A night of pork

When Mike says, "porchetta night", I jump. Have you heard about the sous-vide then deep fried porchetta on Serious Eats? Yeah, I knew you had. Mike had tried it before and we weren't able to score an invitation. Actually, we didn't even know it was happening until after. But this time around, we were able to score the invite, and we were SO THERE.

To start, I had been asked to make my version of the Momofuku pork buns. Actually, they are pretty true to the original recipe. I still had a bagful of homemade buns in the freezer, so I took those, my scallions and cucumbers, and my hoisin over to Mike's.

The part that had "worried" me the most, mostly about timing, was the pork belly. But Mike said that he had extra that he was planning to sous vide anyway, so I asked him to give it a rubdown with equal parts salt and sugar and then sous vide it. It went as long as the porchetta -- about 36 hours -- and came out looking luscious.

It came out hot, with only a short resting time. It was incredibly gelatinous to the touch. here it is, skin side up.

And then skin side down. Just looking at it makes me droool.

I cut it in half and let it rest as long as I could before slicing. It was so soft that slicing it was a real challenge, but slice it I did. Then I sauteed it up in a hot skillet which was a real challenge. Because it was already warm, a decent amount of the fat melted, but I still got a good char on it.

Each bun was steamed for 2 1/2 minutes. Then I swiped the bottom with a generous amount of hoisin, put in some pork, added some quick pickled cucumbers, and a hearty pile of sliced scallions. Plate and serve.

We did two rounds. Both were delicious. I'm down to about eight buns. Going to have to make more soon.

After my work was done, I was able to sit back and enjoy the drinking, I mean, the night.

Mike pulled the gorgeous porchetta out of the sous vide. He had the pork belly, which he filled with fresh herbs and then a pork tenderloin. Then he rolled it up and tied it. Then sous-vided it for 36 hours. And it comes out looking like this.

After it hangs out for a little bit, he used this fancy new clamp tool he has to lower it into a pot of peanut oil.

You're supposed to flip the porchetta halfway through, but the oil level was high, so it was completely submerged and there was no reason to flip. There was some fear about over-bubbling oil, but all turned out right.

After some amount of deep frying, Mike took it back out of the oil.

And then let it rest. You can see just how crispy the skin is in this photo.

When it was time to serve, he cut off the strings...

And then sliced into generous portions. It was hard to go much thinner because it was warm. No one else understood as he said this, but after slicing up the pork belly, I did.

It looks luscious on the plate, doesn't it?

This was my dinner plate. We had the porchetta with a pan sauce. Mac and cheese with sausage. And roasted cauliflower gratin. So good. Also, filling!

Lisa had found these dark chocolate-dipped bacon slices. They were actually very good! The bacon was good quality and balanced well with the dark chocolate.

For dessert, rum ice cream with candied bacon. Awesome!

Also, a 2005 firebreak. Lucky us!