Gotcha! Pork Roast

The Gotcha! Pork Roast from Shokugenki No Soma, or Food Wars, is the first dish featured in the series. In order to defend the family restaurant from being demolished by a team of urban life planners, Soma Yukihira whips up this innovative ‘meat’ dish. Even after most ingredients were destroyed in the kitchen by Yaeko’s minions, Soma still manages to impress with this incredible imitation meat dish.

This slice of life anime is infamous for its… ‘detailed’ reactions to the food carefully crafted in the show. Its often deemed as both literally and figuratively ‘food porn’, with each recipe visually depicting each ‘foodgasm’ that occurs when somebody tries a delicious dish. With each dish drawn meticulously well and carefully crafted under the watchful eye of co- creator and chef Yuki Morasaki, its impossible to look away; or even sit in your seat without a snack.

“Thats where I got the idea for this dish… from a mistake.” -Soma Yukihira

After whipping up the dish, in what looks like probably an hour, Soma serves it to the group of bewildered businessmen/women. He explains the flavour secrets and inspiration of his concoction, most notably being a mistake he made in plating pork over potato salad, in which resulted in the juices seeping through and flavouring the potatoes.

Image result for gotcha pork roast

However, due to Soma’s extreme skill, and coming from a background of masterclass experimentalist cooks, this was not an easy dish to recreate. After looking at various recipes from other Shokugenki enthusiasts who have trialled this, I decided to stay as true as possible to the anime and adhere to the original recipe Souma proposes. Some of the main issues that came with this were:

I used too many potatoes, and tried to emulate the size of the roast in the show.
The increased amount of potatoes meant that the cooking time was increased, and the bacon that was placed on top shrivelled up, which exposed the potato, and made it less juicy.
Noticing the abnormally high potato to onion and mushroom mixture, I decided to add more onions and mushrooms. This was a bad idea. I was too focused on the ratio of mushroom/onion to potato, and didn’t take into account this would inevitably affect the size and juiciness of the roast.
I didn’t make enough glaze/sauce, which would have made a nice addition with the amount of potatoes I did have. I also had to make two batches, and even then it wasn’t enough.
It took me FOUR HOURS TO MAKE. That was probably supported by the side dishes I made, but most of the time it was addressing the issues I had encountered.

Ingredients:

For the roast:

1-2 packets of bacon rashers
10 mushrooms (I used a mix of cup and shiitake)
5 white potatoes
1 and 1/2 brown onion
Sprig of rosemary
Cooking twine
2-3 tbsp corn/potato starch (found in Asian supermarkets)

For the sauce/glaze:

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sake
2 tbsp mirin
200ml red wine (I used McGuigan’s ‘The Plan’ Pinot Noir)
2 tbsp butter

Method:

Prepare, slice, and portion ingredients.

Meanwhile, saute onions and mushroom on medium heat.

Strain water from cooked potatoes, mash, and add to mushroom and onion mix.

Put in the oven for approximately 35 minutes on 180°C

Wrap with bacon rashers and cooking twine, and top with a sprig of rosemary.

Meanwhile, cook sauce. Combine soy sauce, red wine, mirin, sake, and butter on medium heat; turning to high heat once it begins to thicken and resemble a glaze.

I turned it upside down so my shrivelled up bacon didn’t seem as noticeable… top with coriander or watercress.

Plate. To compliment the powerful salty and umami flavour of the pork roast, I chose to pair it with a garlic sweet potato mash and honey glazed carrots.

All in all, the dish was full of flavour, fun to make, and a success, apart from the minor setbacks in which I’ve decided to address when I reattempt this dish.

Thanks for sticking around~

Hannah