After seeing me taking photos and trying all sorts of things in the kitchen, my wife wondered aloud why I never wrote any posts about the bento lunches she makes for our daughter.  In our house, we tend to cook separately.  She doesn’t want me in there.  She loves it and excels at it, and I just don’t have the experience to write about it.  The next time she asked me about the bento post, I said “would you like to write one?”  She finally agreed, so here is her first guest post.  She’d love any questions or comments you have, so please share them.  Oh, and the pictures in this post are really useful, so I encourage you to click to get the bigger version to see all the little details that go into them.

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It’s been a while since my last post, but I swear I’ve been busy. Among many other things, I was busy planning and preparing for my younger daughter’s first birthday. I know plenty of people think it’s silly to have a big party for a kid who won’t remember any of it, and that’s fine. We have them as an excuse to have a big party. Our older daughter’s first birthday party was a tea party theme, with tea, only the most proper tea sandwiches, and petits fours. The cake was shaped like a teacup, and much fun was had by all. It was February, so this was all held at a tea house near our family (i.e. two-and-a-half hours away from home), which meant no cooking for us. It was a great event, and I think I remember liking all the food and drink.

Our second daughter blessed us with a warm-weather June 30 birthday. This meant we could plan an outdoor party, which allowed us to host it at our house. I don’t remember who first brought up the idea, but we decided that it was time for us to tackle a new culinary challenge, a pig roast. I’ve never cooked single piece of meat larger than 6 pounds or so, so this was going to be a quite a novel experience.

There were so many factors to consider, and so many different components to fit together. We picked a date, came up with an initial guest list, and then set in to decide upon the cooking equipment and the pig source. To be honest, the pig was easy–we got it from the University Meat Science Lab folks. Now, I know that sounds scary, to have some laboratory pig, but we are so blown away by their sausages that I couldn’t pass it up. Plus, it’s local and cost-effective.

Choosing the cooking equipment and/or method of cooking was much harder. There are so many options: pit, grill, rotisserie, charcoal, gas, pellets, smoke. After researching what was available from the rental companies around town, we had narrowed it down to two options. One was a charcoal grill with a spit attachment large enough to spin our little piggy into wood-fired piggy goodness. This would be cheaper, but hard to maintain temperature. The other option was a large pellet-fired smoker/grill. The cost was much higher, but temperature control would be easy, and the flavor should be excellent.

In part due to a scheduling conflict, we ended up choosing the latter, and after a small hiccup in getting it home, found ourselves with a huge metal box ready to cook some meat. The Traeger COM-200 has 4 shelves inside, with up to a total of 50 square feet of cooking surface. It’s an amazing piece of machinery. Once I was using it, I was amazed at how easy it was. You load some wood pellets in the back (we used hickory), plug it in, and turn it on. It’s got a digital temperature control, so you just set it and forget it.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve never cooked a whole pig before, so I went with a simple preparation. I added (kosher) salt and pepper liberally throughout the body cavity, and that was it. Since I am opposed to buying pre-ground pepper, I took a tip from Alton Brown and used power tools to help grind all the pepper I would use. I just attached my cordless drill to my pepper mill and cranked out a pile of pepper in mere seconds.

The hog we purchased was 114 pounds. It came wrapped in a thick plastic bag, the legs tied up with string and ready to be roasted. Not to devolve into the macabre, but it was the largest nearly-intact dead thing I’ve ever laid my hands on. I guess seeing this animal on my table (as opposed to nondescript cuts of meat), gave me a feeling of duty and responsibility to prepare it well. Having a large, whole dead animal in front of you is an experience not everyone has had (or wants to). I’m no butcher, but I looked over the carcass just the same. The animal was cleaned well, inside and out. A large number and inspection stamp marked its back, between the shoulders. The layer of belly fat was sufficient, but not excessive. In comparison to what I’ve seen in their meat case, this pig was smaller and younger than what they normally butcher for retail cuts.

Thanks to the Traeger, cooking the pig was really straightforward. It sat in there for about 11 1/2 hours at 250 deg F. Being paranoid, I checked the temperature of the ham, and it was plenty done. Wrestling it out of the grill and onto a foil-covered table was… interesting. Once there, I set in with a knife, breaking open the skin, and started pulling out the meat. Most of it was tender and dripping with juice, but the meat from the hams was still a little tougher to pull out, due, I think, to all the silverskin you can find therein.

In addition to a couple store-bought barbecue sauces, I made my mother’s recipe as well (with a couple tweaks). To her credit, that sauce went the fastest. I rounded out the meal with some simple cornbread, a smoked potato salad, and two green salads. Thinking that noone would eat salad, my wife bought a bagged salad mix and some dressings. I decided I wanted to have something with a little crunch, and I eventually got a recipe from a friend who used to work at Union Square Cafe. I doubled the recipe, and while trimming and cutting two pounds of snap peas into julienne takes a while, it was worth it. It was a big hit with many guests, and I recommend it if you can get your hands on good snap peas. The recipe I received is at the end of the post.

The whole party was a big undertaking, and required a lot of planning, but it was successful. There will definitely be a “next time”, though maybe not this year unless someone else wants to pay for the whole thing. Nothing went wrong, partly due to the idiot-proof cooking equipment and the easy nature of the sides I made. I’ll probably be braver next time, clear out the fridge and freezer a bit more and put more on the grill. We underestimated the meat yield, and figured it would probably help to have about twice the number of guests, though plenty of them were happy to take home bags of pork.

There are plenty more pictures of the event, including many pre- and post-roast pig pics in my Pig Roast Flickr set.

Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Pancetta, Pecorino and Mint

recipe from the Spring 2007 Union Square Cafe Newsletter

Serves 6

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 pound sugar snap peas, trimmed at each end

1/4 pound pancetta, cut into 1-inch x 1/8th-inch lardoons

2 tablespoons minced red onion

1/8 cup lemon juice

1/8 cup Champagne, or white wine vinegar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2-3 tablespoons finely sliced mint

5 tablespoons grated Pecorino Romano cheese

2-3 teaspoons Fleur de Sel (sea salt)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring 3 quarts water to boil in a large pot and add the kosher salt. Have ready a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking of the peas. Cook the peas in the water for just 10 seconds. Drain the peas in a colander and immediately add them to the ice water. Remove the peas from the ice water after about 2 minutes. Drain well in the colander and gently pat dry with a paper towel. Julienne the peas by cutting them on a sharp diagonal. Set the sliced peas aside in the refrigerator.
2. Place the pancetta and 1 tablespoon of water into a 10-inch sauté pan set over low heat. Stir the pancetta gently with a wooden spoon to separate while it heats up. The water will eventually evaporate and the pancetta will begin rendering its fat (approximately 4-5 minutes). Turn the heat up to medium and cook, stirring and scraping the pan often until the pancetta Is completely rendered and crisp (another 4-5 minutes). Drain the pancetta in a colander set over a bowl. Set aside the crisped pancetta at room temperature.
3. Place the minced onion in a non-reactive bowl large enough to mix the pea salad. Pour in the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil, and stir to combine with the onions.
4. Place the peas, pancetta, mint, 4 tablespoons of the pecorino, the Fleur de Sel and ground black pepper into the bowl with the vinaigrette. Mix the salad, taste, and adjust the seasoning to your liking. Sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of Pecorino over the salad, and serve.