this past sunday, my pal, michael symon, hosted an s.o.s. (share our strength) benefit at lola that featured a bunch of the best chefs in the country who also happen to be female. to welcome them to cleveland and give everyone a chance to bond, mikey had a get-together for 40ish people the night before at his house. he called me to take care of the food for it, which was an honor, but a little scary too. cooking for some of the best chefs in the country? yikes! anyway, ben and i decided that a latino-style pig roast would fit the bill pretty nicely. you can see the star of the show at the right. anyway, we put together a pretty cool menu using all locally raised ingredients (except limes and avocados) and set about making our plans. besides the pig, we did a bluegill and roasted corn ceviche, shrimp, chantrelle, and l.e.c. bluma empanadas, jicama lettuce rolls, black beans, crawdads, and all sorts of other things. my partner, joan, set up a beautiful table and we spent the day smoking our little porcine friend and working on all of the prep for this special event. thanks to a borrowed smoker/grill/trailer, we were able to drive our piggy over to the east side still hot and finish him on site. the party went incredibly well and everyone seemed to enjoy the food...or at least managed to lie convincingly. Highlights of the event were michael and liz's dogs eating an entire wheel of manchego cheese off of the buffet and traci des jardins (sp? sorry!) pulling the delicious pig cheeks out with her hands. awesome! it was an all-around excellent event and i think mikey was happy too, which makes me happy. i met some new people and got to see a lot of friends from the business who don't usually get to make it out on a saturday night. i privately felt like someone was missing from the group, but that's another story for another time.
