Valerie: We headed to Miami for the Holidays and had a warm and fun Christmas. The weather in Miami all week was excellent (much better than the weather we left behind in New York). Adam spent Christmas eve cooking "el lechon."
Adam: In Cuban families, tradition dictates that christmas eve -- "noche buena" is the center of the celebration, and at the center of noche buena is always a lechon -- a pig, marinated in mojo (sour orange, garlic and oregano) and roasted all day long until the skin is crispy. Valerie's family had talked for a long time about me cooking the pig (always as a joke -- I don't eat pork). But this year I figured it would be fun to try to cook it, even if i didn't eat it -- and I would thow a few chickens in.
Valerie: The first step in this process is to marinate the pig. My parents bought an 86 pound pig from a farm in Hialeah.
Adam: First, you take a few bags of sour oranges, juice them, and add a few heads of garlic, a salt brine, and oregano. You mix this all together, and then take a syringe and inject it into the pig flesh. It's a messy process, and as you can see below, the pig was huge, so it was very difficult. But we managed to get it all in there.
Adam and the marinated pig ready to be placed inside the caja china.
Valerie: We let the pig marinate overnight -- out on the dining room table in my parents' house (since there wasn't a refrigerator large enough). Probably not the most hygenic means of storing the pig (nb: if you have a refrigerator that big, put the pig in it -- otherwise, the house can start to smell).
Adam: Early on Wednesday morning, I got up and began preparing to cook the pig. A lechon is traditionally cooked in a big hole dug in the ground and covered with palm leaves. However, the Cubans have devised something called a "caja china" or "chinese box" which makes the process somewhat easier. Apparently, the contraption has nothing to do with China -- but in many caribbean cultures, to call something "chinese" is to imply that it has magical powers.
The first step is to put the pig inside the caja china, split in half so it lays flat.
Adam and Valerie's uncle transferring the pig into the caja china.
Adam: Then you put a lot of charcoal on top. A lot of charcoal -- 35 pounds in this case. The fire gets really hot, and as the day continues on, you continue adding charcoal.
Adam and Molly watching the pig cook.
Adam: The temperature inside the caja china gets really high -- Valerie's family had told me that this would take 8 hours, but the pig was ready at 12 noon -- and dinner was at 8. Oh no!
A peek inside while the pig is roasting - look how done it gets in 3 hours!
Adam: So we basically let the pig rest under a few coals to keep it warm, and then flipped it and cooked it for another 45 minutes to crisp up the skin, which I'm told is the tastiest part.
The finished pig ready to cut and serve.
Adam: After the pig, I cooked a few chickens for us non-pork-eaters. They ended up pretty tasty as well. Overall, the great caja china experiment was very successful, and surprisingly easy to use. If I had a balcony, I might even consider getting one in New York -- for parties, it does produce a lot of meat with minimal effort.
Valerie: Right before dinner, we took the annual christmas picture.
La familia.
Next: Valerie and her sister try camping out for the first time, Adam meets the world's largest mosquito in the everglades.
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