Before spring arrives and has us putting away our braising pots and roasting pans, I thought I’d post perhaps the most amazing and amazingly cheap family feast we cooked this winter. It’s a pork roast inspired by a dish we had at Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage where I was writing a story for Bon Appetit about Britain’s sustainable food guru. His version (and the recipe we ran in the magazine) is incredible. The trip was as bucolic as this illustration from the story, and the food was just as fantastic.
We modified it by just using a pork shoulder roast whose fat i’d scored to both render it and flavor the meat below. A 12 pound pork shoulder is only about 20 bucks, so this thing can feed a crowd and leaves leftovers for sandwiches, tacos, burritos, or whatever else you can do with tender, melty, full-flavored pork. Click through to bonappetit.com for the master recipe, but feel free to skip the whole fancy tying thing and cook it the same way. In the photo below there’s some gratin I’ve entirely forgotten the recipe for as well as some chutney my sister-in-law made with santa rosa plums–the perfect sweet-tart balance to the rich roast.
—Hugh
