EATING WITH YOUR HANDS: PORK

“I never want to cook the same thing twice,” I recently told a friend. He gleefully pointed out that I was working on a cookbook, a process that would force me to cook the same thing twice, three times, maybe more. For a minute I doubted myself. What the hell am I getting into? I thought—but barely a moment passed before I landed on the same reason I’ve made most of the questionable choices in my life: for the experience. “Sure, let’s do it” has long been my guiding principle. I’ve always rolled with the opportunities that come along, though they’ve produced varying degrees of satisfaction. I just can’t shake the nagging desire to peer around the next corner, as if some newfound wisdom or enlightenment will reveal itself with the next move or project. Curiosity and stimulation—overstimulation if you can get it—that’s the Kool-Aid I’ve been drinking for years now. My first restaurant, the funky Chickenbone Café, was an early American version of a gastropub, with more focus on the “gastro” than the “pub.” 
We served kielbasa bruschetta and braised goat on a deserted stretch of street in then relatively undeveloped South Williamsburg (this was back in late 2002–2003, before there was a cheese shop and a record store on every corner of Bedford Avenue). My next adventure? 5 Ninth. 5 Ninth was one of those projects that had a lot of promise, a lot of potential, but in the end it just wasn’t the right restaurant in the right place at the right time. We were smack in the middle of the meatpacking district in the heyday of the heavy nightclub and partying scene there. Waifish models did not want to eat whole fish with chili and ginger, and geeked-out partiers weren’t into sharing a roasted baby goat shoulder for two. My mission and the mission of the neighborhood were deviating, to say the least … so with one of my partners, I moved on. In 2005, I opened Fatty Crab, a small, rollicking restaurant in the West Village.
Fatty Crab was born when my business partner Rick Camac leased a tiny old laundromat on Hudson Street and asked me if I wanted to open a smaller, café-type restaurant in the space. I walked into the space one day and blurted out, “We should cook Malaysian-influenced food! It’ll be cool, spicy, loud, rock ’n’ roll, with great products and great flavors. I’ll bring my crew from the Chickenbone … it’ll be our party. Our party, and everyone will be invited!” (My Chickenbone crew were all creative rockers, writers, and illicit distillers who were totally out to lunch—like me.)

I’ve been obsessed with pork for as long as I can remember. As a kid I sucked down prosciutto di Parma like other kids ate fruit roll-ups. Yet until recently pork had a serious image problem in the United States. Its rep got so bad that marketers tried to rebrand it, billing it as “the other white meat,” relegating it to the role of mere chicken substitute. Now you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that pork has blown up. Restaurant menus exalt it. Pig farmers and bacon makers are culinary celebrities. And young cooks are tattooing piggies on their arms, backs, and who knows where else. Evidently, people have figured out how fucking good pork is. And, ironically, a major reason for the pig’s rising star (and why it’s my nomination for earth’s most giving creature) is its particularly delicious fat.
For decades, animal fat played scapegoat, and Americans were persuaded to neurotically avoid it (hence the creation of trans fats and that evil butter stand-in, margarine). Yet, as the pig’s popularity increased, people slowly came back to fat. Coincidence? I doubt it. I can’t imagine cooking without poaching fish in pork fat, poaching pork in pork fat, letting hot pig fat imbue vegetables with its silky richness, or tossing a hunk of prosciutto fat into my chicken stock. When I’m dreaming up dishes, the words pig fat (along with mayonnaise, hollandaise, duck fat, lamb fat, butter …) run through my head. You don’t need to eat a ton of it to enjoy its lovely effects. So I use it as a condiment even more often than I make it the centerpiece. Perhaps this is why this chapter is the longest by far—because for me a dinner that incorporates the rapture-inducing flavor of pig fat is the rule, not the exception.
And in case you need any more convincing about the joys of fat, I’ll quote the brilliant book Fat by Jennifer McLagan and Leigh Beisch, which you should buy immediately: “Every cell in our body needs fat, our brain and hormones rely on fat to function, and fat supports our immune system, fights disease, and protects our liver. Fat promotes good skin and healthy hair, and it regulates our digestive system and leaves us feeling sated … . Diets low in fat, it turns out, leave people hungry, depressed, and prone to weight gain and illness.” No wonder I’m so goddamn happy all the time!

