This recipe was a winner and an epic fail all at the same time! Things started off without too much drama. I have a roasting pan and I oiled the bottom with olive oil. I don’t own a food processor so I put the oil, rosemary, fennel, garlic, salt and pepper in the blender and tried to make a paste. I am attempting to grow rosemary at home so I used some fresh from our “garden” (pots on the back porch) and some dried, since I didn’t want to take too much off our plant. Making a paste in the blender turned out to be a bit of an issue since the volume of material in the blender was not enough to really get the garlic chopped up as much as I needed. If I had chopped up the garlic before I put it in the blender this might not have been an issue but hey, I am kind of lazy at times!
The good news is the paste smelled delicious! I used a knife and scored the meat/fat (it was not an even layer, and I am not sure if that was due to the quality of the shoulder I chose or if it is just the variety of nature) and then paused to contemplate how much I felt like a serial killer, even though the pig was already dead. This made my mind wander to Dexter, then to movies with serial killers, then movies with string to tie up food, which led me to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Yes, my mind works in mysterious ways. Bridget Jones used blue string to tie up leeks and ended up dyeing her soup blue. I did not want blue meat so I managed to find white string (two extra light bulbs, a cell phone battery and the allen wrenches I had misplaced) in the back closet. I tied up the pork shoulder even though it seemed like it would hold together without it. I popped it in the oven and let the roasting begin! It should be noted that it takes forever (three hours) to cook this, so if you are hungry this recipe should be saved for another time.
I set the timer, adjusted the heat down to 300 degrees after 30 minutes and let it roast for 2 hours and 20 minutes. When I checked on it at that time it was done so I got it out of the oven and transferred the pork to a plate to rest. Rest is what the recipe says. I prefer to think of it as cooling down so I don’t burn myself trying to cut into it! After the pork was out of the pan, things started to go way south. The recipe says to pour all of the drippings into a bowl and skim the fat. I don’t think I understand these directions completely. Isn’t it all fat? There wasn’t anything floating at the top, but I think all of the “juice” was oil, which is fat. Since I didn’t know what to do with it I left it as is on the side. I put the roasting pan over the oven burner and added the wine. Since the pan is pretty large I wasn’t sure if I should use one burner or two, but two seemed dangerous so I settled on one. It was pretty difficult to maneuver the pan so that it would stay steady while I scraped the bottom. I added the flour to the reduced wine and it clumped up. I tried whisking it with one hand while holding the pan steady with the other. Thank God for the Ove-Glove! I added the drippings and broth and continued to whisk. For about 5 minutes. All that resulted is something that looked like chicken soup and had chicken soup consistency. I added some more flour, but it was of no avail. I called time of death on the pan sauce and went back to the pork.
I sliced the pork and served it, after I cut off the string which seemed to do little anyways! The rubbing had made a crust on top that was delicious. Since I was lazy there were larger chunks of garlic that roasted and were excellent bits on top. The meat was good too, although the shoulder had a lot of fat throughout. I think next time I will use the rub on a tenderloin of pork for a better cut of meat. I had leftovers for three days and some got thrown out. If you make this recipe, invite a bunch of people over and skip the pan sauce, unless you know something I don’t!
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