Consider this my early holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve/Day) present to all of marketmanila.com’s readers across the globe. If you have steadfastly held the view that the only way for you to place a lechon on your holiday table is to order it from a commercial purveyor, or hire a lechonero to do one in your backyard, let me just go ahead and BURST THAT BUBBLE RIGHT NOW. Thousands of readers abroad have read my dozens of posts on lechon and I have received hundreds of comments or emails from around the world about Pinoys pining for lechon, and how they miss home so much around the holidays, and in particular, they want that lechon on their groaning holiday table. Well, you no longer have an excuse… This Christmas, whether you are in Dublin or Zurich, Oslo or Toronto, Dallas or New York, you too, can have a pretty decent lechon at home! You may be rolling your eyes just now, but trust me when I say this is just slightly more complicated that stuffing and roasting a turkey. Really. And while I struggled with the thought of saving this recipe for the mythical Marketman cookbook, the urge to share overwhelms… Surprise your family, friends and relatives; this year, replace your roast beef, roast turkey or goose with an oven roasted lechon de leche…

First, you need a cleaned roast suckling pig. Surprisingly, many specialty butchers can arrange this for you. In North America, you can order them for delivery apparently. So start with a roughly 9-10 pound cleaned suckling pig. Make sure it is fully defrosted. Wash it inside and out. Carefully dry with paper towels.

For this fusion lechon version that I made at home. I decided to use a stuffing of slow roasted garlic (three bulbs worth) and three slow-roasted onions. Salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, pureed truffles and olive oil.

The garlic was shmeared onto the walls of the cavity along with the roasted onions.

Sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme added a nice aroma to the meat. Sew up the cavity with kitchen twine. Desperate because I couldn’t find a needle at home, I even thought to use alligator clips (from my office desk) to close the stomach! But I eventually found a needle.

Baste the entire skin surface of the pig with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and place in a pre-heated 400F oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I basted with unsalted butter. Reduce heat to 375F. Cover tail and ears with foil if they are browning too fast. Then baste again after 30 minutes more. Then I left the lechon in the oven for a further hour, for a total cooking time of 2.5 hours. Cooking time will vary based on the size of your pig, the amount of stuffing you use, and the temperature of your oven. This is best done in a convection oven (with a fan) but I don’t have such an oven in Manila, so the pig in this photo is done in a typical large La Germania home oven.

You need a bit of muscle to remove and baste the pig. That’s really the toughest part of the whole recipe.

So listen to Marketman. The results were great for such minimal effort. Okay, so it wasn’t a Zubuchon :) and it wasn’t as good as a charcoal roasted version. But it was, convenience considered, pretty darned good. The skin was crisp and the meat juicy. Guests went quiet when they were eating, always a good sign. A more detailed recipe with more native stuffings will be written up for the mythical cookbook. But I encourage you all to give this a try this holiday season. Happy Holidays!

The post Oven-Roasted Lechon de Leche a la Marketman appeared first on Market Manila.

Another Marketman “experiment”. As I type this, the youngest little suckling pig we have ever cooked is on the coals. Inside, some garlic, spices and a serious amount of BLACK TRUFFLE puree (not essence, not oil, but mashed black truffles) along with olive oil, salt and pepper. I threw in little cubed potatoes at the last second, thinking they might absorb all the heavenly and luxurious ingredients within the cavity of the pig. On the outside, a slathering of olive oil, and a generous sprinkling of black truffle salt, the flecks of truffles dotting the skin. This is an experiment. And it could be a HORRIBLE DISASTER, not to mention a waste of some wonderful ingredients. Or it could be a wonderful success. The first TRUFFLED LECHON I have ever heard of. Seemed like a good idea to me. The pig snorts out the truffle. The truffle ends up all over the pig as it roasts. What do you think? Potential triumph or disaster? :)

The post What’s Cooking Right Now??? :) appeared first on Market Manila.

