Ever since we acquired a place in the Adirondacks, we have dreamed of hosting festive parties under the trees with family, neighbors and friends enjoying the cool breeze from the lake with food and conversation. The centerpiece of such a bucolic scene would always be an old fashioned in-ground roasting pit with a whole lamb or pig slowly turning on the spit and wafting delicious smells as the skin turned golden crisp and the meat cooked over hours, to be sliced and consumed on the spot when the sun started its path toward sunset. Of course, there is enormous distance between fantasy and realization. We enjoyed the idea of a spit roast for several years and kept putting the making of one off every time we were at the lake for way too short a time to get our act together. We kept talking about it though and, at some point, our neighbor Sherm heard our musings and decided to beat us to it. During one visit, he proudly showed us the roasting pit he had installed in his own place with a thick layer of insulating dirt and with large tree trunks sawed in half and made into sturdy benches on which to sit and monitor the roasting. Having accomplished the process for himself, he vowed to help us build our own roasting pit any time we were ready. Sherm does not give up even when his grateful beneficiaries are wallowing in inertia and indecision. Last summer then, he announced that he had enough dirt to start creating our pit and the adventure was set in motion.
We identified a reasonably open and flat area between the house and the lake and Sherm started to offload masses of sandy dirt from his Kubota tractor until we had a pile big enough to spread a ten foot square shield between the ashes and the ground soil; this precaution is, we were informed, critical to prevent the intense heat from seeping into the small tree roots underneath and starting a ground fire. The “look” of the roasting area had already become a topic of significant discussion and contention. I was imagining a relatively structured, tame appearance with something of a wind-shielding wall made of small stones that we could pick from the lake and put up by our own hands much like Peter Mayle’s wall. Joe had a manlier view of the thing, more like a small scale Stonehenge with boulders surrounding the pit such that one could sit on and mind the roast; he had his way and started selecting massive rocks from the back of the driveway. He and Sherm undertook to maneuver the Kubota and slowly transported enough boulders to form an oval around the pit making sure that several were flat enough to sit on. Sherm also had the idea to make for us large benches from tree trunks much like he had around his pit. I was not at all sure about that style and we were able to put it off for awhile. The winter and the long snow cover served to season the pit base and make it flat and dense enough to protect the ground.
Meanwhile, we had begun to search for a suitable spit apparatus by visiting BBQ places and by searching the Internet. For almost a year we tried to figure out how to put together a motorized spit on that location without spending a fortune for an adventure that remained elusive at best. At some point we found a site that offered a long and sturdy steel spit with a motor capable of handling 50 pounds of meat and we ordered it on line and had it shipped to the lake. As we were imagining the process we thought it would be fitting to have a rustic and rugged looking frame and asked Dan the blacksmith to make one for us. He worked on it during the winter and installed it on the pit the following summer during one of my short visits. A month later, we both went up for two weeks with grand plans for an inaugural pig roast. We created a cute invitation and sent it to the people we knew on and off the lake. We had more regrets than acceptances but we were determined to try out the contraption and were undeterred. No sooner had we arrived and contacted Sherm than there he was with our other neighbor Chuck, also invited and planning to attend, and the Kubota in addition to a great big chain saw. We were reminded of the offer to make benches as soon as we reached the house because two large tree trunks had been saved from the tree-felling of the previous summer and were sitting by the side of the driveway. During one of the first days we were there, we returned home after town errands to find the trees split into huge pieces, the guys waiting for the lady of the house to instruct them where exactly to place the two benches and the massive six foot long table made out of the center section of one trunk. I really was not at all sure I liked the plan but had no tactful way to avert it. Ultimately, the furniture proved quite a-propos the rural setting and the location, naturally natural and immortally solid. The table actually quickly proved an excellent and perhaps necessary piece for handling a big, hot and slippery roasted pig.
Procuring the animal proved exceptionally difficult out in the country despite the heartwarming accounts of local farming and the inroads of the locovore movement. Already a couple of years earlier we had begun to frequent the local farmers’ market and to search the local papers and the Internet for accessible sources of local, organically grown meat. On a rare occasion we ha been able to find some piece of meat but it certainly was a great deal more elusive than what we could get our hands on in Houston. One meat guy had already told us that raising pigs was much too expensive; they ate too much and fetched too little money to make the effort worthwhile. As for lambs, they were too expensive and usually went to higher-end venues or to the members of the co-operatives. The one place that was organized enough to get foodstuffs not locally available on special order was Shaheen’s grocery store. That is, for example, where Sherm got his 50 pound bags of clams for his annual clamfests every summer. I approached the butcher, therefore, a month earlier and asked if he could get a lamb or a pig for us. No luck on the lamb; he could not think of any available source. As for the pig, there was one possibility: order it frozen from North Carolina and thaw it for us in his cold room. The animals were as a rule closer to 100 pounds than fifty but he could promise something under 50 pounds; we had bought a spit fit to handle that weight and no other choice so I told him to go ahead and order us a frozen pig under 50 pounds. True to his reputation, and without accepting a down payment, he ordered the beast. Our first stop in Tupper Lake was to the grocery store to purchase eating supplies and to inspect the pig. With a measuring tape we ascertained that this 49 pound carcass would fit the length of our spit and went back on line to refresh ourselves with the technologies of mounting a pig on a spit, trussing, basting, determining cooking time, needed inner temperature etc.
