mykrocosm

Fijian Lovo Feast

Here’s a great theme for your next party. A Fijian Lovo Feast is lots of fun and a great way to feed many people. This article tells you how to do it, using the methods and photos from our own feast.

Introduction

In Fijian, lovo means “earth oven”. Earth oven cooking is found in many different cultures around the world, from the Polynesian islanders to the Hopi Indians of North America. The basic concept involves burying meat and vegetables underground along with hot coals or a similar source of heat. The earth acts as an oven, trapping the heat and cooking the food over a period of many hours.

For this particular feast we cooked a whole suckling pig and five chickens, burying them at different times. We also cooked vegetables above ground in cast iron pots on coals, and we had entrees and a range of cold salads and drinks to round out the feast. However, we will only be focusing on the earth oven cooking here. You may prefer to cook the vegetables underground as well, though they will need to be buried some time after the meat.

Two Days Before

You need:

shovel
cardboard (old boxes)
chicken wire (5m)
rocks and bricks (30)
firewood (1/2 tonne)

First comes the hard part. You’ll need to dig a pit about 30 - 45cm (1 - 1.5 ft) deep and about 60cm (2 ft) wide. For cooking a pig only a length of about 1.5m (5 ft) long should be enough, for cooking both pig and chickens about 2.5m (8 ft) long. In addition, you may want to dig a shallow platform of earth at one end which can be used for above-ground cooking and somewhere to place hot bricks and coals.

If you’re digging in the lawn, cut out turf squares a foot in size and half a foot deep, place them to one side and water them. They’ll survive long enough to be replanted after the feast. Make sure you aren’t digging where there are buried pipes! Pile the rest of the dirt you dig up alongside the pit as a wind break.

You’ll need some big thick pieces of cardboard, enough to lay in the pit a couple of times over. Old boxes folded flat are great. We had an old refrigerator box which was big enough for the whole pit alone. These will be placed on top of the meat prior to piling the dirt on top. This serves two purposes: one - it helps to retain some air in the underground oven to fuel the heat, and two - it prevents you from damaging the buried meat with your shovel.

The chicken wire is useful because it can be used like a stretcher to lower the food into the pit and pull it out again without having to grapple with hot alfoil and coals. We nailed some wooden stakes along the sides of our chicken wire, though you could just grab it with sturdy gloves. We had two chicken wire stretchers, one for the pig and one for the chickens.

Prepare a pile of 20 or 30 old bricks. Alternatively you can use rocks. These will go into the fire and produce an even distribution of heat.

Don’t forget to gather the firewood as well. At least half a tonne of firewood (about four wheelbarrow loads), including thin branches and kindling.

If you have extra cardboard and time, give yourself a presentation bonus by making a tray for the carving of the meat. 1.5m long by 0.5m wide with raised edges all around, and lined with alfoil.

The Day Before

You need:

whole suckling pig, 20kg
five plump range-fed chickens

Time to get yourself a pig. We called ours Timmy.

Timmy weighed 19.7kg, head, ears, tail and all. Our friendly Mr Butcher prepared him nicely for us. He was cleanly gutted, with a big incision in the throat and a long gash right across the belly, with all the squishy bits inside removed. Mr Butcher also scored him nicely on both flanks and stuck an apple in his mouth. Timmy came taped up in a plastic bag, and spent the winter’s night on our cold bathroom floor. Obviously if you’re doing this at a warmer time of the year, you’ll have to find some way to keep your piggy cool.

In traditional earth oven cooking, the meat is wrapped in banana leaves. This has the effect of locking in the flavour and juices and keeps the meat from getting dirty. However, banana leaves aren’t easy to obtain, so we’ll make do with the alfoil. We did experiment with using fresh spinach leaves inside the alfoil to add some moisture and flavour but we found that they tended to discolour the meat.

As well as the pig you should get a few whole chickens, complete with stuffing. They complement the feast nicely and since they don’t take as long to cook they can be a handy backup dish if your guests are too hungry to wait for the pig.

This amount of meat would feed 50 or 60 people easily, or 30 people with a lot of left-overs. You can also downsize the proportions. We also did a trial run before the feast with a 4kg leg of pork which we’ll include in the cooking times below.

Cooking Times

To assist you in planning the feast day, here are the cooking times we used.

build fire and reduce to coals (2-3 hours)
suckling pig, 20kg (10-11 hours)
pork leg, 4kg (6 hours)
chickens (4 hours)

Feast Day

You need:

salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil
lots of alfoil

7.00am - Fire One

Build up the fire at the deep end of the pit, approximately 1.5m in length. Start with the usual – matches, newspaper and kindling. Add bigger wood. Put the bricks in amongst the wood to get them nice and hot. Use lots of wood, make sure you get a roaring flame at least a metre high!

