Taste: My Life through Food(52)
“What’re you gonna do with it?”
“Well, I was actually going to just try slow-roasting it in the pizza oven.”
“Ohhhhh, yeah. Wow…,” they said, as though they were going to eat it, which I knew they wouldn’t. They only craved the soft, juicy white meat of the carcass and the crunch of the cracklings.
After they spent a bit more time looking at the head and making preadolescent comments about the fact that the rotisserie spit is shoved unkindly up the pig’s rectum, we shooed them inside to wash their hands and made the opposite of slow-roasted pig’s head, their usual afternoon snack of Ritz crackers slathered with peanut butter.
The next day we cooked the pig as planned, but unfortunately it was too heavy for the rotisserie, which ended up breaking halfway through. My friend Oliver Platt—a great foodie—and I took turns spinning the thing by hand every few minutes. Needless to say the pig was not a great success, and neither was my attempt at slow-roasting the head. Consumed with the task of overseeing the carcass, I neglected the head completely, only remembering it later that afternoon. Opening the pizza oven, I was confronted with a sight from a horror film that I won’t describe here. Suffice it to say, I don’t like horror films.
* * *
The second time we tried to cook a whole pig—the pig redux—we were lucky enough to have a professional on hand to help us, by the name of Adam Perry Lang. Adam is a chef and restaurateur who can cook anything brilliantly but whose primary passion and expertise is meat. He was co-owner of a restaurant with Jamie Oliver called Barbecoa in London, connected to a butcher shop that sold some of the best beef, fowl, and game in the city. (Sadly both are now defunct.) Adam left London seven years ago to return to the US and now owns APL in Los Angeles with his friend the food fanatic and all-around mensch Jimmy Kimmel. It was these two fellows and their wives who sent Felicity and me a Caja China as an engagement present. I had no idea what a Caja China was, although once confronted with it I realized I had indeed seen one before.
A Caja China is basically a rectangular metal box set into an aluminum and plywood frame on wheels. The box is large enough to fit a side of beef, a huge amount of ribs, or probably about twenty chickens. But most important, an enormous pig. Adam and his then-wife, Fleur, were visiting family in New York and came up to stay for the weekend. He told us that they wanted to put the Caja China to good use by roasting a whole pig. He gave us a list of ingredients to buy and said he would procure the pig. Say the word “pig,” and Felicity and I hear the word “party.” So we threw one.
The day before the party, Adam and Fleur arrived, followed soon afterward by the pig, all seventy pounds of it. Adam and I carried it out to the patio and placed it on a picnic table covered with a vinyl tablecloth. Here, he deftly sliced the tenderloins from the carcass, as they are too delicate and lean to be cooked in this way, and set them aside, and then we headed inside to make the brine.
The Brine of Adam
In a large container, combine:
8 cups water
? cup sea or kosher salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 lemons, cut in half
3 bay leaves, preferably fresh
8 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Once the brine was made, Adam took out a comically large syringe, filled it with the brine, and began the painstaking process of injecting the carcass wherever bone met flesh. This took a while but he assured me it was worth it. We stuffed the animal into a huge plastic cooler bought specifically for this occasion; weighed down the top with heavy rocks to deter any marauding raccoons, of which there were many; and headed inside for drinks and dinner. I remember sipping glasses of a new liquor that Adam had just brought to market, called Moonshine, which was a refined version of, well… moonshine. And that’s about all I remember of that night.
The next morning we wheeled the Caja China onto the patio, and as it was beginning to rain, I drove to the hardware store to buy a pop-up shelter to shield the coals, which would sit exposed in the tray on top of the pig, cooking it from the top down. The shelter would also cover the paella I planned on making on my outdoor paella maker. In Westchester then, and now in London, there are two outdoor cooking options that I’ve convinced myself I can’t live without. One is a pizza oven and the other is a paella maker, because I adore pizza and I’m in love with paella. The pizza oven is self-explanatory, but the paella maker consists of a huge iron pan that rests atop a round stand in which sit two perforated rings that are connected to a propane gas tank. Making paella outdoors—particularly on this contraption—for guests is one of my greatest joys. It takes a long time and can be a bit tricky, but in the end, no matter what the result, it is worth it if only for the conversation it engenders. The great thing about this Spanish contrivance is that, if one has the time and inclination, one can dispense with the rings of flame and make a wood fire in the stand, place the pan on top, and cook away. Ultimately this is the way it should be made, because the smoke from the fire works its way into the paella, bringing to it new depth. The best paella I’ve ever made was in a roasting pan over a small outdoor fireplace at my in-laws’ house in Portugal, proving that I don’t really need to be outfitted with my favorite piece of cooking kit, but I prefer to believe it had more to do with the seafood, wood, and ocean breezes of the Algarve than the roasting pan.