On the party weekend, we welcomed Marj and Isaac who drove up from New York late Friday night and went to collect the pig from the grocery store. We reviewed the mounting and trussing instructions and purchased metal string since we did not have and had not been able to find a trussing needle in the local stores. We calculated the cooking time and added an hour to be safe and started the process after the morning coffee. We pulled the pig out of its box and installed it on the solid table that Sherm had made for us. Then we started the arduous process of fitting in on the spit and trussing it with the metal string. It is critical, apparently, to approximate the spine as closely as ossible with spit and to bind the legs tightly in order to create a cylindrical mass to facilitate the torque on the motor. A few prior successful roasts in Houston had given us unearned confidence that quickly gave way to frustration. Piercing the skin was extremelydifficult. Once we had a sharp knife slit on it, the slender metal wire was unwilling to go through. We spent an hour approximating the spine to the spit and semi-securing the ends with the metal prongs. Once we had it, we discovered that the motor side of the spit was too far out to fit the motor. There then ensued a ridiculous battle to slide the pig to the correct position on the spit, by the end of which the metal wire had broken and the spit was hanging at the bottom of the abdominal cavity, the spine too many inches away from it, and Shem had arrived unable to stay away from what he correctly assumed would be our fruitless efforts. He left for his home and returned with thick wire and pliers and strong metal needles and we re-trussed for another hour. He also re-fashioned the motor bracket and the motor finally fit onto the spit. The next disappointment was that the motor was not strong enough to turn the pig and a potentially moving piece of the spit apparatus began to uncoil as the motor tried to turn. Rather than risk having the pig fall off onto the fire, we decided that pigs had been successfully roasted with manual turning and got a thick pair of garden gloves and proceeded to quarter-turn the pig by hand every 15-20 minutes.
The next fiasco was the fire itself. We have successfully cooked all manners of food in all kinds of settings for decades and have a healthy confidence about charcoal. Chuck our neighbor insisted that we needed to roast the pig with firewood so vehemently that it became almost a dare to succeed with charcoal. In addition to being unfamiliar with the heat and speed of a wood fire we were also concerned that it raises more flame than charcoal and were afraid of loose sparks onto the grass especially during a day when the oppressive heat was increasingly being eased by a gusty breeze from the lake. And that turned out to be the real problem. No sooner the heat rose from the blistering hot charcoal bed above the metal frame of the roaster, it was deflected away from the meat above it by the constant gusty wind which created a cool insulating sheet of air between the fire and the meat. We probably used twice the prescribed amount of charcoal and the bottom of the roasting platform was as hot as any we have created in prior endeavors. Yet, hour after hour we stuck the thermometer into different parts of the pig and the temperature refused to budge above one hundred degrees, one hundred and fifteen at the most. Enter Chuck, vindicated and ever helpful: all we had to do was ask for his help, he said and went to work amassing piles of fire wood and stacking it over the coals. Soon we had a blazing fire such that would warm anyone’s heart and feet on a freezing winter night. I was again afraid of loose sparks and had the hose on standby; the flames lapped and roared inside the metal pan but the wind kept them from making contact with the meat just the same. The guests arrived, they gathered around the fire and admired our fortitude and spirit of adventure and eventually lost interest and gathered on the porch near the beer and the snacks and started munching as we turned the pig and checked the temperature and watched the clock advance and the sun lower itself in the west. At eight o’clock we declared the war over and took the pig off the fire.
Here is where Sherm’s table proved its mettle and made a believer of me. The tabletop was as solid as the hemlock it came from and held the pig steady for the removal of the wires and the prongs. It held the pig steady for the hammering that was required to start separating the joints and the head. I sliced it superficially like a loaf of gyro and took off peels of crackling skin and warm, properly cooked slivers of meat and plated enough for the guests to finally experience the luscious food we had promised. When I reached pink flesh I stopped. Before the evening was over, we hacked the pig in a few manageable pieces and transferred it inside wrapped in large plastic garbage bags which we stuffed in the refrigerator. The bulk was made lighter because Aidan, the Sayles’ grandson had expressed the wish to take the eyes to his home for dissection and seeing the amount of stuff on the table and the degree of rawness of the head, I offered that he could take the whole head and his eyes sparkled and he said that would be great! So before the party was over, Joe took cleaver and hammer, he cut the head off and stuffed it in another plastic garbage bag which Aidan proudly slung over his shoulder before leaving for his home. After the guests left, we started collecting all residuals that could be of interest to a bear as a black sheet spread over the sky and thunder rumblings competed with the loons. We made a mad dash to the dock and brought the John boat out of the water in the lick of time before a torrential rain came along and took care of the smoldering embers.
The next day, after Marj and Isaac left we put the pig in the oven in two batches and cooked if for several more hours before it reached an FDA acceptable temperature. We had delicious bits and pieces for breakfast and lunch and snacks and allotted portions to take to Houston and to leave behind for our next visit. Luck eluded us again, however, and on Saturday morning, the day before our departure the freezer melted and we had to hurry the still frozen containers to safety in Sherm’s freezer. The problem corrected itself for some unexplained reason but it was too late to retrieve the leftovers; maybe there will be something for us in October, maybe Sherm and his family will have enjoyed every last bite. This undertaking proved a real battle and / but taught us quite a lot about our set-up. For the next trip, this fall we will purchase and whip ahead good trussing needles, trussing twine and sturdy kebab skewers. We also plan to carry frozen lamb or goat from Houston and have another practice run of the bucolic in-the-ground-spit roasting so we can refine both technique and equipment for future celebrations.
Enjoying a roast has proved much harder in the country than in our Houston backyard contrary to our expectation. When we first started putting together the makings of the lake pit, we mentioned our exploits to Marcelo and Staci Vela who brought to our attention the technology of the Caja China. After reviewing the on-line information we purchased it, assembled it and have used it on two delightful occasions. It is a very backyard-friendly process with reliable cooking times and outcomes and it will be the subject of a separate account. Of course, it lacks the visual drama of the open air in-the ground roasting, the smells, the sizzle and the opportunity to sit around the fire watching the meat slowly turn to ambrosia.
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