Oh lake Havasu...It is destined to happen someday. But not today.
Anyway, I was still happy as a clam to be spending my week in my favorite city with my favorite people. Patton Oswalt (one of my heroes!) even came to Grand Rapids for laugh fest, and Eric and I had tickets to his show. Patton Oswalt's hilarious life commentary had sustained us on a number of road trips, and seeing him live was really special.
Where is Patton Oswalt in this picture you may ask?
Funny story. Toward the end of his set, he backed up against a free standing curtain that was serving as a backdrop for the show, and the entire apparatus came crashing to the ground. It was pretty clear he was unscathed when he leapt to his feet and incorporated the accident into about 10 extra minutes of jokes while roadies rushed around clearing beams and sheathes of cloth from the stage floor. He was fantastic - truly a master at work.
Along with seeing great comedians, our friends also found a saturday night to get together and celebrate how much we just enjoy each other's company -- with a dinner party!
This wasn't just any dinner party.
For the longest time, we've all been enormous fans of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' -- a great comedy about the most terrible people in existence.
In one episode, the gang goes to the jersey shore for a little r&r. Frank (played by Danny DeVito -- and you don't have to know anything about the show, the man plays himself), decides to make a rum ham. This is a ham soaked in rum so that he can "eat his drinks" on the beach. Ingenious! Naturally, we had to try to make this. But after some internet research, it turns out it's actually a horrible idea the way it's presented in a show.
Thank God for greek life, several fraternities had tried soaking ham in rum. The result? A repulsive ruined ham and a major waste of rum. Merely soaking the ham in rum doesn't work. We were not discouraged. A few posts down on the thread, someone had posted their interpretation of "rum ham" and this sounded so good, we had to give it a try.
This internet recipe had no formal units or instruction, but luckily, I made note of the guestimation that went into our delicious result.
So, special thanks to user "Gravyshanks" (http://imgur.com/a/F8HWX) for this awesome recipe which I will list out below.
Ingredients
6-7 lb pork shoulder roast
2 fifths of bottom-shelf spiced rum
64 oz pineapple juice
2 tbs whole cloves
2 tbs black peppercorns
4 oz blackstrap molasses
3 cups of light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups of salt
Tools
meat thermometer
meat injector
ridged cast iron griddle
2-3 gallon ziplock bag
Step 1: Brine
In a large saucepan, bring the rum to a rolling boil for 2 minutes (do NOT put your face over that unholy cloud of steam rolling off the surface unless you actually want to be knocked out).
Add the peppercorns and cloves, boil for another minute.
Reduce heat to a simmer, and stir in molasses.
In a separate bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups of salt and 1 1/2 cups of light brown sugar.
Pour the warm rum mixture over the salt and sugar. Add about a cup of water, and stir until the salt and sugar have dissolved.
Place shoulder roast into the ziplock bag.
Place the roast in the bag into a clean mixing bowl (for stability).
Pour brine over the roast -- make sure the roast is fully submerged in the brine.
Press excess air out.
Refrigerate for 24 hours.
Step 2: Marinate
Remove roast from brine solution, and place in mixing bowl.
Use meat injector in several locations (8-10) to inject brine into the roast.
Pour pineapple juice over the roast (should be fully submerged).
Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Step 3: Cook
Remove roast from pineapple juice (at this point, we cut the roast in half to potentially reduce cooking time, as our party was fast approaching, so this left us with two 3 pound roasts - this was a lot more manageable logistically).
Heat ridged cast iron griddle on a burner (I don't know what the real name for this thing is, so here's a picture).
Rub the roast with the remaining light brown sugar, and more salt.
Place the roast on the cast iron skillet to caramelize the outside of the roast (warning: this will cause a giant smoke cloud! If you have a grill, that's probably the ideal way to do this, but we opened some windows at the house was fine).
Place the skillet with the roast and all, into the oven at 350 degrees and bake for about 4 hours. This part is actually more up to you, we could have baked this for less time, but we were a little worried about food poisoning and waited for an internal temperature of 220 to be safe. And just in case you were wondering whether the over baking dried it out, this thing was falling off the bone when we took it out of the oven.
We carved it and served with cheesy potatoes, pasta salad, and broccoli salad.
Our 6.5 pound roast served the 11 people that were over, and was PERFECT.
Unfortunately for Sunny fans, this deliciousness will NOT give you an edible buzz. But really, who cares? I can't wait to pull this recipe out again.
And if you're really in a party mood, we also combined rum, butter, dried sage, and pineapple juice to make a rum glaze that was also good served over the carved roast (although it tasted considerably alcoholic -- I'd rather drink mine in some Coke).