I didn’t plan this dish. It just happened. We were at the beach last weekend and the market was brimming with seafood, so I lost control and ended up with shrimp/prawns, mud crabs, squid, fish, etc. and decided to see if we could pull together a paella for us and the crew. Thankfully, there was a kilo of spanish short-grain rice vacuum packed in the cupboard and frozen sofritto and some fresh chorizos… We threw the paellera on the charcoal fire, started to saute the chorizo and only then realized there was no pork or chicken in the house. It was only a mild panic, as seafood and chorizo is an excellent match, but I wanted to add more “laman” or viand if possible. I spied a defrosted package of Zubuchon in the fridge and thought, “why not?” and quickly pulled off the skin and cut up the meaty pieces into large chunks of cooked pork…

…we added the lechon to the chorizo, added paprika and cooked the paella as we normally would, with lots of sofrito to flavor the rice, a chicken broth and a huge amount of seafood on top. The fire was a bit too strong, so we burned the bottom of the paella a little more than what would be described as tutong or socarrat, but it was a HUGE, HUGE hit. The lechon was flavorful in its own right and it stood up to the rest of the paella. It wasn’t overly fatty and it worked well with the chorizos, shrimp, etc.

It wasn’t planned, and I have never had a paella with bits of lechon in it, but I can tell you it’s worth trying the next time you have meaty leftover lechon pieces. And it sounds so festive and so luxurious. So maybe you saw it here first. :) While others sell lechons stuffed with paella, or lechons combined with a paella, I haven’t heard of lechon in a paella. :)

I dread my next blood test and cholesterol count…

The post Lechon Paella a la Marketman :) appeared first on Market Manila.

For several years I have avoided roasting the youngest of piglets, true or just days after “suckling pigs” at 5-6 weeks old or less. I thought about it seriously here, when I spotted these little munchkins in large baskets, for sale at a livestock market in Mantalongon, Barili, Cebu. They were still grouped as a litter and I suspect just separated from their mother hours before… A part of me believed (and still does) that the skin of older piglets with some crunch and substance was preferable to the paper thin variety. However, the meat of the lechon de leche is probably or theoretically paler, sweeter and juicier. Our recent meal at Sobrino de Botin, and tasting their cochinillo asado, convinced me to have a go at cooking my own…

The piglet we purchased was a week or two older than I would have wanted, with a live weight of 6-7 kilos. It resulted in a cleaned weight of roughly 4-4.5 kilos. We still don’t have that wood fired brick oven that I have wishing for for years so we were going to roast the little pig over a charcoal fire. That is the first huge difference. The Spanish cochinillos are done in ovens, sitting on clay or steel pans, and unstuffed but seasoned inside and basted every so often with the natural fat and juices, along with olive oil and in some cases, butter. Experimenting on an open fire could mean potentially drying out the meat, but it was a risk I was willing to take. If the experiment failed, I would just have to start building that darned brick oven… :)

In this attempt, the stomach and rib cavity was left open rather than sewn up. I seasoned the cavity of the pig with salt and pepper, thyme and rosemary, olive oil. The skin was massaged with olive oil and sprinkled with salt (do NOT use iodized salt). It looked a bit bizarre in our makeshift roasting contraption, almost like a flying pig actually.

I was a bit concerned that the turning radius of the spit was quite large and the pig had to sit a little further away from the charcoal than usual. We covered the ears with foil to prevent premature burning, and roasted away for half an hour or so…

After half an hour, we took the pig off the coals, and I slathered the entire animal with unsalted butter. I did this in the belly as well. It was already smelling rather scrumptious at this point.

Back onto the charcoal flames for say another half hour, during which the skin started to turn a naturally caramelized color. This was perfect for us. If you prefer those deep brown or burgundy lechons popular from commercial sources, you should know they are probably not totally natural (sometimes painted with soy sauce, or sugared water, or liquor and sugar, etc.).

While roasting, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be too much liquid dripping from the lechon. In fact, we never once had a flare up in the coals, a sign of minimal fat in the young piglet. However, as I watched the rib cavity, it did seem as though it was drying up just a bit, but the proof would be at the table…

After 30 minutes (or 1 hour total cooking time so far), we removed the pig from the flames again, and slathered it with more unsalted butter all over its body, then returned it to the flames for another 20-25 minutes or so.