WHOLE SMOKED PIG (THE GUY)

A whole animal means a party. An animal of this size means a serious party involving serious excess. Divest yourself of inhibition. Have a real good time. Toward that end, serve the pig with some Salty Oil-Cured Chilies, Pineapple Red Curry, Chili Sauce #1, or, hell, anything you want. I can’t think of one condiment from the condiments chapter that would suck with this. Some boiled and grilled fingerling potatoes and maybe some corn too if it’s a summer party. As with most of my cooking, nothing is precisely the same each time I make it, but the marinade here is almost always what I use when I smoke up those fatties. Almost as important as the list of ingredients and description of the method, however, is the list of stuff you need to get through this twenty-four-hour cooking adventure, besides your barbecue and your pig. Here are the bare necessities:

2 cases beer on ice—cans, not bottles
A couple joints
2 bottles Pappy Van Winkle bourbon
Plastic cups
An 8-ball 1 carton smokes
iPod and portable iPod docking station, fully charged
2 head lamps Batteries, for everything
Foldable tarp tent in case of rain
4 high-quality, portable, foldable chairs
About 40 pieces hardwood (pecan, cherry, post oak, apple, etc.)
3 friends who like to stay up all night and, on a serious note, understand the importance of maintaining a consistent temperature in a smoker and, on another serious note, are funny as fuck 

Serves about 100 of your closest friends 

 6 bunches of fresh cilantro with roots, leaves reserved and stems and roots chopped 4 hands of fresh ginger,
3 cups peeled and chopped
6 heads of garlic, cloves separated, peeled, and chopped
10 shallots, chopped
2 cups fish sauce
Ten 14-ounce cans coconut milk, preferably Aroy-D brand, shaken
1½ cups dried red chilies, such as cayenne
6 tablespoons whole white peppercorns
Zest of 7 limes
12 fresh kaffir lime leaves, stems and center veins discarded and leaves chopped
1 whole pig (at least 200 pounds), gutted and singed, scalded, or shaved
2 cups kosher salt

1. Use a mortar and pestle to pound (Pounding) cilantro stems and roots, ginger, garlic, and shallots, to a paste, pounding each ingredient thoroughly before adding the next. Then add the fish sauce to create a thin paste. You’ll probably need to work in batches. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the coconut milk. 
2. Grind the dried chilies and peppercorns together in a spice grinder. Add the lime zest and kaffir leaf pieces, and grind them all together until the mixture is fine and slightly moist. Stir the spice mixture into the coconut milk mixture.
3. Rub the pig down and up (put it in a giant garbage bag or large plastic bin), inside and out with the kosher salt. Then rub the coconut mixture all over the salted pig, inside and out.
4. Put the pig, belly up, in a large heavy-duty trash bag and pour any remaining marinade inside the cavity. Squeeze out as much air as possible from the bag and tie it. Let sit for 2 to 3 days in a large refrigerator.
5. Get a large smoker up to 200°F. Remove the pig from the bag, saving as much of the marinade as possible. Put the pig in the smoker, belly up, and pour the marinade into the belly cavity. While it’s cooking, focus on stoking your fire, maintaining the temperature, and drinking. The piggy is ready when the internal temperature of the thickest part of the shoulder is at 170°F. Any pig over 140 pounds or so will take the full 24 hours. If you’re working with 50-pounders, though, it’ll take closer to 12 hours.
6. Remove the pig from the smoker and transfer it to a large table covered with a plastic tablecloth or tarp. Let it rest for about 20 minutes, but pork-mad people will undoubtedly start ripping into the fatty flesh before you can get it to the table. I know because I’m one of them. Use a heavy-duty, sharp knife to remove the primals, peel the skin, and chop the meat. Be sure to have a catch basin for the juice and fat that will be spilling out from the smoky carcass. Toss the reserved cilantro leaves over the chopped meat.

LISTEN: Take all the music suggested throughout the book, put it into one play list, and you’re set!
DRINK: I think we covered that in the “necessities” list above.

By Zakary Pelaccio with J.J.Goode in the book "Eat With Your Hands", Harper Collins U.S.A, 2012, excerpts from p.13 and 145-151. Adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.