Porchetta

Advice about porchetta is plentiful, but this recipe is based on the one Roberto Liberati prepared for me, and inspired by the porchetta I’ve eaten at Il Norcino in Marino. The pork should be the very best you can afford. You need to enlist your butcher and ask him (or her) to prepare you a boneless porchetta cut, which is the belly with the ribs removed and attached to the loin, or a rectangular piece of pork belly and a pork loin.

Fennel pollen, with its sweet-citrus and licorice-like flavor, is an ingredient traditionally foraged, therefore free. Nowadays it has become rather fashionable and very expensive, which I think negates the beauty of it. If you can’t find it easily and at a reasonable price, best to spend your money on fantastic pork and use ground fennel seeds instead, which have the similarly distinctive flavor that works so beautifully with pork. To drink, you want acidity, bubbles, and a strong flavor: a very dry Franciacorta or Lambrusco would be lovely.

serves 6 generously, with leftovers for sandwiches

1 (6½–9-pound) porchetta joint

salt

1 teaspoon black peppercorns, crushed

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons chopped rosemary

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tablespoon ground fennel seeds or fennel pollen, if you can find it

Bear in mind that the porchetta needs to rest, once seasoned, for at least 12 hours, and then come back to room temperature before roasting.

Place the pork skin-side down on a clean work surface, season it generously with salt, then massage the salt into the flesh with your fingertips. Sprinkle over the black pepper, red pepper flakes, rosemary, garlic, and fennel. If you are using a loin, place it about 2 inches from one end. Roll the porchetta up as neatly and tightly as possible. Tie it at ¾-inch intervals with kitchen twine. Prick it all over with a trussing needle or the tip of a very sharp knife. Cover the pork, first with wax paper, then with foil, and leave it to rest for at least 12 hours in the fridge.

Remove it from the fridge at least 1 hour before roasting and preheat the oven to 325°F. Use a clean, dry dish cloth to pat the meat very dry and put it on a rack over a large baking sheet. Slide the pork into the middle of the oven and roast for 4½ hours. For the last half an hour, crank the oven up to maximum to crisp the skin, so that it almost ruptures into deep golden crackling. The meat inside will be soft and succulent. Leave the meat to rest, uncovered, for at least half an hour before eating.

The other quarter

To understand something of Testaccio and its mattatoio (slaughterhouse) is to understand something of Roman food, and therefore part of the story of Rome. The area itself has been associated with food trading since ancient Roman times, when it was a port and sprawl of warehouses. In fact, Testaccio takes its name from the Monte dei Cocci that rises somnolently at the bottom of the wedge, an extraordinary 115-foot-high, 650-yard-round mound of broken but neatly stacked amphorae dating from the second century. It is now the hub for a cluster of nightclubs that burrow into its base, which means that at night the ancient amphorae jolt in time to drum and bass, Latin jazz, and ’80s disco, the ancient and the everyday colliding with almost banal ease.

Until it was developed in the late nineteenth century, Testaccio was an open space, dotted with ruinous clues to its ancient significance and vines producing wine grapes for industrious Romans. It was common land for common people to wander, idle, eat, drink, and during carnivale: wreak havoc. In the 1870s, when Italy was unified and Rome became the capital, a zoning plan turned the former port and open space into a quarter of public housing, factories, and the slaughterhouse. It was supposed to be the ultimate working-class neighborhood, where thousands of immigrants from all over Italy, attracted by the promise of work and the metropolitan lifestyle Rome had to offer, could live.

For the next hundred years the slaughterhouse was quite literally the bloody, beating heart of the quarter, providing work and meat for those who could afford it. The workers, of course, couldn’t afford the meat (or much else, since poverty was endemic), but they were paid in kind with the bits nobody else wanted: the offal that made up a fifth of the animal’s weight. It was this quinto quarto (fifth quarter) that the workers took home to their wives, and that local trattoria owners inventively and resourcefully turned into tasty, sustaining meals.

The uncompromising and distinctive quinto quarto cooking is a style that evolved through necessity but continued for posterity, flavor, and because the bits neglected became the bits selected, by some at least. It’s a style of cooking that you still find in trattorias and homes: oxtail cooked slowly with celery, tripe with tomato sauce and dusted with pecorino, lamb’s offal with artichokes, tongue with green sauce. These are dishes that merit attention, and for some of us a leap beyond misconceptions, squeamishness, and a possible moral crisis, because they are tasty and good, and because they tell a story. This is why they are as much a part (albeit a less frequent one) of this tiny, chaotic Roman-kitchen-of-sorts as freshly baked pizza bianca, battered squash blossoms, pasta e fagioli, spaghetti al pomodoro, braised beef, artichokes, curls of puntarelle, sweet tiny peas and fava beans, ricotta, sour cherries, sweet yeasted buns, strawberry-scented grapes, ugly hazelnut cookies that taste buono, and other good things.

My grandpa Gerry would have loved the next three recipes, and so would my grandpa John, even though the tomato with the tripe might have given him heartburn (but then most things gave him heartburn). All my grandparents knew the economic and gastronomic merits of offal, and that if you eat meat it is disingenuous and wasteful not to eat the whole animal. My brother does too; in fact, ever since I moved to Rome and started my blog, he has been pestering me for recipes for oxtail stew, Roman-style tripe, and tongue. Ben, these three are in no small part for you.

Trippa alla romana

Roman-style tripe

Good tripe from a good butcher, cleaned properly and cooked well, has a tender, bizarrely soothing succulence and fragrance that most meats don’t even come close to. Three people I trust implicitly and admire when it comes to meat and offal (Fergus Henderson, chef Leonardo Vignoli from trattoria Cesare, and my butcher Roberta) are all champions of tripe. In Rome, tripe is simmered with tomatoes, scented with Roman mint, and dusted with pecorino romano, a dish that manages to be both elegant and workaday. I think it’s the best introduction to tripe. It’s vital you get well-sourced, honeycombed tripe that has been properly cleaned and precooked (unless of course you are prepared to do the preboiling yourself). The best thing is to talk to your butcher.

serves 4

about 1¾ pounds veal honeycomb tripe, cleaned

1 onion

2 slices pancetta

a small handful of mint leaves

1¾ pounds canned plum tomatoes or peeled fresh ones

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup white wine

salt and freshly ground black pepper

freshly grated pecorino, to serve

Wash the tripe thoroughly in hot water, drain it, and then plunge it into a pan of boiling water. Let it boil for a few minutes, then drain and allow it to cool enough to handle. Cut the tripe into pieces roughly ⅜ inch wide and ¾ inch long.

Finely dice the onion and pancetta and tear the mint leaves into 2 or 3 pieces if they are large. Chop, puree, or pass the tomatoes through a food mill. In a cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pan large enough to accommodate all the ingredients, warm the olive oil, add the onion, pancetta, and mint, and cook gently until the onion is soft and the pancetta has rendered its fat. Add the tripe, stir, and add the wine. Allow it to bubble for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, stir, and bring to a slow boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for 20–25 minutes, or until the tripe is very tender but still has a slight chewiness. Season with salt and pepper, then serve with a dusting of grated pecorino.