Every cook has a fantasy ingredient. The thing that sits in the back of your mind when you’re young. The thing you associate with achievement. The thing that says you’ve arrived.
For some people it’s caviar. For others it’s truffles. Maybe lobster. Maybe wagyu beef. For me, growing up as a working-class Scottish boy obsessed with food, it was a suckling pig.
Nothing announced culinary importance quite like a whole pig. A proper one. Head on. Apple in its mouth if you wanted to be particularly theatrical. Golden skin. The sort of thing that makes people stop talking when it enters a room. As a young chef, that was the pinnacle. Or so I thought.
The funny thing about travelling is that it destroys many of your assumptions. Years later I would discover that entire countries eat whole pigs as routinely as we eat roast chicken. In the Philippines, lechon isn’t an extravagance. It’s Christmas dinner. It’s weddings. It’s birthdays. It’s family celebrations. Throughout Southeast Asia whole roasted pigs appear with such regularity that nobody feels particularly impressed by them. The same thing happens across large parts of America. Spend enough time in the Carolinas, Mississippi or Louisiana and eventually somebody produces a whole hog as casually as if they’ve put sausages on the barbecue.
But before I learned any of that, the suckling pig remained my culinary Everest. And one day I finally got my chance.
At the time I was head of catering at a sports complex in Coatbridge. The job involved all the usual challenges. Budgets. Staffing. Functions. Trying to produce decent food while accountants attempted to produce smaller invoices.
Then one day an opportunity arrived. Important visitors. Council dignitaries. Senior management. People with titles. People who liked being reminded they had titles. A significant event. A showcase. The sort of occasion where everybody suddenly becomes interested in catering despite having ignored it entirely the previous week. I was told to make an impression.
Now, telling a chef to make an impression is dangerous. What management usually means is: “Please produce something memorable within budget.” What chefs hear is: “Unleash your creativity without restraint.” These are not the same instruction.
The moment I heard “important visitors” my mind went straight to the pig. This was it. My moment. My masterpiece. My opportunity to present the centrepiece I had always dreamed about.
I ordered a suckling pig. Not a portion. Not a joint. Not a piece. The entire animal.
I still remember the morning it arrived. Two people carried it into the kitchen. Two. I immediately realised there had been some sort of misunderstanding. This was not the delicate little piglet I had imagined. This thing looked like it paid taxes. I have absolutely no idea what it had been suckling. Whatever it was, I never wanted to meet it in a dark alley.
The pig was enormous. Magnificent. Terrifying. I stood staring at it for several minutes trying to reconcile reality with my expectations. Then another problem emerged. It wouldn’t fit in the oven. Not slightly. Not if we angled it. Not if we negotiated. Not if we prayed. The thing was simply too large.
Now, experienced chefs solve problems. Good chefs adapt. Bad chefs panic. I chose adaptation. Which is a much more flattering description of panic.
After considerable thought I arrived at a solution. A practical solution. A logical solution. A solution that would have horrified the pig. I cut it in half.
There’s no elegant way to say that. One moment it was a whole suckling pig. The next it was two very large pieces of pig. Like a magician’s assistant in a particularly disturbing stage act. Somewhere in the afterlife, I hope that pig forgives me. It hadn’t been raised for this. Then again, neither had I.
The good news was that both halves fitted comfortably into separate ovens. The bad news was that I now had to somehow present them as a single pig. Details. Minor details. Future Roddy’s problem.
The cooking itself went beautifully. The skin crisped. The meat remained succulent. The aroma drifting through the kitchen was extraordinary. Staff wandered through pretending to need things while secretly coming to admire the pig. Or rather the two pigs. The halves. The situation.
Hours later the moment arrived. Presentation. The great reveal. The reason we’d all gone through this madness. We arranged the pieces carefully. Decorative piping. Potatoes. Garnishes. Strategic placement. A little culinary camouflage. The sort of thing chefs have been doing since the invention of embarrassment.
And do you know what? It worked. It genuinely worked. People stared. People smiled. People pointed. Visitors gathered around it. Photographs were taken. Compliments flowed. Everything I’d imagined when I first dreamed about cooking a suckling pig. The centrepiece dominated the room.
For a brief period I felt invincible. The pig was magnificent. The guests were impressed. The food was excellent. The event was a success.
Unfortunately success and profitability maintain an uneasy relationship. The following week my boss summoned me. Now, nobody has ever been invited into an office because their pig was too successful.
The conversation focused heavily on words such as: budget, margins, costs, expenditure. Apparently my masterpiece had generated rather more admiration than profit. The pig had been expensive. Very expensive. More expensive than anybody had anticipated. Particularly my boss.
I attempted a defence. I spoke passionately about quality. Presentation. Guest satisfaction. The importance of creating memorable experiences. I suspect I even used the phrase “investment in reputation.” Management remained stubbornly attached to mathematics. Numbers won. They usually do.
The truth is the pig cost me that job. Not entirely. Life is rarely that simple. But it certainly didn’t help.
Would I do it again? That’s the trouble. I already know the answer. And it’s the same answer that’s cost me money my whole life.