Summertime and the livin’s easy — why not loosen up, party down and pig out in the backyard with friends and family? Hosting a pig roast can make for a memorable, fun and delicious experience (so long as your guest of honor doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight with a real hog).
This past Memorial Day marked the 19th pig roast Ian Macdonald, assistant manager at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrence, has prepared for an annual celebration in Virginia, at which between 300 and 500 people typically attend. “You can get fancy with all kinds of rubs and splashes and mops,” says Mr. Macdonald, who favors a simpler approach. “Honestly, when I do it, it’s as much about the fun party aspect of it.”
While many people associate pork with barbecue sauce, Jim Weaver, executive chef and owner of Tre Piani restaurant in the Princeton Forrestal Village, says it can sometimes overpower the meat, especially with the delicate flavor of a suckling pig.

While snow blankets the earth, chefs dream of spring.

In February, area chefs were already contacting distributors like Mikey Azzara at Zone 7, a local gourmet produce supplier, to see what might be available in April and May. His produce lists are a culinary dream, as growers make a point of ordering the most popular new varieties from the seed catalogues.

If you’re a vegetable gardener, you know how it goes. With so many snow days this winter, it was so easy to over order on seeds. First, your overwintered herbs start coming back. Next, those tiny lettuces, spinach and Asian greens strive toward the sun, and then the first shoots of asparagus break the earth about the time your peas leaf out. You’re torn — will it be risotto with pea shoots today or with garden fresh peas in a few weeks?