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03/06/2001 Archived Entry: "18-Hour Pork Roast: Another Hamlin Find"

My friend Suzanne Hamlin tells me that this recipe and ones like it “are going around.” She found this particular version, which she put in the book she edited with Fran McCullough, The Best American Recipes of 2000, in Suzanne Somer’s diet book Get Skinny on Fabulous Food.

Indeed, Rozanne Gold, who is also a dear friend, has a long-cooked pork shoulder recipe in her book Entertaining 1-2-3. Rozanne’s is cooked with only cider vinegar and ketchup, the premise of her book being recipes with merely three ingredients, and she doesn’t cook it for quite so long, but it’s the same idea: Cook this fatty, flavorful, cheap cut of pork until it is practically falling off the bone. After Rozanne does that, by the way, she shreds the meat and cooks it in more of her ketchup and vinegar mixture, turning it into Carolina-style barbecue or pulled pork.

This fennel and garlic and hot pepper seasoning is from Suzanne Somers. Who knows where she got it? I think it is a little irresponsible to put such a high calorie meat in a diet book, but it sure is delicious and satisfying. Suzanne Somers suggests eating the meat rolled into lettuce leaves, which is not a bad idea. I’ve added the idea of putting chopped avocado or gaucamole into the leaves, too, plus, say, some chopped onion, and say, some pickled jalapenos, if you really want to hotten it up Mexican style. I served it recently more Italian-style, and more formally as a center-of-the-plate meat course, with a side dish of fresh fennel bulb, sweet red pepper, and onion all sauteed together in olive oil, plus plain boiled broccoli. The first course was my ever-popular spaghetti frittata – tomato-sauced spaghetti bound together with eggs and seasoned with, in this case, minced provolone and a combination of grated pecorino and Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can find that recipe in my book Naples At Table: Cooking in Campania.


Eighteen-Hour Pork Roast

Serves at least 8, probably more

A note on the pork: I find pork shoulder at my Brooklyn supermarket. It is there all the time at less than $1 a pound because my market caters to a diverse clientele that includes many African Americans and Dominicans who love this cut of meat. It is so much more succulent than the much more expensive and quite dry center cut pork loin. If you live in an affluent area you may not find pork shoulder so easily, but any supermarket butcher should be able to get it for you. Ask.

A kosher listener asked me what cut of meat she could use instead of pork shoulder. I suggested veal shoulder. It is hardly the same flavor, but I can imagine it would be a very good roast. She made it and reports that it was fabulous, although very expensive.

1 whole pork shoulder with skin (about 9 pounds)
1/3 cup fennel seed (1 1.6-ounce jar)
12 large cloves garlic
2 rounded teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
8 dried chili Arbol (long narrow peppers) (you can use less for a less spicy result)
2 tablespoons olive oil or more
Juice of 6 lemons

Score (cut slits) the pork skin, through the fat and just to the meat, about every 1/2 inch.

Using either a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind the fennel seeds into a coarse or fine powder. The texture is up to you – as long as the seeds are not whole.

In the small bowl of a food processor, or in a blender, make a paste with the fennel, garlic, salt, pepper, chilies and olive oil, adding another tablespoon or so of oil if necessary.

Rub the seasoning paste into the meat, all over, getting it into the slits in the skin and fat.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Place the meat on a rack in a roasting pan and cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. At this point the fat and skin will be sizzling.

Reduce the heat to 250 degrees. Baste the roast with the juice of 2 of the lemons.

Cook from 12 to 18 hours, preferably the longer time, basting two more times with the remaining lemon juice, after 12 hours, then, say, after 15 hours.

Serve hot, or keep in the turned off oven for up to 2 hours before serving. It is good at room temperature as well, but best eaten on the same day it is made. Leftovers are excellent, but not prime.