Lechon Party People!

considering that i've been living in cebu for the better part of four years, i haven't written about the famous cebuano "lechon". manilenos always ask for lechon every time someone from Cebu flies over. never mind that it is not exactly hand carry material, that and the oh-so-crispylicious-skin resemble rubber by the time the plane does a landing in manila.

that aside, i was invited to a lechon party over the weekend. we're not celebrating anything, people just wanted to have a reason to gut some pig, stick them in a pole and roast them for hours over a coal pit.


they also served the sinfully rich ginger-fragrant dinuguan (pig's blood stew) and puso, an ingenious way of cooking rice grains stuffed inside a coccoon made out of coconut leaves and boiled until it becomes glutinous and sticky. "puso" is unique to cebu and form half of a balanced diet: a barbecue in one hand, puso in another.



suffice to say that it took less than an hour to devour the whole pig, as they say: sarap to the bone!

even then, the carcass will be cut up and recycled as the mildly sour cebuano version of the lechon paksiw or fried to a crisp in a marinade of garlic, peppercorn and soy sauce for the ultimate lechon adobo.

if you're inclined to taste this dish, you can buy by the kilo in lechon stalls all over the city, the most famous of which is CNT's. For whole roasted pigs, Alejos can deliver door-to-door. For the pretentious-dieter, you can also ask Alejos to do a liposuction before roasting the pig. Yup, roasted pig without the fat.

Comments

Anonymous said…
how do i contact alejo's? isn't the lechon a bit thin after the "liposuction"?
5:58 PM
Erich Jao said…
If I were to come up with a crime on a whim, it is the posting of food with picturs almost so real that the aroma wafted out the stills. And to describe the sumptous feast with the location so far away... that is a sin of great magnitude.
5:19 AM
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