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Aroogah
So settle in if you'd like a little Christmas disaster lol.
I tried a new butcher in Leyton for my pork belly as I was picking up my sister in law from there. The butcher seemed confident but asked some odd questions, although he assured me that he knew what he was doing. He told me had already sold 2 pork bellies that day for porchettas. He strongly advised me to leave the loin attached so I went went with his recommendation. I thought 1.5kg would be sensible since it was a side piece but I ended up with 2.5kg, which seemed like a red flag.
I prepared it yesterday in the end at a different sister in law's house, I left the capers and anchovies at home by mistake so I blended garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, rosemary, and lemon thyme. I scored the skin first, salted heavily, then flipped it over and scored the flesh, salt and peppered, then added the herb marinade. So far so good, but here's where it all started going wrong. The loin was still attached so I assumed you rolled it"width ways" so I ended up with some bastard fat porchetta with no length at all. There wasn't enough twine so I tied it the best I could and put it on a dish to rest overnight, thoroughly unhappy with my first attempt at a porchetta.
I drank a whiskey and watched some videos and decided I'd definitely done it wrong. So I unrolled it, and stared at this Christmas challenge. I decided to cut off the loin and cut that into strips, not sure where that idea came from, possibly drunk bright in law, but thought, hey that sounds good, and then I rolled the shebang lengthways with the strips of loin in the middle. The problem with this was the skin/fat was narrower than the flesh so it didn't look like a typical porchetta, and it didn't help that there really wasn't enough twine so I could only do a tie every couple of inches.
Despondent I posted here then left it over night. Now here's where I'm at after 3 hours at 140 (goose is in that temp), it's internal temperature is 78 degrees (slightly over?), Waiting for the goose to finish so I can do the crackling.