-inch deep cuts 1 inch apart. With a paring knife, make about 10 incisions (about 1/2 inch deep) all over the pork and stuff with about ⅓ of the herb mixture. Tie pork into a compact roast with kitchen twine, brush oil over skin and rub all over with remaining herb mixture.

Set pork skin side up in a roasting pan. Roast for 2 hours.

Pour wine over pork and baste with wine and accumulated juices. Continue roasting, basting once every half hour, until skin is well browned and the meat is spoon-tender, 2 1/2 to 3 hours more.

Remove from oven and let meat rest 15 minutes before slicing and serving.