A quick check of the meat in the thighs and near the neck with pin pricks yielded no blood or pinkish liquid, so we took this off the flames at roughly 85 minutes and brought it to the kitchen. After about 10 minutes of resting time it was ready for the table. It looked terrific and smelled even better.

The first test would be the “can you cut it with a plate” challenge. The answer? Absolutely YES. Starting at the butt, a small salad plate with blunt edges was rolled up the spine of the lechon and the skin yielded readily and cracked all the way up the lechon. Bits of skin shattered along the way, and our excitement was palpable.

We had several square inches of the skin, the lechonero who cooked it getting first dibs, and everyone’s eyes rolled upward as we munched on superb skin, thin and light, and just nicely salted. It definitely did not have the substance of the larger lechons, but this was special in its own way.

But the real surprise was the meat, still incredibly succulent, juicy and yes, almost sweet tasting. Not quite as juicy as the cochinillo in Spain, done in an oven, but not a far cry either. Older pork has a bit of an aftertaste, possibly due to the feed it consumes, but this lechon de leche was just wonderful. The tiny ribs were amongst the finest I have ever eaten. I saved some of this lechon de leche and brought it back to Manila so Mrs. MM and the Teen could taste it, refried, and it was still noticeably different than our standard lechons. You could say we are all huge fans of it at this point. I still want to experiment with an oven-cooked version, but overall I would consider this experiment a resounding success!!!

The post Zubuleche (Roasted Suckling Pig) a la Marketman appeared first on Market Manila.

Honestly, how much more can be said of our iconic national celebration dish, the lechon? Reader “Rico” just sent me a heads up and I was again pleasantly stunned to see Anthony Bourdain has yet again referred to the lechon he had in Cebu roughly a year ago. The article in the Food & Wine Magazine blog, is written by their restaurant editor, Kate Krader, and includes excerpts of Anthony Bourdain’s interview by the New York Times food critic Frank Bruni at the NYC Wine and Food Festival held last weekend in New York City. And I quote:

On the hierarchy of pork he’s eaten around the world: “Puerto Rico’s lechon is great. In Bali, the lechon is even better. And in the Philippines, the lechon is slightly better than that. It’s the best of the best.”

And we all know which lechon(s) he munched on in Cebu. Talk about “kilig to the bones” (thrilled to bits)… Heeheehee. :) I will be smiling all day long. Thanks Mr. Bourdain. And thanks Rico for sending the link. :)

Now if only I could find a lechonan in Manhattan and my crew were given visas… Right now, you can savor the same lechon for just $3.75 a pound at the Banilad Town Center in Cebu on Sundays, I think we could probably get away with a significantly higher price point in New York City, no? :)

The post “It’s the best of the best.” appeared first on Market Manila.

Finally, some 8 months after the episode aired in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world last February, the episode of No Reservations, with Anthony Bourdain in the Philippines, (and a short segment with Marketman’s lechon) will air this week in Manila and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Please check the Discovery Travel & Living website for schedules for China and Taiwan as I believe they have slightly different schedules. So please set your alarm, write it into your “to do” list or put a post-it on your television if you want to see the episode…

On Discovery Travel & Living, the schedule for the Southeast Asia grid, including Manila, I gather viewing times will be:

14 October Wednesday at 9pm
15 October, Thursday at 7am
18 October, Sunday at 11am
18 October, Sunday at 8pm
19 October, Monday at 00:00 hours, four hours after the previous showing
20 October, Tuesday at 6pm
21 October, Wednesday at 1pm

If you want to read all about lechon and what led up to the Bourdain shoot, try this post, that summarizes all previous lechon related posts on marketmanila.com. Many thanks and happy viewing!

The post “No Reservations, Philippines” Showing on Local Cable Stations appeared first on Market Manila.

To market, to market to buy a fat pig (or two, or three)… I don’t think I have ever been to a livestock market, and with our recent need to identify more and more sources of traditionally raised pigs for the ZUBUCHON experiment, we decided to plan a half-day trip to the Mantalongon Livestock Auction Market in Barili, Cebu. Not to be confused with the other Mantalongon market, which is predominantly a vegetable trading center roughly 2.5 hours south of Cebu, this livestock market was about 1.25 hours away, and relatively near the town chicharon town of Carcar. This post is about the trade and sale of live animals predominantly for the purpose of feeding people. If that bothers you, then simply DO NOT read the rest of this post. I will delete any comments that I deem inappropriate. Just so that’s crystal clear before you click on “read post.”

