On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 14:42:51 +0200, Werner Saurer
> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>first of all I'd like to express my deepest sympathy for the people of
>Louisiana and other states that were hit by this terrible disaster. I
>hope things will work out better than they appear to now.
>
>But to take your mind off these horrors for a bit, let me ask you for
>some advice. I built a clay oven (from clay mixed with straw and sand)
>not too long ago and it works wonderfully for baking pizzas, Flammkuchen
>(or tarte flambee)or the Indian bread naan. The oven is fired with wood
>and gets very hot after 2-3 hours (a pizza takes about 1 min with a very
>crisp crust!). The other day I tried to bake bread with a store-bought
>bread mix and it came out a lump of charcoal after one hour of baking
>(the fire had been cleared out after I had baked a number of pizzas and
>before I put the bread dough in). I guess I'll have to experiment a
>little more. I must have put the bread in too early, should have let the
>oven cool off a bit first.
>
>Now I would like to roast a suckling pig in my oven. But naturally this
>is too expensive to experiment with. Does anyone have any experience
>with this sort of thing? At which temperature to put the thing in the
>oven, for how long?
>
>Thanks,
>
> Werner from Saarbruecken, Germany

Hello Werner!
Have you considered "rotisserie" cooking your pig? Also, you can cut
the carcass so that it "fans open" without cutting all the way through
the backbone and lay the whole carcass backside down on a grill over
"low heat" so that you can cook it for several hours. When you cut the
pig, tell the butcher that the backbone should function as a "hinge"
cut through the backbone but not all the way through the meat on the
back so you can spread open the carcass to lay it flat on a
grill...with the backside down on the grill...using low heat to cook
very slowly! Keep the lid down on your grill to hold the heat in most
of the time. Keep an eye on it to make sure it does not catch on fire.
It has alot of grease in it so you do not have to worry about the meat
drying out. That's the way alot of folks in the Carolinas cook a pig.

I cooked a pig that weighed about 100 pounds that way...it was
delicious!

Regards,
Bill