Fat for Winter

9/22/10

Epic Pig Roast: We Don't Know How to Do This. (Part Two)

Disclaimer: This ought to go without saying, but some of these photographs involve a very dead pig. If you get squeamish about such things, you should skip this post. And probably any post that has the "slaughtering and butchering things" tag.

To recap: My friend Matt and I are hosting a pig roast. The pig is Beatrice, and she'd been soaking overnight in garlic, thyme, and a citrus marinade all night. You can read more about that here. Now it's the morning of the roast, and our beloved friend, Sarah, has zipcar'd a pickup truck to haul Beatrice and the grill to the park at 6am. Then she went back to bed, and we prepared to spend the next fourteen hours at the park, roasting a pig.

This is what I look like after three hours of sleep. I may be attempting to recreate the Pieta, but instead of looking sad and serene, I look annoyed and exhausted. I'm a realist like that.

At 7am, next to a beautiful lake full of resting Canada Geese, Matt and I straddled a raw pig carcass and, grunting, pushing, pulling, jamming, and becoming more and more frantic, tried to attach it to the spit. We decided, as marinade got in our shoes, as pig juices soaked into our clothes, as we took turns supporting and pushing 60 pounds of pig, that, in fact, this is a four person job. Minimum. It took us about 20 minutes and a lot of anxiety to get Beatrice securely on the spit. I would have loved to show you photos of what was probably, to an observer, a hilarious time, but Matt and I were both far too busy mounting Beatrice to take pictures. Use your imagination.

We finally got her up on the grill (we didn't manage to get her on quite straight, as you can see, but she's secure, I promise!). That morning we had been planning on renting a generator for power, but once we got there we discovered an electrical outlet that had gone unnoticed on our reconnaissance trips. Hooray! However, once Beatrice started turning, the chain on the motor began to slip. Ten minutes into the roasting process, our pig had a crispy, bubbling patch on one side, and wasn't able to turn all the way over. Disaster!

Matt discovered that if he held the chain down with a spoon, he could keep it turning. This technique, aside from being tedious and impractical, also seemed like it would burn off quite a bit of arm hair and be extremely uncomfortable. Before calling the party rental place, I decided to take one group photograph before the day turned into a hellish experience.

You can see the spoon, the patch of skin that bubbled from the heat, and our still-visible, slightly delirious, and quickly waning excitement about our pig.

Luckily the party rental folks answered the phone, and were able to direct us to the huge, totally noticeable knob (see it on the left? by the motor?) that would adjust the height of the chain. This fix worked for the next eight hours, and only started slipping again at the very end of the roast, when it hardly mattered anymore.

Crisis averted!

We spent the next few hours groggily watching the pig spin, adding charcoal and hardwood chips every so often, and trying to to homework.

Around noon, a group of folks showed up with a permit for the space. In all our planning, we'd never seen any permit requirements, or any way at all to call or request such a thing, so this was a surprise. Luckily they turned out to be the most awesome group of folks ever, and were pretty impressed with our pig, so we ended up sharing the boathouse with them for a few hours.

They were Philadelphia Black Gay Pride, and had a bumping DJ, a fat sign, and a bunch of really smart, interesting, super friendly, amazing folks. Matt and I were pretty happy to have some nice people to talk to, and we talked cameras and pig roasts with them for awhile.

People from the Pride event and other folks who passed by the boathouse kept coming in to look at the pig and take photos. It was so gratifying to see so many people who were interested, excited, and impressed with our pig ordeal, now in its ninth hour. We'd started in on the beer around 9am (hydrating!) and had been trying to get through some dense books, or in my case, fall asleep in the sun, so it was particularly nice to have our own folks start wandering in around 4pm.

The pig, which we had estimated taking about eight hours, was clearly not yet done, so we spent some time hula-hooping and goofing off.

A wedding party was using the boathouse for some photographs, and Matt suggested that I go ask them if they wanted to take some photos with the pig. (Which I did. This sort of friendship, where we willingly carry out each other's ridiculous suggestions is, as my sister pointed out, how we ended up hosting a pig roast in the first place.)

The couple seemed sort of horrified, but a few minutes later came over, followed by their troupe of wedding photographers.