The livestock market takes place only on Thursdays, and while we arrived at about 6:30am, I think the peak of the trading action occurs around 7am or so. Livestock from near and far arrive either on tethers led on foot by owners or hired hands, or on vans, trucks and jeepneys. It’s a pretty wild sight and an open grounds area is filled with vehicles, animals, people and a whole lot of POOP. :( Chickens, goats, pigs, carabaos and cows are all up for sale, and while I sort of expected an auction style arrangement with an auctioneer selling off lots of animals, in fact it is more like a huge open market with buyers and sellers milling around the animals striking their own deals.

I spotted these three little pigs in the back of a van that seemed less stressed than other animals being brought to market in crowded vans. So I quickly started negotiations with the owner and even before they were unloaded, I had purchased one of the three pigs for a lechon lunch the next day. At roughly 15 kilos live weight, the piggie was perhaps 6 weeks old, and much smaller than the ones we usually make into lechon.

This rather huge pig, a male or “barako” snorted up alongside me while I was bargaining for the young piggie, and frankly, he was one fat papa! Many insist that male pigs, particularly older ones, have an off-flavor to their meat, so we have ONLY been purchasing female pigs for lechons. I can’t imagine what happens to all the male pigs, either they are cooked young or there a whole lot of male meat for sale in some markets… And how would one explain the treatment of wild boar (presumably males) as a delicacy and its strong flavor as desirable??? Hmmm….

With so many pigs in the field, one rapidly realizes that there are differences… some certainly look happier than others, some are heavier for their age and size, while others look like they were on a South Beach Diet. It was a bit upsetting to see so many herded into this auction area, and when they were purchased, led off to the buyers vehicle to almost certain death, if not fattening before death. But I eat meat, so I deal with that.

I’m sure if you come to the market often enough, you would figure out who seems to have the best livestock on offer. And you get to know the individuals and ask how big their piggeries are, if the pigs are raised in their back yards, among a dozen other pigs, or only 2-3 at a time. There aren’t many folks here that come from large professional piggeries… this is a market for the rural folks, with several city buyers. In many cases, ladies of all ages bring one of two young pigs to market, selling them at say 2-3 weeks, for others to fatten for a month or two. These ladies often take the proceeds of selling one or two of their piglets to the market down the road to buy rice, vegetables, canned goods, etc. that will last them until the next piglet is sold…

This market is akin to what one might call the “wild west” and outsiders are not common here. Why, after all, would a tourist from cebu venture all this way to watch thousands of kilos of porky’s change hands? But we weren’t just there as tourists, we purchased several pigs that day…

The smaller piglets are kept in pens that looked like large produce baskets. These were the cutest cleanest ones in the market.

I was rather tempted to buy one of these, not to fatten, but to cook as a true lechon de leche. But these were rather pricey for their size, and the meat cost per kilo was much more expensive than buying a 24-30 kilo pig. And admittedly, their clean, cute, faces helped to spare them from the barbecue this time around. Don’t get me wrong, I know these pigs and other livestock are raised specifically to feed humans, and for the most part, I suspect they have led much more natural lives compared to their cousins in large commercial piggeries, poultries, goateries(?) and cattle operations, but there is still that slight tinge of guilt.

From the pigs, which seemed to comprise the vast majority of livestock changing hands, I also spent some time in the goat section. Here goats seemed to sold in little herds or congregations of the beasts…

And I know most goats are fine with jumping, leaping and generally kicking around their environs, but even I was a bit surprised how they were “thrown” into a truckload filled with goats. I just took the photo to record the event, not to make a judgment call on how the goats were being treated…

There were several calves on offer, older, tougher looking cows and bulls and a smattering of carabaos… At least now I know where to go if I ever decided to try my hand at a whole roasted calf…

