But Chad Colby, who teaches in Mozza's pizza school and does the Saturday night whole-pig dinners at Mozza2Go, brought another guest to the party: actual pleasure. A lot of the chefs experimented with quick charcuterie, but Colby was the one who managed to turn his Hampshire into a quick-cure cooked prosciutto, into mortadella dogs, into something he called nose-to-tail salami with oregano, and into a dreamy, lardo-like "pork butter''; into a sharply funky paté made with the animal's pluck and into a fermented finocchiona cotto that breathed the essence of fennel.
Was the 10-hour shoulder perhaps a bit stringy, and the puffy, crunchy, chicharrones-style skin on the porchetta a little incongruous? Perhaps. But the pillowy gigante beans were soft as dreams. And for dessert, there were crisp puerquitos, a lard-laced, Italian-influenced take on the popular breakfast pastry that in a just world would be in the case of every panaderia in Mexico.
Nobody was surprised when Colby won the competition. And even after the 40-odd dishes, most of the judges grabbed some bacon on their way out the door.
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