Taste: My Life through Food(53)

I returned from the hardware store to find Adam and my son Nicolo tying long branches of rosemary, thyme, and parsley onto the end of a broken broom handle. Adam planned to use this to baste the beast. We left Nicolo to finish the rustic baster while Adam and I erected the pop-up shelter, which ruined the aesthetics of the whole patio for me. I like my surroundings, even at a pig roast, to have a suggestion of elegance, and blue nylon pop-up shelters suggest anything but. However, I let it go. This time. We secured the pig tightly between two racks provided with the Caja China, hauled it into the box, put the top on, scattered the coals, and lit it up. It would now cook from the top down for about four hours. This method of cooking ensures that not only will the meat be incredibly moist and its fat almost melted throughout, but a crusty “crackling” will be created. This method of cooking is ancient but the invention of the box is recent.

A Cuban immigrant to Florida remembered pig being cooked in a box in this manner by descendants of Chinese immigrants in Cuba, and he and his son built a prototype in 1985. Having achieved the desired result as described above when cooking the pig, they began to manufacture them and still have a very successful business to this day. I had to abandon my Caja China in the US when I moved to London, but I am tempted to buy another, because the pork that emerged from that odd, hot box was extraordinary. However, given the lack of storage space in my house, I may just have to employ it as a cot for our youngest when it’s not in use.

Anyway, once the pig was in, I set up the paella maker, Adam returned to the kitchen to prepare the largest batch of chimichurri sauce ever made on the New York–Connecticut border, Fee and Fleur set the table, and the kids shucked acres of corn. Were it not for the cheap and tawdry nylon pop-up shelter, I would have been in heaven.





The Chimichurri of Perry Lang


— MAKES ENOUGH FOR ONE 16-OUNCE PIECE OF MEAT —

(FOR MORE, INCREASE THE QUANTITIES OF THE INGREDIENTS ACCORDINGLY)

2 garlic cloves

1 jalape?o (or spicier pepper; optional)

10 sprigs oregano

10 sprigs parsley

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

? teaspoon salt

? teaspoon freshly ground black pepper



Peel the garlic cloves. Smash on a cutting board with the broad side of a chef’s knife. Mince.

Top and deseed the jalape?o pepper, if using. Dice on the same cutting board and pile on top of the garlic.

Pick the oregano and parsley leaves off the sprigs. Pile directly on top of the garlic and roughly chop.

Add the red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper directly onto the board. Mix all.





A few hours later, guests arrived, and when Adam gave me the go-ahead, I began to cook the paella. Some of the teens helped me embed the chicken wings into the rice, and after they’d cooked for a bit we distributed the clams, mussels, and shrimp evenly around the pan. For some reason every time I make paella I find that if there is a teenager around they particularly like to help with this part of the cooking process. I don’t know why but I’m glad of it. As I said earlier, paella cooked outdoors draws people into its orbit like crows or monkeys are drawn to shiny objects. They linger around the pan as it burbles away, slowly chatting about this and that but all the while taking in the slow transformation that happens as the rice expands and grows deeper in color as the soffritto works its way into each grain, the mollusks open slowly, and the shrimp change from an opaque blue-white to reddish pink. So many slow-cooked meals are secreted away inside an oven and presented in their finished state, but paella invites one into the process. It has nothing to hide.

With the paella completed, the top of the Caja China was removed, revealing something that looked nothing like the hog that had been placed inside hours before. What we carefully raised from the box was a golden, sumptuous, crackling-encrusted pig that elicited moans and applause from the now-ravenous guests. We laid it onto a table covered with a hodgepodge of cutting boards, released the pig from its racks, and Adam began the process of freeing the meat from its bones as the corn was placed into pots of boiling water to cook for five to ten minutes.

We served it all up on countless paper plates, poured more wine and beer, and raised a glass to the Spanish and Cuban visionaries who had created two of the best dishes ever cooked in an iron pan and a metal box.



* * *



I got carried away by the pigs. I need to write a little more about fish.


I?I had never tasted samphire until I came to the UK and instantly took to its briny sweetness.





18


Felicity and I both love seafood, and seafood stew is something we cook quite often. It’s quick to make; it’s healthy; it can be served with pasta, rice, or toasted bread to create a complete meal; and it’s bloody delicious. As a kid I was never that keen on fish and therefore I never fully appreciated how well my mother, also a seafood lover, cooked anything that came from the water. Many of her specialties were served on Christmas Eve, as I described earlier, but I don’t really remember her making a seafood stew. As I began to travel for work and started eating in restaurants more often, I became fascinated by seafood stew and would order it if it was on the menu in any restaurant I went to.

One of my first jobs away from home for an extended period of time was in 1988 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver was about a quarter of the size it is now, but even then it had some fairly good restaurants. (Now it has some amazing restaurants.) One was a place called Joe Fortes, a sort of old-fashioned seafood and chop house, which is still around. Here they served a fish stew called cioppino. It is said that cioppino was created by Italian fishermen who had immigrated to San Francisco in the early part of the twentieth century and was based on a stew they had made back in Liguria called ciopin. Like most fish stews, it is composed of whatever fish were hauled up in the daily catch. I had never heard of it before going to Vancouver but I was very happy to have found it.