SWINE FEVER

Living high on the hog…

BOSS HOG

It’s a feverish August bank holiday weekend and I’m part of a scene being partially replicated across the length and breadth of the UK. I’m with a group of people, we’re outdoors, somewhere greenly pastoral, and we’re talking, drinking, smoking, some even dancing awkwardly to ward off the oncoming chill. And whether we’re at a party, a festival, a celebration or just with maxing and relaxing with a large group of friends, the one constant is we’re all waiting for the same thing. Only in this particular case the star of our show has gone AWOL. He’s a star that will be the subject of frenzied anticipation before he arrives fashionably late – after taking an unexpected detour at a venue down the road – encased within a sleek space-like vessel, specifically designed for his reassuringly rounded porcine frame.

Wide-eyed children gather round to gaze unerringly as a flustered-looking, slightly balding man in a butcher’s apron methodically dismantles this vessel. Once hard-bodied village toughs, with faded tattooed eulogies to their long-dead grans on crocodile tans, lick their lips and drool into their Summer Lightnings and Scrumpy Jacks as a dense waft of roast meat escapes his craft. Ladies of a certain vintage briefly pause their Chenin Blanc-fuelled conflabs for a good 30 seconds to deeply inhale the exotic aromas, grinning as beatifically as their crumbling dentures allow. All are lustily transfixed.

Forget barbeques – so terribly old hat and passé – there’s a new kid on the block and he’s got mass catering on lock. He’s the hog roast. And he’s the daddy now.

PIG BUSINESS

Along with the sudden ubiquity of the beer festival (and often in tandem with it), the hog roast is currently the du jour al fresco dining experience – achingly popular from the hoi polloi downwards for weddings, christenings, funerals, you-name-it, though not, of course, bar mitzvahs.

Research conducted by the Independent on Sunday backs this up – with a 100% increase in bookings in recent years, and a roast hog the rather unromantic star turn at 50% of British weddings (and at a recession busting £400 per pig it’s not difficult to understand why). And while its soaring popularity is undisputed it’s also estimated that 65% of hog-hosters are moonlighters, non-professional caterers with a neat entrepreneurial sideline. All that crackling is making them rich!

SQUEALADELICA

Much of its popularity, its fervent admirers allege, comes from the ‘Wow’ factor of witnessing a whole pig on a spit. From where I’m standing this is more of a damp squib. Eyes may be solemnly trained on the flustered-looking man’s gradual unsheathing of our upcoming repast but as a ceremony it leaves a lot to be desired. In turns out the pig is already cooked, clad in a not unattractive brittle-brown crackling, and after a few seconds of breathless marvelling further that yes there really is a whole pig on a spit (albeit a headless one, so which end is which?), our flustered friend starts hacking at the carcass with a Psycho knife as his cohort starts set up a serving area to his right.

  

That ‘wow factor’ is diminished further by the plated results. As a queue snakes hungrily towards the stall, those at its apex are offered a floured white bap, a chunk of moist grey flesh, some sage and onion stuffing (more Tesco Value than Paxo) and a shard or two of crackling. That’s it. Though help yourself to applesauce and salads if you so desire. As pork sandwiches go it’s adequate, nothing to write home about, even though the crackling is as irresistibly earthy and primal as it should be (though a carnivore who doesn’t like crackling isn’t worthy of the name). And while there’s plenty more for seconds, thirds if you can take it, somehow the ceremony feels slightly hollow, and a lot less than it was cracked up to be.

UNLEASH THE BEAST

And while I’ve partaken manfully and all other guests appear blissfully serene with such indulgence, it’s hard not to summon up indelible images of the boys in William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, or recall the brutal descent into savagery that unravels once a renegade Jack has killed, and roasted, his first pig. And with more crackling and jungle juice being passed around as darkness falls, the spectre of Golding’s novelised beast looms ever larger. So I take the only sensible option and make a sharp, if slightly uncoordinated, exit.