Not exactly al pastoral…

I have a ridiculously good relationship with my mom.  We’re besties, we crack each other up, and we bust each other’s chops.  Think Gilmore Girls, but, you know, Bengali.  So for I don’t know, maybe like the last 15-20 years, we’ve had a long-running mock war of attrition over a kitchen item.  I am powerless to resist watching infomercials.  I love them, cannot get enough of them.  Late at night, I’ve been fixated for a full half hour as women have pulled the unfortunately named Australian product “Nads” from their legs to wax at home.  You can probably see where this is going.  Ever since I’ve been aware of its existence, I have hungered for a Ronco rotisserie like the Christmas Story kid wanted his bb gun.  And my mother, not unreasonably, dug in and said no, I wouldn’t use it, it’s likely not as awesome as Ron Popeil makes it out to be, etc. etc.  Now, I have had a job since my college days, pay my own way, and could absolutely have purchased one for myself.  But it was my single-minded goal that my mother buy it for me, and her equally obstreperous position that she would never do so.  She has spent more than I care to admit on fabulous, thoughtful, frivolous gifts for me, including a massive Bliss Spa gift card, gorgeous cashmere goodies, and all manner of pricey luxuries.  Yet the $200 Showtime Rotisserie was somehow a bone of contention.

Fortunately I have married into an exceedingly tolerant family, who find such weirdnesses hilariously delightful.  Apparently my husband’s grandmother was also keen on infomercials, and in an ill-advised moment, purchased two rotisseries for a steal and gave one each to her son and daughter.  That’s how it came to be that one day I received in the mail a heavy-ish package from my husband’s awesome aunt.  It continued a used-only-once-and-dear-lord-it-filled-the-house-with-smoke-sorry-but-in-case-you-actually-want-it Showtime Compact Rotisserie.   My husband used it once for a roast chicken, but I only saw the end product (good!) but he grumbled about the rotisserie’s terribleness and so it had just been hanging out on our counter.

Regular readers of this blog (all 3 of you) might recall that I had made an al pastor marinade and used it on chicken recently.  Pineapple, fresh orange juice, garlic, onions, chipotles, chipotle sauce, guajillo peppers, and such, pureed in the food processor.  So yesterday I dumped a 1 kilo-ish pork shoulder into it.  The shoulder was sort of oddly spread open, like the butcher had taken the bone out but not fully butterflied it.

So, today, I placed plastic wrap on it, pounded it out a bit with a meat mallet, and then added a big handful of cilantro and parsley, along with some orange zest, into the middle.  I rolled it up and used four of the Ronco elastic ties to sort of truss the roll.  Then my husband I wrestled with getting the damn thing loaded onto the weird prongs of the rotisserie.  We wanted to be sure to spear the pork, and have the prongs show up on the other side of it so as to place on the closing mechanism.  It took a few minutes, but we, as they say here, “did the needful.”

Next came loading the actual rotisserie.  Turns out the prongs-spit thing is just a little too short for the machine, and so it keeps dropping out of its slotted space.  Every time we tried to turn on the rotisserie function, it displaced the prongs, so we had to turn it off and place it again.  I say we, but this task fell to my husband.  Also, the included protective gloves seem to have disappeared.  Apparently at some point the housekeeper wore them to clean the bathroom, so they had to be retired.  So, my husband, using cloth oven gloves, kept readjusting the prongs.  Finally, using 2 cutting boards under the back end of the rotisserie seemed to tip it such that the prongs were only minorly displaced, and could still turn the meat without smacking it around on the surfaces or the heating element.  So, we were finally close to being able to “set it and forget it!”  From my light Googling of Showtime Rotisserie cooking times, pork shoulder was due to take 30 minutes per pound, so we let it go for about an hour and ten minutes.  I must admit, it looked glorious turning away in the rotisserie, and came it out stunning:

I let it rest for some time.  I quality assured a couple of bits which had dropped to the bottom, and they were sublimely delicious.  However, when I cut into the whole roast, it was still really pink inside.  SIGH.  I fired up the cast iron, and sliced it all up.  The meat got 3 minutes per side in the pan on medium-high, and that did the trick.

My husband is a big fan of cubanos, so for him, I sliced “panini bread”, as the package called it, loaded it up with ham, swiss cheese, mustard, pickles, and some of the pork, and put it into that same cast iron pan with a grill press:

For me, there was the tail end of a bag of tortilla chips, which I topped with shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, and homemade guac for some al pastor nachos.

It was good.  I just don’t know if it was “wrangle this devilish machine for 30 minutes, fear piercing your fingers on the weird prongs-spit, watch your husband howl with frustration, find 2 odd-sized cutting boards to steady the machine, wind up with undercooked meat” worth it, if you see what I mean.  Will we use it again?  Maybe.  But Ron Popeil was not entirely honest with me about the ease of use of his gadget, and frankly, I am disappointed.  If you can’t trust a television huckster, what in this life is reliable?!  The absolute worst part of this?  How much I HATE having to admit that my mom was totally right.  As usual.

Later this evening I intend to drown my sorrows in some ice cream.   This city has really fantastic ice cream, and it always surprises me when people go for insanely expensive imports.  We love the local place Naturals.  Most of their flavors have 3 ingredients– fruit, milk, and sugar.  The tender coconut is delicious, the fig is spectacular, and the sitaphal (custard apple), which is only available in season, is utterly divine.  But tonight it will be another seasonal flavor, lychee, on one of their gorgeous waffle cones (several times when I’ve been to the shop, a dude is outside making cones using a little waffle maker, and they sell these delicious confections for a mere 10 rupees a pop! I get a package or two of ice cream and 6-10 cones when I go, which lasts a while.)

Tomorrow I plan to bring you a truly special, never-before-seen (as far as I know) recipe of my own invention, so stay tuned!