Shokugeki no Soma Episode 1: "Gotcha" Pork Roast

For those who’ve watched the anime, did my clothes explode off my body after eating this? No. They didn’t. But the dish was pretty damn tasty.  Now I don't know if "Gotcha" is the correct translation but Soma creates a pork roast dish or rather a "pork roast looking" dish because he didn't have any actual meat to cook a "juicy meat dish".  I won't really go into a summary of the episode, but I wanna say this is pretty close to how he did it.

I had a lot of fun making this.  Of course, I had the opening song of the anime playing on full blast. Yup.  I love that it uses simple ingredients and yields delicious results.  This is what I used:

I rewatched the part of the anime where Soma explains the dish just so I could have an general idea on how to tackle this bad boy.  I used gold potatoes because it LOOKED liked small potatoes in the anime haha. I didn’t have a steamer so I decided to microwave the potatoes.  No need to use water [we're in a drought anyways] or turn on my stove.  Besides it's faster.

I let it go for about 8 minutes until I could stick a chopstick in there with very little force.

While the potatoes were in the microwave, I minced up the onions and mushrooms in as close to Soma fashion as I could :P you know, with my eyes all intense and with streaks of light coming out of them.

Sauteed them over medium heat. I added in the mushrooms first just to sweat out as much of the moisture as I could before adding the onions. And OMG I have a gas stove! I haven’t had a gas stove pretty much all my life except once when I lived in a complex that had it.  So happy ^.^

With the potatoes done, I gave them a little pre mash and added some salt and pepper

 Added in the onions and mushrooms. Mash mash mash.  Taste taste taste.

And formed it into a nice little lump. [forgot to take a picture] “Lump” is a funny word. Well, I think so. And wrapped the bacon around it!

And placed it on a nice long piece of kitchen twine.  I checked the anime just to see how to do this. I felt like a kitty playing with a ball of string and then getting all caught up in it.  It was a bit of a battle lol.  It seems like Soma placed the string under first, and then worked his way up the pork and at every third wrapped it around and tucked it under.  Did that make any sense? Maybe a couple pictures would help.

Haha, at first I stuck the rosemary pieces to the bacon before I wrapped it.  Did you know that rosemary can stick to bacon fat as long as it’s a bit warm? :P

And of course they just got in the way as I was wrapping the string around it.  So hello, duh. I tucked the rosemary under the string after I was done.  I’m so smart.

I set the oven to 350 since they said “slow roasted” in the anime.  I also learned today that my oven is gas powered too!  That’s pretty cool! I wonder how it will affect the desserts. This probably isn't the best pan choice because the sides will block the heat a bit. I should've used a sheet tray but I just didn't want all the rendered bacon fat all over the place, nor did I want to potentially get it all over my hands.  I've spilled hot bacon fat all over my arm once at my old job from pulling a pan out  of the oven too fast haha...it wasn't that fun, thank god it wasn't that bad of a burn.

While it was in the oven. I made the sauce.  I used the same pan that I cooked the mushrooms and onions in.  Added red wine, soy sauce, a pat of butter, and a sprinkle of sugar.  The anime mentions sweet sake, which I’m guessing is mirin, but I forgot to buy it so I just added a touch of sugar.  Reduced it down, and added some salt and pepper.  Came out pretty good actually! I was surprised.

So 350 was too slow.  I was getting hungry and the smell of bacon and rosemary was filling the house, so I cranked it up to 400 to finish getting the bacon crispy!  Poured the sauce over it which I wish I had more of.  And here’s a little peek inside.

Not the prettiest but oh well!

As for the taste, I like my bacon a bit crispier especially in this context because of the softer potatoes in the center.  The saltiness of the bacon was nice.  I think if I had cooked it in the oven for a longer period of time the flavor would have penetrated the potatoes more just like they went crazy over in the anime.  The potato mixture in the center was good which is really dependent on what it tastes like before it gets all wrapped up so it's important to taste as you go.  It's definitely a rich flavorful dish.  The aroma of the rosemary was nice, not sure if it really got into the bacon though.  The red wine sauce was great.  It had a bit of acidity from the wine which complimented the fatty overall heavy nature of the "roast".

Can’t wait to keep on cooking the anime dishes!  Some of them will definitely be more complicated but I’m ready for the challenge!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed it! Cheers!