Guest Post Recipe: "Pit Cooked Pig"

I don't usually bother with advertising on this site, after all it's more of a hobby than anything else, but I had an email the other day from a new hog roasting company in the south west, Astridges, who were looking to spread the word about what they do. Since they were a local family firm - with a great look for their website! - and they were offering an interesting recipe for pit cooked pig I thought I'd give them a mention.

I've not tried their service yet as I've not seen them at any events, so can't vouch for them personally. I do know the butcher who supplies their meat though, Hartnell's, and have bought a fair bit from them myself over the years so can certainly vouch for the quality of their produce.

I would like to try one of their Lamb Roasts that's for sure. A whole lamb roasted at once? My idea of heaven :-)

Anyhow, here's the recipe - enjoy!

Pit Cooked Pig

Called Mumu cooking in Papa New Guinea, a Kula in Hawaii and a Porceddu in Sardinia, this rustic method of cooking a pig has provided a celebratory feast for many ancient cultures, dating back hundreds of years. A suckling pig was, and still is, a popular choice, particularly in Mediterranean countries where outdoor cooking and festive occasions are something we can only follow. The flavor and texture really is quite wonderful and delicious!

There are a number of variations but, in outline, a large pit is dug in the ground and layered with stones. A hardwood fire is then built up over a number of hours until the heat of the rocks reaches maximum temperature. The embers and the top layer of stones are then removed and the prepared whole pig, wrapped in wet aromatic leaves, is lowered on to the remaining stones and covered with the embers and spare stones. After this the pit is then back-filled with earth and the pig left to cook. Depending on the size of the pig this could take up to 12 hours... or more. To ensure the heat is maintained, a fire can be built over the top layer of stones and used as an alternative to backfilling the the pit with soil. Some of the hot stones can also be placed inside the pig cavity to generate a more even distribution of heat.

As an accompaniment, apples, corn on the cob and sweet potatoes wrapped in foil can also be cooked in the pit by burying them in the top layer of the soil about an hour before the pig is ready. 

I have have been to a wedding where they had a pit roasted pig – it was fantastic, BUT a lesson learned was to ensure that the pig is well wrapped and protected in a suitable layer. As delicious as it was I spent most of my time spitting out gritty soil and ash! For more detailed information there are a number of sites offering advice and instructions. 

If you'ld like to hire a Hog Roast caterer, why not get in touch with Astridges Hog Roasts and they'll be happy to help you.

Italian Slow Roasted Lamb Shoulder with Potatoes & Olives

I'm a big fan of the slow roast, though perhaps I do have something of an ulterior motive. It gives me time to get on with other things (which this Sunday unfortunately meant studying), yet means I can create a delicious tender and well flavoured Sunday roast without having to spend as much time and effort creating it as you might think. This Sunday it was lamb again, but given an Italian twist through the combination of a few recipes.

I rarely if ever follow one recipe, but I guess I'm experienced enough in the kitchen to combine them, picking up their various strengths whilst adapting them to suit what I have in the house and what it is I'm trying to cook. I do have an extensive library of cookbooks, well over 100 now, ranging from small pamphlets produced by local groups like the WI (that's the Women's Institute for international readers) to huge tomes like McGee's On food and cooking and the Italian classic The Silver Spoon. I absolutely love cook books, but much prefer scouring old book shops and charity stores for them, as opposed to buying new ones. I've found some wonderful gems that way, for example the fabulous Time Life Good Cook series.

But back to the slow roast. The tradition of slow roasting like this on a Sunday apparently goes back to the days when villages like mine used to have a communal bakery. Bread of course is traditionally baked very early in the morning, and needs a very hot oven. As these village ovens cooled people often used to bring their meat to the bakery and use the residual heat to cook their Sunday lunch, whilst they went off to Sunday church. Of course the longer you cook a slow roast the more tender and moister it gets (up to a point that is), leading to the idea that the longer the sermon in church the better your lunch would be! Not being a religious person myself, I tend to head to the pub (my favourite local The Lamb in Silverton) rather than the church, but at least I'm supporting some sort of local institution that way. I'd recommend the Dob's Best Bitter in particular, though that may be a bit biased again, seeing as the Exe Valley brewery who make it are based in my village.

