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I live on top of the hill. But every day I go down to the village to buy
the food that I'm gonna cook that night. Welcome to what's left of the Italian-American
neighborhood in San Francisco.
I'm Gianni.
And this is MY North Beach.
So I had to come down to Union Produce to get a couple of herbs I was missing for the paste that we're gonna stuff the porchetta.
So I got some rosemary and some fresh basil. Now we're gonna go up the hill and put the
porchetta in the oven.
Okay, so we're gonna make a porchetta.
So in Italy, they take the whole pig, they debone it and they roast it with an herb stuffing.
I don't have that much time today, so I'm using a pork loin.
We were at Little City. He cut off a piece of the pork loin.
What he did was took that pork loin, cut it this way, opened it up, and then he cut this
last third and opened that up. And, see, it's all even in terms of its thickness.
Okay, so we're gonna put this on the side for a second because I have to prepare the paste.
So what do we have here?
You can use whatever herbs you like. I'm gonna use rosemary. I'm gonna use Italian parsley.
And I'm gonna use some sage leaves. And garlic.
Remember baboom to get rid of the paper?
Just like that. Smash it like that. And you want this pretty much in that consistency
because we're gonna chop it anyway.
Baboom!
Paper comes off. Garlic goes over here. So I just pile everything up that way.
And just take this and reduce the volume. So I do a rough chop this way.
Oh, man, you can smell these herbs. The sage, the rosemary...the parsley's gonna be subtle
in this mix. The garlic. Your mind just goes blank and you're one with
these herbs. See how fine I'm getting it?
Just pick that up like that and I'm gonna put it right here in this bowl.
Nice a nice. I don't like to leave anything behind.
I'll come back and get this. This is the salt from Sicily.
Peppercorns freshly grated. Good extra *** olive oil.
We're gonna just put this in to moisten. We don't want to make it too wet.
And we're just gonna mix this up a little bit.
If you want to do this in a mortar and pestle, you can do this in a mortar and pestle.
This is where you want to end up. We're measuring the size of the loin because
we're gonna make a bed over here of the same herbs that went in the paste for the filling.
So that's the rosemary, that's the sage. Garlic cloves. Again, baboom. Baboom.
That one went on the floor. Bafangool. We got another one over here.
And baboom. Spread this out. I'm leaving it on the butcher
paper just the way I got it from Mike. Here's that paste, right?
What did Mike say at Little City? He said, "You want me to butterfly it like
a ho-ho?" I thought he was talking about a ***.
He meant them Hostess cakes. Spread it around because you're gonna slice
this. So you want an equal amount of the herb paste.
Because this had a little fat here, I'm gonna make that be on the outside so we have a better
chance of the fat cooking off. So take this. Just like a jelly roll.
And we got a little bit of that fat cap there. That will melt away.
Look at this. Here's some string. I just cut a few pieces
because we have to tie all of this up. So just like this.You want to have it pretty
tight because you want to maintain the shape of the loin.
You want to flavor this crust. So there's some oil that's leaking out of
here, but I'm still gonna put a little bit more.
Get this to crust up when it's in the oven. So you can just put it on top because I'm
gonna roll it around using this butcher paper. And then I want to give it some cracked black
pepper. And then some salt.
See those big pieces of salt? That's going to help tenderize, draw the moisture out,
and give us a nice crust. So I'm just gonna roll this.
Make sure I pick up the rest of that oil. And if you got a little fatty piece, put that
on top so that drips down. Let's go this way.
See this is falaghina. It's an Italian dry white wine. And don't ever cook with anything
you wouldn't drink with. So don't use cheap wine for this.
So I'm just putting a little of that in the dish.
How much is that? Maybe a quarter of a cup? Some water in here also.
This is gonna help create a sauce for us. The oven has been preheated to 425. We're
gonna put it in there probably 15, 20 minutes. I want a high temperature because I want to
start to create a crust here. We got the porchetta in the oven. It's still
at 425. We're still waiting for the outside to carmelize, to brown up a bit.
So while we're waiting for that, I'm gonna do the two things we're gonna serve with the
porchetta. One of them is truffled oven roasted potatoes.
We'll do that next. First, I want to do some cioppolini onions.
So I'm gonna clean this one one. See, I got two over here I already cleaned up.
I'll just clean this one up for you. These are from the farmer's market down at
the Ferry Building. These are organic.
Usually, I'll use these for an appetizer. You know, in an antipasti?
So you want to take this first layer off. I got some water boiling over there. I'm gonna
drop these in. It will probably take, maybe, 3 - 5 minutes until these are knife tender.
Then we're gonna finish them in the agrodolce sauce.
So while that's going...I want to server some truffled roasted potatoes with this.
So here they are. I got my towel over here because sometimes they're a little hot.
So I'm not gonna rely on their time in the oven to fully cook.
We got a head start on this. But they are hot, so be careful.
But, otherwise, I'm gonna take these, cut them in half, cut them in half again. We're
gonna make these pretty...see how hot they are inside? So we're not gonna have to worry
about them fully cooking on the inside. I leave the skin on. If you don't like the
skin on, take it off. So this one looks clean.
