A Simple Recipe for Oven Roasted Suckling Pig-Lechon sa Kawali

The other day during our weekly outing of dining and slot machine playing, my wife and I decided to eat in the Buffet Restaurant of TVC, Lincoln, CA-our favorite Indian Casino. Of the hundreds of dishes ( Chinese, Mexican, Italian, traditional American), the highlight of the buffet that day was an oven roasted suckling pig. It was delicious and the skin was crispy and meat juicy. The problem was we can not find any liver sauce. This reminded me of our Pinoy, Lechon sa Kawali ( Roast Pig in a Pan). I searched for recipes in the Internet. There were several but the following published in the Food Lab I found very simple and easy to follow. Try it and let me know.


Whole Roasted Suckling Pig

Yield: Serves 12 to 16
Active time: 1 hour
Total time: 5 to 6 hours
This recipe appears in: The Food Lab Redux: 7 Pork Dishes for the Holidays The Food Lab: How to Roast a Whole Suckling Pig
Ingredients

1 whole suckling pig, about 20 pounds (see note)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
20 whole cloves garlic
1 six-inch piece of fresh ginger, cut into 1/2-inch slivers

Procedures

1 Preheat oven to 300°F. Season pig inside and out with plenty of salt and pepper. Fill cavity with garlic and ginger. If pig fits on a single rimmed baking sheet or roasting pan, place him on the baking sheet back-up and transfer to the oven. If pig is too large, remove a rack from the oven and place on your range. Overlap two rimmed backin sheets so that they fit on the oven rack and line the whole thing with foil. Transfer the pig to the overlapped baking sheets then lift the whole oven rack and return to the oven so that the pig is in the center.

2 Roast until an instand read thermometer inserted into the deepest part of the shoulder blade registers at least 160°F, about 4 hours. If ears or tail begin to burn, cover with foil and continue roasting.

3 Increase oven temperature to 500°F and cook until skin is crisp all over, about 30 minutes longer. Remove pig from oven, tent with foil, and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Serve by tearing skin into serving-sized pieces and removing flesh with your fingers and piling it onto a serving platter.

Note: You can order suckling pigs from your local butcher, or from online resources such as McReynolds Farms. Plan on a pound and a half of weight per person. You can feel free to substitute the garlic and ginger with any aromatics of your choice such as herbs, other vegetables, or fruit. Your pig can be removed from the oven and left at room temperature tented with foil for up to two hours after step two and before proceeding with step three if you need to do so for timing purposes.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

My Favorite Pinoy Menudo Recipe

The other day, my daughter came home to visit and brought a menudo dish that was cooked by her fellow office mate who has also Filipino ancestry.

I love the dish because it was a little spicy. I have never cooked menudo before so I did some Internet search. There are several menudo recipes in the web, but here's a video of a recipe that I found easy to follow. Since my wife and I I do not care for hot dogs, the one that I cooked did not have hot dogs. To make it spicy I added a dash of Tabasco hot sauce.

Salmon Fish Head Soup for Dinner Last Night

Last night we have salmon fish head soup with boktoy and green beans based in tamarind sauce. Thus I reposting the following recipe i wrote about one year ago. yum, yum, yum!

When I saw the salmon fish heads yesterday at the grocery store, I changed the menu for our dinner instantly. I was planning on purchasing 2 rib eye steaks to broil, but the temptation for fish head soup was just so great, I forgot about the rib eye steak. I paid only six dollars for two large salmon fish heads instead of $18 dollars for two pieces of rib eye steaks.

Fish head soup ( sinigang) is a delicacy in the Philippines and one of the most common dishes in an oriental family's diet. My favorite fish head soup besides salmon is the head of bingao, an big ocean fish that belongs to the snapper specie However, to most non-oriental fish head soup is not for human consumption and just looking at the fish head disgust them. My four US born children and six grand children do not eat fish head soup, but they love salmon steaks or red snapper fillet. Of course they love Fish and Chips.

When I was growing up in the Philippines the fish head was always reserved for the head of the family(my DAD) or for the guest of honor at dinner time. The other parts of the fish are for other members of the family. I have a very simple recipe for salmon head fish soup which contained a lot of vegetables( green beans, baby bokchoy, tomatoes, radishes and eggplant)and of course flavored with tamarind cubes.

Here's my recipe. If other vegetables are not available in your area, baby bokchoy, radishes and green beans must be a must if you want your soup to taste good! The following recipe will serve from 6 to 8 adults with other dishes in the dinner table.

2 pcs salmon fish heads (red snapper or other big ocean fish heads may be used)
1.5 liters of water
1 medium onions (quartered)
2 tbsp of ginger slices
2 pcs of medium tomatoes (quartered)
6 pcs string beans (cut 3 inches approx)
6 bunches of baby bokchoy( Kangkong is used in the Philippines)
2 small raddish (sliced)
2 pcs of egg plant (sliced)
1 pck of sinigang mix (Tamarind based) (for 1.5 liter mix)



In a large sauce pan, boil water and onions & ginger then add fish and cooked for approx 5-10 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients( slice the vegetables evenly) except for the bokchoy and cooked for about 2-3 minutes and serve hot. Add the baby bokchoy last. Shut off the heat and let the pan simmer. Do not over cook veggies.

Fish heads contain a lot of omega 3 fatty acids and fish oil that promote brain development according to a recent report on nutrition and health. There are some studies that shows that if a pregnant women eat fish (which means lots of omega3 fatty acids or fish oil on her diet) her babies will have higher IQs and fewer learning disorders, and were less likely to develop mental retardation or cognitive delays.

As for me even if I can not get pregnant, I will eat fish as often as I can, since I love fish and I know it is good for my health and in my aging years. For those of you who hate fish, especially fish heads, I feel sorry for you since you are missing one of the most nutritious and delicious dish easily available all over the world.