I'd chosen a shoulder of lamb from Crediton Farmers market courtesy of Higher Hacknell farm this week, and picked up some waxy potatoes there from Linscombe as well. I knew I had some black olives knocking about at home, so decided to re-do an old recipe from Antonio Carluccio's Italian Cooking, but with a nod to Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat Book and a touch or two of myself thrown in for good measure. Basically what you need is this - black olives, waxy potatoes, shoulder of lamb, onion, rosemary:

The ingredients ready to combine

Put all this together in a deep roaster, add plenty of seasoning, and toss together to make sure it's all well coated:

Everything ready to go in the oven

Roast in a hot oven (220ºC) for about 20 minutes, then turn down to about 150ºC for another 3 hours or so. Timings not too critical, you've got a fair bit of leeway either way with this sort of cooking - enough for a pint at least. I did baste it once during this time, but it's not imperative. One small note - I don't use my fan oven for this, I use a conventional oven. I find the fan is too hot and tends to dry things out too much with it's constant convection.

Eventually you should end up with this:

Everything cooked and ready to serve

You'll probably need to pour off some of the fat, depends on the meat. I used spring lamb this time around wish isn't very fatty, so only poured off a very small amount, but later in the season they'll be a lot more. Then straight out onto the plate and enjoy!

Flavour wise it's pretty strong, and if you don't like olives then you won't like this. It will depend to a certain extent on the olives themselves though as they tend to dominate - these were particularly strong, even a bit strong for me if I'm honest, but still delicious none the less.

We had a primo with this, something B cooked up with Ricotta, left over home made paste and chives from the garden - it was wonderful, really light and tasty. If you're looking for a light supper in the heat this would be the business I reckon - but that's probably another blog post :-)

Primo - home made tagliolini with a ricotta and chive sauce

Spit Roast Chicken 'French Style' with Buttered Parsley Arborio

I've been meaning to blog about the recipe for some time, what is for me probably my absolute most favourite way of cooking a chicken. To be honest, I have blogged about it before, but I never included enough detail last time to let anyone else recreate it in this style - here's hoping I can do better this time.

If I'm totally honest it's not 100% my recipe - though that said I've never actually seen any other recipe for it, or even like it really. It was inspired by a meal I had in a French bistro in Albert back in the Summer of 2007, and I was so struck by it that when I returned to the UK I had to try and recreate it - so this is my version of what I had then.

The core of the recipe is cooking the chicken relatively hot and fast on a spit over a roasting pan, and then using what drips into that pan during the cooking time to make a jus (has to be a jus, it is a French recipe after all) to serve with the meat. To me it's also critical that it's served with arborio rice which has been cooked till light and fluffy, lightly buttered and mixed with plenty of chopped parsley.

The Recipe

First off, the chicken. Doesn't really matter how large, but what is important is that you trim off any extraneous fat, and make sure that plenty of air can get blown into the birds cavity by trimming around that as well. I do this on the spit attachment in my oven, which doesn't turn, but as it's a fan oven air is blown all through and over the bird giving something like a spit effect. Once it's trimmed and on the spit it needs a tablespoon or so of olive oil rubbed all over it, and a generous seasoning with salt & pepper inside and out.

Preparing the bird for the oven

Now get it into an oven, and make sure there's that tray underneath to catch the juices. If you don't have a spit you can try and cook it on a grill with a tray underneath, but the key is still to try and make sure that air can flow freely all around the bird.

In the oven, ready to roast

I roast it in a 180ºC fan oven for about 15 mins per pound - might take a little longer/shorter in yours, if in doubt go a little over as ever with chicken, provided you let it rest properly it should be fine. One other little note - try and get the bird to hang downwards for the longest part of the cooking process. Basically you want the breasts to be facing down so that juices flow back into them, especially during the rest.

One cooked chicken, ready to get the tray out for gravy, ermm, jus

Once the cooking time is up you can remove the tray from the oven, which should now be full of crispy stuff and fat. The bird can stay in the oven as it cool,s provided you leavethe door ajar. You can tip most of the fat away from the tray, what we're after is the crispy stuff. The trick now is to get that tray onto the stove, add some stock, and transform it into a wonderful chickeny sauce.

Making the jus

Now for the rice - which you'll need to get started before the jus thing above. Using arborio is also a bit odd I know, but bear with me, it's very tasty. You need to cook it like long grain rice, so for me that means washing it thoroughly first in cold water, then boiling it in plenty of well salted water for about 15 minutes till tender, and then washing it again when it's ready with fresh boiling water from the kettle. Now leave to stand for a minute or so with the lid on to drain, back into the pan (once you've thrown away the any remaining water) and add a few dollops of butter and plenty of chopped fresh parsley and leave that to melt in.

Serving the bird - legs only!

I've always preferred legs, so this recipe is perfect for me as you only serve the legs, which leaves the breasts for sandwiches another day or loads of other tempting leftover treats. This time around I also did this with vichy carrots (well, a sort of vichy carrots anyhow) which worked really well I'm happy to say. When I had it in Albert it just served as chicken, rice and jus, but the carrots worked so well they'll probably become part of the dish for me I think.

The finished dish