Their wedding was probably less work than this pig.

Don't worry, Bea, we still love you.

Eventually Beatrice seemed about done. We decided to try to crisp her up a little more by lowering the spit a few notches, close to the coals. It got a little stuck, but eventually, and with the support of the growing group of onlookers, we got her down. That's about when the chain decided to start acting up again.

We took the chain off, and got ready to move Beatrice off the grill. I like this photograph, because it looks like I'm super hardcore. Which I am, but not because I can lift heavy things. I'm supporting maybe ten pounds here. And that part of the spit wasn't hot at all.

I also like how excited everyone is. Except perhaps Matt and I – we'd been at the park for over eleven hours at this point.

I was starting to lose it.

Not to take anything away from the euphoric sense of accomplishment we felt slicing into Beatrice!

And then we cut her up, very unprofessionally.

It started to get dark as we were cutting, which made things a little difficult, but we'd set out plenty of food for people, and everyone seemed content to hang out, eat, and talk while we butchered Beatrice. Some particularly fantastic friends had contributed some dishes: pasta salad, hummus, cookies, chips and salsa, I think someone brought bbq sauce, and we'd also brought some corn, potato salad, apple sauce, and bread.

So much delicious. And that pig skin was so wonderfully crunchy, the pork was moist and flavorful, and everyone seemed happy.

I'm glad it all turned out so well – we got unbelievably lucky in lots of ways, considering we really didn't know what we were doing. We also got a lot of help and advice: from family (sister!), friends, and classmates, but also from people we didn't know, who stopped to talk to us on the street, or in the butcher shop, or at events, or parties, or who stopped by to watch our pig rotate on the day of the roast. It's been a wonderful opportunity to connect and learn from pork lovers everywhere.

And it's now three days later and I still haven't recovered. I'm still exhausted, I keep finding charcoal dust under my nails, and I've got a bunch of pig bones in a pot on the stove. Next time I want roast pork, I'm just going to order a precooked one form Cannuli's. Or get a sandwich from John's Roast Pork.

I am glad, however, that we've proved ourselves undeniably awesome.

9/21/10

Epic Pig Roast: We Don't Know How to Do This. (Part One)

This summer has had a lot of pork in it. It hasn't been a coincidence.

With my friend, the same one who celebrated his birthday with bacon and ice cream, I've been planning the most outrageous summer party of my life. All my recent pork adventures have been attempts to learn as much as possible before our big event. And it's amazing how a strong love of pork and an impressive lack of experience and information can get people (mostly big, meaty, man-people) to open up and become fountains of tips, advice, and stories. It's been lovely, smokey, delicious, and hilarious. But last Saturday was the culmination of our summer of research. We got a chance to put all of that advice to a test.

My friend Matt and I roasted a whole pig.

Practically by ourselves.

This is the story of our pig roast, how awesome we are, and why we're never doing such a ridiculous thing ever again.

Told in two parts. This is part one. Pre-roast day.

Meet Beatrice.

We were introduced to her by one of our friendly neighborhood butchers at Cannuli's, which is in the heart of the Italian Market in South Philly. This guy regaled me with stories about his own pig roasting adventures while I waited, including one where he had to prove to a cop that the roast pig in his backseat was not, in fact, a dead human body.

When he held Beatrice up for us, another butcher yelled "D'you want the one with the sunglasses, or the one with the ears?"

It's a pretty cool place.

We also talked to the boss, Charles Jr., who roasts his pigs in a professional oven and sells them to people. We'll do that next time.

I think he always looks a little grumpy. But it was a very serious discussion. We had a lot of annoying questions, and he took plenty of time to talk to us. The best advice we got from him was to take it easy and not rush. And to coat the pig skin with olive oil. Yum!

Then another lovely Cannuli's employee wrapped Beatrice up in butcher paper, and walked us out through the back of the butcher shop. Which was thrilling. Even more so, because, although this particular store sells already-roasted pigs quite regularly, it seems like buying an entire raw pig is somewhat unusual. Or at least, everyone in the back of the shop stared at the pig as she went by.