I'll do one more of these. So what I have here is an extra *** olive
oil from Italy. It's flavored with black truffles. See? You see over here?
Tartufo nero. A lot of people like to use this to flavor
the potatoes as they go into the oven. I don't like to do that.
I like to keep this as a fresh finishing oil. So what I'm gonna do is grab my olive oil
over here. This is an extra ***, but it's not one
of my finishing oils, so a lot of times I'll use this for basic cooking.
So what we're gonna do is just drizzle a little bit of this in here.
Again, our Sicilian sea salt in the grinder. A little bit of that.
And a little bit of ground pepper. Best tool in the kitchen. See how I'm coating
everything here? So let's see what's in the oven now.
These go in. Let's take a look over here. Oh, look at this.
Nice. See what we got going on here?
Starting to get this nice little crust. I'm gonna let this stay in a little bit more.
And look down on the bottom. See all those herbs? Remember we put the wine
and the water in there? That's gonna give us a nice gravy when we're
done. I'm gonna leave it at 425 to let this get
a little browner. So that will help the potatoes, too.
So the butter. We don't want it to get too burnt, so I'm gonna turn this down a little
bit. There's one--that big fat one.
There's the other one. Two little ones.
See how it's falling off the knife? That's what we mean when we say fork or knife tender.
Hear that little sizzle in there? Now I'm gonna go up to a little higher than
a medium high. We just want to let these brown a little bit.
Now the other thing I'm gonna do with this is, I'm gonna take...we're gonna salt these
a little bit. Again, I'm using the Sicilian salt. That's
gonna help draw some of the moisture out of some of these.
The butter's getting a little brown. That's okay. It's gonna get a little nutty flavor.
You can't keep butter on a flame this long without it getting a little bit brown.
Look at this. Look at that dark, rich color. It's almost like syrup.
Look at that. I ain't using this. It's too expensive. This
is a finishing balsamic. I'm gonna use this one.
So how much am I putting in? About that much. A couple of tablespoons for three onions.
And then I'm gonna put in some of this sugar. I'm gonna go light on the sugar first.
And then if I have to come back, I'll taste it and see if I have to adjust the acid/sweet
balance. Look at how that's getting thick already.
That's what you want. And if it's getting a little too hot for you,
just pull the stuff off the flame and then put it back.
See that? See how it's...see how thick it is in the pan?
That's what you want. Nice a nice.
Okay, so we're getting there. I'm gonna put this down.
I'm gonna put this temperature down from 425 to about 375 so it's gonna cook through.
See how because of the high temperature I'm losing some of the liquid?
We're gonna refresh that. Let me get my water.
Because, again, we want the flavor of the meat juice and the herbs and the garlic we
got in there. That's gonna be our au jus. White wine and water.
So i'm just gonna give that enough so that it doesn't burn before it finishes cooking.
While we got this out, let me check these potatoes.
Look at these guys, see how they're doing. See, they're starting to get a little carmelized
on the bottom. You just want to turn them around a little
bit. They're just cooking in that oil. You can hear them sizzling.
So we just want these to brown up. So we'll put these back up. Back in the oven,
they'll probably be done the same time that porchetta is ready to get out.
Okay! Put this back in. Another 15, 20 minutes before
this is all done. Okay, so we got porchetta out of the oven.
Let me just get some of this string off of here.
Don't hurt yourself. So when I took this out, it was at about 140
degrees. I let it rest. It's probably about at 160 now, which is a good temperature for
pork roast. You don't want to cut them too thick.
You're gonna get that nice spiral. You got a little bit of that filling in there.
Just put a couple of these puppies on the plate.
Nice spiral, ho-ho effect. Remember those potatoes?
We cheated those in the microwave and then roasted them.
Look at this nice color on there. We're gonna finish these with a little bit
of truffle oil. This is a very potent taste, so don't go crazy
with it. A few drops is gonna be all you need. See that? That's plenty.
And this stuff's expensive. See over here, I got the cipollini onions
in the agrodolce sauce. And we got the pork. Here's a little bit of that au jus. Just right
over the top. Let's see what we got. What am I gonna go
for first? I took a piece of the pork. See we got a nice
crust on there? Mmm.
Tender. That salt and pepper we put on the outside,
delicious with the crusty exterior. Okay, now what I like to do. Let me taste
this. This is the onion. Mmm.
The onion's sweet. The balsamic. Okay, we didn't even taste the potatoes yet.
We gotta get to the potatoes. See? Nice and crispy.
Let me cut one of these so you can see what's inside.
Watch, it's gonna be creamy. Look at that. See?
See how creamy that is inside? So you get the crunch, the carmelization of
the potatoes on the outside and you get this burst of creamy soft potato on the inside.
That little bit of truffle oil...absolutely fantastic.
Okay, we created a little bit of Gianni's North Beach here in my kitchen. Now you can
make it and put it in your mouth. Ciao ciao.