And I must explain the photo above. I had not planned to go to a livestock market when I went to Cebu on a business trip. The day we left for the market, I realized I only had a pair of off-white jeans (my other pants were business slacks) and had no choice but to wear them to market. But in a bit of Pigman karma, probably for having roasted so many of their relatives, and despite taking great care during the first five minutes at the market, I got POOPED on by a pig in a passing truck! YUCK is right. But that was okay, I would understand if it was intentional. It doesn’t look bad in the photo above, but a big chunk of poop dropped down into the cuff of my pant leg, and it smelled vile all the way home… :)

So what do the vendors, buyers, traders and visitors eat when they have cut their deals? Roast pig, of course. It looked great, but the skin wasn’t crisp at all… :)

The post Livestock “Auction” Market appeared first on Market Manila.

Ever since the No Reservations Philippines episode of Anthony Bourdain, I have received dozens and dozens of requests to purchase the same kind of lechon served in that show. The subsequent feature on Jessica Soho’s program only increased the inquiries for the accupunctured pig. I have steadfastly responded that it is not for sale. Well, now it is. At least on an experimental basis. My office crew in Cebu have been on my case to allow them to try their hand at an entrepreneurial effort, so the result is ZUBUCHON. Zubu was the designation for the island of Cebu in a few of the really old Spanish and Portuguese maps of the Philippine archipelago, so ZUBUCHON is the crew’s brand name for our unique style of lechon.

Now first let me say what ZUBUCHON is not. We do not use MSG. We do not use mixes of any sort such as sinigang mix, ginisa mix, etc. We do not use paintbrushes to paint the skin with soy sauce, and we do not use blowtorches to even out the caramelization of lechon skin. We do not use very large pigs for sale by the kilo (these pigs at 45+ kilos live weight tend to have more fat content). We do not extract any of the prime meat inside the pig before cooking (some folks remove the tenderloins). We do not have a smooth shell-lacqued skin.

ZUBUCHON is about doing things the old fashioned way. We carefully select our pigs from folks who generally raise them in their back yards, not from large commercial piggeries. As such, we feel we pay a fair price with little intermediation to the individuals who actually raise the pigs, even if we must drive an hour away to obtain them. We often “fatten up” our pigs for several days or weeks before they are slaughtered. We use only the freshest and often home grown organic lemongrass, green onions, siling labuyo or peppers, local sea salt, and other herbs and spices. We use good olive oil. And we prepare, accupuncture and cook the pig by hand, with no mechanized systems at all. We cook the pigs on natural bamboo poles over charcoal purchased from small scale manufacturers in the highland towns of the province. And yes, our lechon probably costs more than any other lechon for sale in the city of Cebu. But it doesn’t get more artisanal than this. And I hope you will find that it’s worth the small price premium. :)

So if you live in Cebu, and have been pining to try this pig, now is your chance. The crew is going to try their hand at running this lechon business from now until the Christmas holidays, to see how it fares. Any profits at this point will be split amongst all of the crew that participate in the effort. No profit will accrue to Marketman. And remember, this might not be what you normally expect in a lechon. What you will get is something with a slightly uneven colored and blistered skin, that looks less traditionally “attractive” but which is hopefully quite crisp, and whose meat is naturally perfumed with fresh herbs and spices.

There are two ways to try ZUBUCHON… If you just want to try a kilo or two, then go to:

BANILAD TOWN CENTER
Sunday Market in the Lobby
Sundays, 10am-1pm
Zubuchon at PHP385/kilo (practically at cost, this would cost PHP600+ a kilo in Manila!)

If you want to order a whole lechon, please call at least 3 days in advance:

ZUBUCHON
032-236-5264 (M-F 9am-4pm)
Look for Edrid or Beverly
Free Delivery within 15 minutes drive of the Capitol building.
Price is based on the size of pig, not the supposed number of people it might feed. And if you compare prices with others, ask them for the approximate LIVE and COOKED weight of their lechons.
Lechons from PHP4,000-PHP6,000

The crew can only do a maximum of 2-3 pigs per day at this point, so please call early to reserve your lechon (particularly for weekend orders). They will gracefully decline your orders if they can’t do them justice. Many thanks in advance to readers who decide to give the crew’s new lechon venture a chance… :)

The post Zubuchon appeared first on Market Manila.