Dinner at the Evan's

is always interesting and we have a great time. Last night was one for the record books and hopefully never to be repeated again. In the morning, I got up to take my daily dose of medication for my "rhummy" (rheumatoid arthritis) and made my way to the kitchen to prepare my "Kalua Pig" or smoked pork as part of my contribution towards the dinner. It's a Hawaiian dish usually dined on at luaus and events in a Hawaiian family. I always make it because it's usually requested by my friends and very easy to make. Here's the recipe:



1 pork butt approx 1-2 lbs at the butcher store

1 bottle of liquid smoke

Hawaiian salt (rock salt)

Banana leaves

Foil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a deep bowl or pot add pork butt. Coat and marinate in liquid smoke. Let it sit for 10 minutes. On a plate, lightly coat/roll the pork butt in Hawaiian salt. Transfer the salted pork to the banana leaf and roll that up. It's OK if the banana leaf splits revealing the pig because underneath the leaf, you're going to roll the banana leave/kalua pig up in the foil. Enclose the side of the foil. It should look almost like a burrito. Place your kalua pig on a deep cookie sheet to catch any liquid salt spillage from the pork. Put in oven and let it bake for 4 hours at 350 degrees. After it is done cooking, split open the foil revealing the banana leaf and pig. What you want is the pig only. Discard the foil and banana leaf. Place pig in a casserole dish and shred pig with two forks pulling away from each other. It should be moist and ready to eat.

As I was saying, the holiday dinner featured a "poor man's" gumbo dish from New Orleans made by my friend Carmen. Her mother had been cooking a wasabi mashed potato dish and had mistakenly turned on the burner for the gumbo pot which had already been turned off by Carmen. The next thing we knew, there was a billowing cloud of smoke from the gumbo pot. Mama ran to turn off the stove and put the very heavy pot, laden with shrimp, crab, sausages, chicken and other delectable spices, onto the other side of the stove. My daughter Nani and I were hurrying to open up windows and doors to let the smoke out after setting off the smoke alarms. Carmen, who was in the shower and by now was out in the kitchen wondering what the heck happened and saw that it was her pot of gumbo that had been smoking and lifted the cover and found that her gumbo was completely destroyed by being on the unwatched stove for too long. She quickly got angry at her mother and all hell broke loose as Carmen let out a barrage of verbal attacks against her mother. At one point, I had to tell Carmen to "stop it" but she wouldn't listen. The verbal attack went on to the point of Mama Diane drinking all of the rum just to escape her daughters nagging, then falling asleep at the dinner table in a drunken stupor. That pretty much ruined the mood of the evening. My family and I salvaged what we could from the gumbo which was everything that floated to the top, sausages, crab and whatever else didn't burn much. The soup did have a burning taste but when you put everything else over rice, it turned out to be a good meal after all. Carmen vowed she would throw the whole pot out and take whatever we wanted to salvage and we did. The turkey didn't get done until midnight because they put the bird in the oven too late. It was just a whole comedy of errors and what ever could go wrong did go wrong. I know Carmen won't let her mother forget this, that's just how Carmen is, she doesn't let things go very easily. After settling down and finally having dinner after midnight, it was time to go home. Carmen packed us off with food from the evening, we said our thank yous and made our way home. I've never felt so glad to be home.