This fellow gave us some good advice too. He told us not to get drunk until the pig was done. Harder than you might think when you have a minimum of eight hours to waste as the pig just spins around cooking!

She was 59 pounds of dead weight, but not too unwieldy. Or at least, it didn't seem like she was. I didn't actually carry her, I was too busy snapping photos.

As we walked down the street, cars slowed down to try to figure out what was going on. One fellow yelled out his window, "I hope that isn't a dog!"

Oh, South Philly, your humor is so... basic. It's okay though, I still laughed.

Beatrice has a pretty terrible sense of humor too. She thinks it's funny to stick her tongue out in photos.

We put Beatrice in the bathtub with a few bags of ice, and let her chill out while we made a wet rub and a marinade. I don't know if "wet rub" is the proper cooking terminology, but that's what you get when you stick a huge amount of garlic (I want to say 60 cloves? Not sure.) and four bunches of thyme in the food processor with some olive oil.

Then we peeled and processed eight oranges with a bunch of lemon and lime juice (about 7 of each?) and a lot of salt, since we figured Beatrice needed some. Citrus and salt is such a weird combination.

We rubbed her insides with the smelly (in a good way) wet rub, and poured the citrus mixture in over it.

(Two days later, my hands have just stopped smelling of garlic.)

We spent a long time in my little bathroom: a 60 pound uncooked pig, me, Matt, and Barbara taking photos.

It was a bonding experience.

Then we made a pot of apple sauce, about 12 pounds of potato salad, and around midnight, called it a day. We were going to meet up again in six hours.

Stay tuned for Epic Pig Roast: We Don't Know How to Do This. (Part Two)!

9/13/10

Grocery Shopping 101: The Farmer's Market

I love tomatoes. I like them highly acidic, plump, hard, and with a strong smell. A friend of mine once asked her father what a tomato plant smelled like, and got the reply "a tomato plant smells like a tomato plant." I like my tomatoes to taste like a tomato plant. And I like my tomatoes raw. And mostly I like my tomatoes to be dry-farmed Early Girls from Tomatero Farm. Which, being located in Watsonville, CA, doesn't yet sell their produce in Philadelphia, but does attend my favorite, and previously local, Grand Lake farmer's market.

Which was, for a few years, my weekly grocery stop. And for which I set aside every Saturday morning for every time I find myself back in Oakland, and not just for the tomatoes. So, while tomatoes feature heavily in this post, there's lots of other beautiful produce as well. And some beautiful Oakland people. Who are selling, buying, and eating beautiful produce.

Dry-farming, where the plant gets very little water, and thus spends all its energy producing its fruits, is less productive than normal farming methods, and is also super delicious. My favorite application is tomatoes, of course, but the most excellent strawberries are also grown with this technique - my favorite are Albion strawberries, also from Tomatero Farm's stand.

Actually, I get a lot of stuff from Tomatero Farm.

But there's a bunch of other nifty vendors there too, and one of the wonderful things about farmer's markets is the ability to see, smell, and taste what you're thinking about buying. My tomatoes and strawberries always come from the same stand, but I buy peaches from different folks week to week, depending on what varieties are offered and how they taste.

And some things are more seasonal than others, and you have to get them while they're available. (This being California, strawberries are not one of the seasonal things, but okra seems to be.)

And other things are less seasonal.

That photograph on the right is of chalkboards listing different cuts of meat. I've begun buying meat at farmer's markets more often: it's more expensive, but also more delicious, more sustainable, healthier, and lowers my meat consumption to a more reasonable level. The food festival I went to while I was in California, Eat Real, tried to emphasize those points, but I'd already noticed the improvement in my regular grocery shopping and diet when I got my protein from the market along with my produce. An added benefit is that if I take the time to carefully choose such a wonderful cut of meat, I'll take the time to cook it properly, with good accompaniments, meaning I eat higher quality food and more balanced meals.

And of course, the vendors are always happy to help you make educated choices, recommend ways to cook their produce, and give you plenty of information about what they're selling. They're also usually really awesome.

If, for instance, you need ripe melons for your housewarming party that afternoon, the lady selling melons will go pick out the ripest ones she can find from her huge truckload.