Food Writing 101: Food Childhood Memoir (Lechon)

I'd like to dedicate the title to my friend who I had an argument with whether or not duck is red meat. So we appeased ourselves by agreeing that I don't eat four-legged animals (i.e. pig, cow, goat, sheep, etc.) but do eat two-legged ones (i.e. duck, chicken, and turkey).

Disclaimer: Wrote this as my last homework for my Food Writing class at Stanford. This is the original with no copywriting edits.

Zubuchon, Cebu City

The Last Four Legged Animal I Ever Ate

            It glistens under the light. Its tempting aroma fills up the whole house while party guests arrive. Anthony Burdain declared it as the “best pig ever.” The lechon or roasted suckling pig from Cebu, my hometown in the Philippines, always takes the center stage at every family reunion, birthday party and just about any get-together you can think of.
            Roasted to perfection, a whole pig awaits to be devoured. It sits perfectly on a shiny silver platter at the edge of a long buffet table. The hired chef skillfully takes a whack at the lechon with a butcher knife to signify the start of the glorious meal. The kids start to line up first while hungry adults patiently wait. Since I was a scrawny kid, I could fill up my large plate with mountains of rice, pancit (noodles), sweet and sour shrimps, and chopsuey (sautéed vegetables with meat) without looking like, well, a pig. Popular in Filipino food culture, the lavish buffets were probably the best training I had growing up in Cebu to be able to eat a lot while maintaining a slim frame!
Now at the end of the buffet table, I stare face-to-face with the 40-pound, hallow-eyed pig. Its ears still perky and tail slightly curled up. I point to the ribs of the lechon asking the chef clad in a white apron to chop off some for me. He puts three small, 5-inched ribs on another plate. Unsatisfied, I sheepishly point again this time at the belly’s skin. With two full plates, I walk carefully back to the table where my siblings were seated.
  I grab a 7-up from one of the waiters carrying different beverages and ordered for lechon sauce- a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and small red chilies. Using my bare hands, I start crunching on the lechon skin- fat included. The juicy pig fat is pure bliss. Like firecrackers inside my mouth, the crackling skin is also the perfect combination of garlic and brine. Next, the succulent meat of the ribs dipped in the sauce that the waiter brought over oozes with flavors of lemongrass and bay leaves. It was finger licking good, especially since the oil is really tough to take off my fingers.
As I pace myself, I look around. Some adults were toasting the local San Miguel beer or busy scraping the fat off the lechon skin worried about the cholesterol they would soon ingest. Being a kid has its benefits- I don’t have to be health conscious.
A few hours later and on my third round to the buffet table, three-fourths of the lechon is exposed, showing the stomach cavity filled with lemongrass and spices. The innards have already been served on the table through the form of a dinuguan or pork blood stew that also came with the lechon. Made of meat and offal, such as lungs, kidneys, intestines, ears, heart and snout, the dinuguan is a rich, spicy dark gravy of pig blood with garlic, chili, and vinegar. I grimace at the thought of dinuguan and have never gotten the courage to try it.
            When I turned 14 years old, I stopped eating beef and pork for no particular reason other than following my sister’s diet then. The lechon was the last one I ever gave up. Even though I still stare at the lechon in every party in Cebu, there is no more temptation. Yet, I find myself continuing to eat platefuls of food.
For your information, here’s a recipe of a Cebu lechon. Please don’t do this at home.
  • 1 whole native pig (live weight about 40 lbs)
  • salt and black pepper to taste
  • soy sauce
For the glaze:
  • 1 liter of Sprite or 7-up
For the stuffing:
  • 10 bundles lemongrass (tanglad)
  • 1/4 cup star anise
  • 6 pieces of laurel or bay leaves (cut into small parts)
  • 5 cups of crushed garlic
  • 4.4 lbs green onion leave
  • 8 pieces of halved saba bananas (half-cooked through boiling)

Instructions:
  1. First, shave hair follicles of the pig and remove the innards. Rinse the pig and make sure there are no more lumps of blood inside the stomach.
  2. Then rub the insides with salt and pepper including the body.
  3. Rub a little soy sauce on the inside belly of the pig.
  4. Stuff the belly with saba bananas, anise, green onion leaves, crushed garlic and laurel leaves.
  5. Next, stack the lemongrass inside the center stomach, and stitch the belly, making sure that no ingredients slip out.
  6. Skewer the pig with a mid-size bamboo and split roast over hot charcoal. Do not put the charcoal directly underneath the belly of the pig but over both sides, slowly churning the pig roast.
  7. While slowly roasting the pig, glaze it from time to time with Sprite using a sponge. This will make the skin extra crispy.
  8. Roast for a couple of hours until the meat is tender. Do not overcook.
Source: http://bizbuddies.hubpages.com

You Might Also Like

0 comments