Carne-val 2024
I start each Meatwave season with a schedule that purposefully does not have any events during the summer because the heat and humidity here in central North Carolina is no joke. Invariably, weather or commitment conflicts have forced schedule changes and I end up hosting at least one cookout during those sub-optimal months. 2024 was on track to be the first time my best intentions would come to fruition, but then I got a little nervous as the forecast ticked the temperature into 90 degree-plus territory as event day approached, but a cold front ended up settling in about an hour before showtime. The clouds and dip in the temp that brought rendered the day fairly pleasant and let Carne-val continue the 2024 trend of some of the best Meatwaves ever.
I use Carne-val as my excuse to smoke up large roasts of meat, which usually means brisket and/or pork butt. I went for the pork this year and finally tried my hand at cochinita pibil which is traditionally pit-roasted Mayan roast suckling pig. Pork shoulder stood in for the suckling pig, and instead of being buried in the ground with coals, I cooked the banana-leaf wrapped pork in the smoker. Once fully tender, I pulled the meat and set it out to be assembled into tacos with toppings like sour orange pickled red onions, super spicy chile tamulado, cotija, lime, and radish.
While I was at it, I made a double recipe of the cochinita pibil marinade and divided it between the pork and jackfruit. The jackfruit also got smoked and then shredded, offering the vegetarian constituency tacos that didn't differ all that much from the meaty ones.
I let cochinita pibil drive the influence of the rest of the menu, and that led me to pollo Yucateco asado. Instead of whole chicken though, I used the sour orange-based marinade on only wings to make it finger food-friendly. These wings were pretty incredible, embedded with a strong sourness that made them taste pretty unique from any wing I've made before.
While I had tacos on my mind, I used this day as an opportunity to adapt a chicken tinga recipe I developed for Serious Eats for outdoor cooking. Tinga is chipotle based, so it doesn't really need more smoke, but I still chose to smoke a couple whole birds and them pull them and mix the tender meat into the tinga sauce. I put a little too much chicken into the sauce, so it diluted the strong spicy and earthy flavor a bit, but it was still damn tasty never-the-less.
Like I did with the cochinita pibil, I also doubled up on the tinga sauce and made a vegetarian version. I had intended to use Soy Curls as the "meat," but didn't realize I had to special order those, so looked for an alternative at the last minute. I settled on a mixture of roasted cauliflower and shiitake mushrooms that delivered on the flavor and heft to put it on par with chicken. Only after I roasted the cauliflower in the oven did I think that I could have grilled it instead for extra flavor and it then could have been an appropriate recipe for this site too...c'est la vie.
There's a large child crowd at the Meatwave these days, so I always try to remember to cook something up specifically for them. I made a large batch of cheese quesadillas on the grill and while I was at it, I also did a more "adult" version that added in sweet potatoes and rajas (roasted pepper strips). These quesadillas ended up being a favorite for many this day, so I'm glad I took the extra effort on this additional dish.
I had also made a large bowl of esquites, but since I already have a recipe for this Mexican corn side on the site, I totally forgot to snap a photo of the dish. So the photo above is from many years ago, but I felt having the sweet corn salad was such an important part of the entire meal, I wanted it to have some representation of it in the recap.
I was totally in awe when Kellyn showed up with these incredibly adorned taco cookies. I had so many questions and I don't remember all the answers, but the filling is brownies, the lime is a gummy, and those browned parts on the tortilla/cookie were hand painted on. The skill in these was so astounding there was no way I couldn't give them a proper shout out here.
And here's the pastry chef extraordinaire Kellyn with Ian, Anna, and Cody making up the start of what was yet another very well attended Meatwave.
Among the large crowd we also had Jenny, Meredith, Eric, Jessica, and Evan.
Next up are Leslie, Kim, John, and Juliana.
Lindsay won the prize of the leftover bear filled with animal crackers from Kramer dog's Bark Mitzvah the morning before.
Ryan and Ethan capturing the light in a great way.
And we close out another excellent round up with my totally biased, most favorite of attendees, Betty! Now I just need to keep my fingers crossed that when we start up the Meatwaves again in late September that the weather continues to cooperate as it has to date, and if it does, this could end up being one of the most perfect seasons ever.
