Thursday, September 4

Diary of a Pig Roast

Since moving to Maryland, I have decried what seems a lack of native food customs. Yes, yes, Marylanders have their blue crabs – and Lord knows I love them – along with other bounty from the Bay like rockfish and oysters. Unfortunately, no matter how plentiful those items were in the past, they are almost luxury items now; you have to take out a second mortgage to be able to afford a bushel of jumbo males, which are running about $80 a dozen right now.

Over the past couple of years, though, I've become acquainted with another local food custom: the roast. Around here, roasts are big. Mostly they are bull or oyster roasts, and a lot of organizations throw them as fundraisers. If you are truly lucky, you can get yourself invited to a pig roast at a local farm featuring a home-grown hog. I was happy to attend just such an event a couple weeks ago.

I've learned that there are four essential ingredients to a successful pig roast:

1. A big pig.

2. A big crowd.

3. Nice weather.

4. Lots of beer.

The pig roast I attended most recently had all of those things, although I was told that the pig himself, at a mere 200-something pounds, was pretty small. There were loads of guests milling about a 19th-century farmhouse. The weather looked threatening, and it was hot back "in town," but the house's high perch on a hill kept the temperature comfortable and the rain passed us by.

There were two kegs: one that everyone knew about, and another that we tried to keep to ourselves. (We did our best to kick it ourselves, too.)

The reason you need all that beer is to keep people entertained while the ETA of the pig, which is cleaned and scraped and then roasted whole in a drum-style roaster, gets ever later. When we first arrived at the party, around 4:30, the pig was due to be taken off at 5:00. He didn't want to cooperate, and so we milled around, drinking beer, talking to other guests, drinking more beer, and eventually getting in line (with fresh beers) after the pig was unveiled around 6:15.

The way it works is that you get your pig first – it's the most important thing, after all, and it needs a lot of room on your plate. "Getting your pig" means that you wait in a long line while the poor guys slicing the pig work as fast as humanly possible to feed the hungry masses. The pork just falls off the bone after its long time cooking. If you're lucky you get a piece of crispy skin (mmm, like bacon!).

Then you move on to the line for sides to fill up the half of your large dinner plate not taken up with pig. There is no way to sample every item on the groaning tables, but the options include: several kinds of coleslaw, several kinds of potato salad, multiple pots of baked beans, green salad, fruit salad, composed (Jello) salad, layered taco salad, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, pasta salad with tomatoes and scallions, pasta salad with Thousand Island dressing, cucumber salad, and lots and lots of freshly steamed corn with butter. I imagine that if ever a vegetarian ventured to a pig roast, he or she would find plenty to eat.

All of this is, of course, washed down with more beer.

Lest you think that the eating portion of the evening is finished, the doors to the farmhouse are thrown open to reveal the dessert table that's been set up inside. The desserts are as varied and plentiful as the side dishes: coconut cake, devil's food cake, angel food cake, German chocolate cake, pound cake, marble pound cake, eight different kinds of brownies, lemon bars, date bars, Oreo cookie bars, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, apple pie, cheesecake squares.

The only problem with the desserts is that they don't go well with beer. The hiatus is probably good for you anyway.

Eventually full night falls and citronella candles are lit on every table. It's comfortably cool up on the hill and there's a pleasant hum of conversation at the party. Everyone is relaxed (possibly from all that beer), and the view is great: you can pretend that Howard County hasn't been eaten alive by McMansions and cheaply constructed townhomes.

All in all, a wonderful food tradition: one that would only be improved by the addition of a little woodsmoke to the pig, which should be a brisket anyway. (Remember: you might be able to pry the girl out of Texas, but you'll never get the Texas out of the girl!)