A Pig’s Tale, Part One
It’s that time again: whole pig time.
Tomorrow morning I will be cooking a 20-pound piglet for a a festive BBQ in my Brooklyn backyard, using a rather full-proof, if somewhat cumbersome heat source known as La Caja China.
The ‘Chinese Box’ is a curious thing. It’s a Cuban-American take on the Chinese-Cuban community’s take of the Cuban method for cooking lechón, or suckling pig. Follow? Cubans (and Colombians for that matter) tend to bury their baby pigs and start a fire above it to achieve that wondrous combination of succulent meat and crispy skin . The Cuban-Chinese elevated the whole process into a wooden box, and the marketing-savvy folks over at La Caja China, a largely web-based merchant in South Florida, popularized it with assemble-it-at-home ease, complete with a marinade recipe (the famous mojo criollo), a meat syringe (for optimal juiciness), and easy to follow instructions.
THE CHALLENGE: This will be the third time I will have done this, and a few things come to mind that’d I’d like to change a bit.
First, the cooking time and/or charcoal amount needs to be adjusted down from those recommended by the makers of La Caja China. You see, the last two times, the skin was just a little too charred, the result of either excessive heat (i.e., too much charcoal) or sitting for too long top-side up (the bulk of the cooking happens with the pig lying on its back). For pigs up to 40lbs., a half hour is recommended after the flip, but I think this is too much. I am determined to get that elusive golden brown.
The other matter has to do with the presentation. Previously, I would simply set the cooked pig out for everyone to hack at, but I am not sure everyone approaches this task with the same enthusiasm. This time, unless Lily has strong objections, I may just carve the animal shortly before serving. To be determined.
The last challenge is that I am missing hardware, the double-rack that holds the pig in place while it cooks and the meat syringe that allows one to inject the meat with marinade.
The absence of these key accessories is the direct result of the Caja China’s unwieldy size, sort of.
You see, the box I own (model #1; handles a pig up to 70lbs.) measures 48″ x 24″ x 20″, and transporting the thing from Virginia, where it was delivered to my parents’ home almost three years ago, to my then-girlfriend Amy’s backyard in the East Village was its own drama.
But then it lay for almost an entire year in that 10th Street backyard before I had the means and motivation to procure its removal, well after Amy had moved out and both of us had moved on.
Once I had enlisted the help of my friend Dave Johnson and picked up the box from Manhattan and delivered it to Greenpoint Brooklyn, I had already challenged the patience of East Village apartment’s current tenants—removal entailed lifting the box through a narrow bedroom fitted with expensive looking linens and light-colored area rugs—so when I discovered that these two key parts were gone, it was sort of a tough-luck situation. I did email the tenant who had facilitated the rescue, but she promptly replied that that’s all there was. No search party would be sent out.
And now that I have finally brought my box home, I realize what the problem is: me. Oh yeah….no double rack. Hmmm. No meat syringe? Wha? Waited a year to pick it up and another to order the easy-to-acquire spare parts online….
But, no worries. (I hope). For a small pig, two oven racks hooked together with 4 “S” hooks (on hand) should do the trick. To keep the racks off the floor of the box, and in an optimal position relative to the charcoal-fired heat above, I’ll use a couple of bricks on either side of the sandwiched racks. And I just called Brooklyn Kitchen on Lorimer, and they do have a syringe in stock.
I promise to document honestly where this pig tale leads to in the end.