Porchetta

I must admit to being a bit dubious about this dish. I'm not a fan of meat sandwiches, and even after living in Montréal for nearly 5 years I still haven't tasted the famous local delicacy, the smoked meat sandwich. I live about 5 minutes away from Schwartz's, where the queues can probably be seen from a satellite in space on a typical sunday afternoon. Maybe I'm missing out on something huge, i'll never know. Anyway, back to porchetta. I bought a 'hunk a pork' a few months ago at the supermarket (before I took my vow to only go to a butcher for meat) and stashed it in the freezer for this very recipe. I hadn't really read the recipe beforehand, so when I had defrosted the pork shoulder, I realised I had to not only take the bone out, but butterfly it too. Long story short I'll never be a butcher. I made such a mess that in the end I cubed the meat, as I'd never have been able to roll up the pile of pork rubble I'd managed to make. I made the marinade and added it to the meat in a ziploc bag, and let them mingle for 24 hours. When it came to cooking I had to innovate, and placed the mixture in a foil covered pyrex dish for about an hour and 15 minutes.

I decided I'd have a go at making ciabatta and went online searching for a recipe. They all appeared to have bigas or starters and I didn't have 24hrs to spare (my husband already looked like he was going to keel over from starvation at this point). Colomba from the Delia site posted the following recipe for Ciabatta (di Jason Molinari)

500g flour

450g water (30°C)

7g dry yeast

15g salt

Place everything in the kneader bowl. Plug in the "K", switch it on slowly at the beginning then increase to mid-speed and let it go for about 10-15 minutes or until the dough "climbs" up the K or leaf-shaped hook. Leave it to rise for 2-3 hours. "Pour" it on a very well floured surface otherwise you will not be able to handle it. If you wish you can cut it into smaller "ciabattine". Heat the oven at 270°C while your ciabatta rises again for about 45 minutes. Bake for 10-12 minutes, then reduce heat to 220 C and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Really delicious.