Last night, at a perfectly decent, but otherwise nondescript Italian restaurant in the middle of Manhattan island, I was momentarily transported to the countryside of Umbria as my taste buds rejoiced upon the first bite of the night's "special."
Up until that dish, I had enjoyed exactly 464 meals so far this year. (Trust me, I did the math.) What was it that made this the one to write home about? In a word: porchetta.
The pig may not be a beautiful animal to look at, but it is beautiful to eat. It provides ample, gustatory goodness in the form of bacon, ham and sausage as well as assorted chops, loins and ribs. And thankfully, porchetta, its boneless shoulder, slowly roasted with herbs and garlic until the meat reaches a crescendo of "falling-off-the-bone" tenderness -- although there's no bone here -- and the skin achieves a remarkably taut texture that can rightfully be called crackling.
Eaten together, as they must be, these bulbous chunks of pure porcine pleasure, redolent of garlic and rosemary, coupled with the salty crunch of its cutaneous covering, constitute what is at once a cardiologist's nightmare and a carnivore's wet dream. There is no wetness apparent , however, so don't bother looking for gravy or sauce because, by definition, roasting is all about dry heat. Yet, when prepared properly, the porchetta product is not dried out, but moist and voluptuous.
In this case, it was served with the classic accompaniments of expertly crisp, yet fat, rectangular potato chunks and a bed of deftly sautéed broccoli rabe, whose slight bitterness is the ideal offset to the savory perfume of pork. The fruity, food-friendly flavor of Sangiovese makes it a perfect vino rosso to pair with this righteous meal. When consumed altogether, I confess to having experienced a frisson of sensual arousal that rendered me momentarily oblivious to my surroundings. That was no easy feat considering I was seated amidst 20 members of the loud family -- not the ones of TV fame -- but my own earsplitting relatives.
This little piggy feast of beast can be summed up in four letters: OMFG. My sympathies go out to the kosher, vegetarians and Muslims, whose perfectly acceptable rejection of pork severely prohibits their palates' pleasure principle. Everyone else should find a proper porchetta at the eatery of their choice. As for me, let it be known as they count the cholesterol in my corpulent corpse, that while I lived I never wasted a meal.