Microcontroller for ENC28J60

Hi, I am considering using an ENC28J60 to provide ethernet access for my
project; however, I am required to build a separate board for my
microcontroller. Can you guys suggest a microcontroller which is easiest
(in terms of interfacing and coding) to use to drive the enc28j60? I
looked at PIC because they offer royalty-free tcp/ip stack code but I'm
not familiar with them I don't even know if a separate device is needed to
program it with a pc (icd2? is that a software or hardware?). I know how to
code Z8 encore!, its fairly straight forward to code (only needs rs232
connection) but I don't have the time to write the code for tcp/ip since
its not the focus of the project. Thanks!
.