8.30am - Prepare Pig

You’ll need a lot of alfoil. Tear off about 10 sheets, each about 1.5m long, enough to cover the length of the pig easily. On a nice sturdy table, lay 4 or 5 of these at cross angles to the table, partially overlapping each other and let the ends hang off the sides of the table. Now lay out 4 or 5 more lengths down the length of the table , mostly overlapping each other.

Lay Timmy on some newspapers or plastic. If you’re short of space you could put him straight onto the alfoil, but be warned, you’ll have to flip him and you don’t want to damage the alfoil.

If your piggy isn’t scored, make sure you do that now by cutting lines with a sharp knife at half-inch intervals right down his full length. Cut deep into the meat, this helps the seasoning to penetrate.

Rub Timmy’s top side liberally with olive oil inside and out. Sprinkle salt and pepper generously. Now carefully place him onto the alfoil, seasoned side down. Repeat the oil, salt and pepper process on the other side. Wrap plenty of alfoil around Timmy’s trotters to prevent them from piercing the package later.

Pack Timmy with stuffing. We used about six onions chopped in half, a full tube of lemon grass (fresh lemon grass is better if you can get it), heaps of rosemary (about 8 branches), some thyme, some garlic chives, a bunch of parsley, an apple or two, salt and black pepper - add just about anything you can think of and lots of it, it doesn’t seem to overpower the pig.

Put another 4 or so 1.5m lengths of foil on top of him along his length, tucking in where you can. Now you can take up the cross-ways lengths of alfoil you left dangling down the sides of the table and pull them over the top of him. Get still more alfoil and wrap him up snug on all sides to ensure that Timmy won’t get dirty or lose his juices. We found it convenient to bend his front trotters under him and wrap them up alongside his body.

You’ll end up with a very shiny silver mummy.

9.30am - Coals

Let the fire die down. Pretty much all the wood should be coals now. Pull out about two thirds of the bricks with tongs and place them somewhere safe. Rake the coals flat and spread the remaining bricks (about 8 or 10) evenly across them.

10.00am - Pig Burial

Arrange some foil on the chicken wire, and then place Timmy on top. With a couple of strong assistants, lift the wire and lower Timmy on top of the bricks in the pit. Place the cardboard pieces on top of Timmy, and weigh the cardboard down with some more hot bricks (about 6 or 8) distributed fairly evenly but perhaps a little more closely together where Timmy is thickest (shoulders and chest).

Here’s a great cross-section photo, showing the coals and the bricks on the bottom, the chicken wire with some alfoil on it, then Timmy the alfoil mummy, the cardboard, some more bricks and on top the first few shovels of dirt.

Now, bury that piggy! Shovel about 20cm (8″) of dirt on top. Don’t forget to cover the open side of the pit with dirt as well.

10.30am - Prepare Feast

Now’s the time to go off and prepare your entrees and other dishes or just stock up on booze.

2.30pm - Fire Two

By now, you should be seeing some moisture coming through the ground from the first oven - this is a good sign, it’s all the steam rising through the soil. The soil will be warm to the touch. Build up another fire in the second half of the pit. Repeat the preparation process for the chicken. Season and stuff the chicken with your own choice of herbs and spices. They will cook nicely in their own juices inside the alfoil.

4.30pm - Chicken Burial

Let the second fire die down to coals, and optionally move some of the coals/wood over to the shallow platform for cooking the vegetables. Repeat the process of laying half of the hot bricks in the coals, place the foil-wrapped chickens onto a stretcher and lower into the pit. Cover with cardboard and more bricks, and then cover with the remaining soil. Hopefully you have enough dirt left.

5.00pm - Prepare Feast

You should now have filled in the entire pit, except for the shallow platform at the end where you can now have a third fire to cook the vegetables, toast marshmallows, or just provide a little warmth for your extremely curious guests.

If you haven’t got the booze yet, nip out and grab a few slabs.

7.00pm - Party

Ply your guests with nibbles, entrees, drinks. Regale them with your day’s adventures.

9.00pm - Exhumation

After great fanfare, carefully remove the top soil from both pits. Remove the top layer of hot bricks with tongs. Remove the cardboard - it will be probably be charred in places but essentially intact. If you’ve removed enough dirt, you should be able to just grab the chicken wire and lift, and up comes the foil parcel. Be prepared for plenty of smoke and steam!

Transfer all the meat to your serving tray (you did make one, didn’t you?). Carefully remove the foil. First cut up the chickens and then prepare to carve the pig.