Porketta Sandwich At Hagberg’s Country Market
See the article in the StarTribune “Dining Diaries.”
“I feel like we’re in Eveleth,” my mom giddily exclaimed.
We were actually at Hagberg’s Country Market in Lake Elmo. A grocery store with an expansive meat market and lunch counter, it reminded her of our favorite Iron Range IGA (a local, familyowned grocery chain). Cases are filled with premium cuts of meat, slabs of bacon sliced to order and a global array of sausage styles.
Off to the side is a sandwich counter where we found another taste of home in the porketta sandwich ($7.99). Up north, we’re accustomed to every well-appointed local grocer stocking different kinds of porketta. The kind of pork can vary: shoulder, loin, Boston butt, but it’s always boneless, usually held together by netting and slathered with dried Italian seasonings. At Hagberg’s, they go with a low and slow braised meat that falls into submission: a juicy, highly flavorful mix that’s redolent of fennel seed, oregano, basil and black pepper. It’s piled onto a fresh bun sturdy enough to hold up to all those luscious juices, but soft enough to melt into the meat with each bite. Balancing this beauty of a sandwich is the horeseradish-spiked cream sauce that bites just enough to keep things interesting.
If heaven were a small town with copper-colored mud caked on truck wheels and hockey as a way of life, this is what it would taste like.
Joy Summers
