Christmas Book Bash with CARIDAD PINEIRO Giveaway #11

Please help me welcome romance
author Caridad Piñeiro as our eleventh giveaway!

Thank you so much to Talina for having this fabulous Christmas bash!  It’s so much fun to be with you here today to share a little bit about my holidays and my new release, Stay the Night.

My signature dish for Christmas is a Cuban-style citrus-marinated roast pork. We, because it is a family affair to cook this dish, start preparing it the night before after a trip to Union City, New Jersey to pick up some Cuban staples and the pork leg.

I normally feed anywhere from 15 to 25 people on Christmas Eve, so I need a really really big pork leg (pork shoulder/picnic ham/pernil). I normally get a piece of pork that weighs around 25 pounds, but you can buy a much smaller piece and adjust the cooking times (more on that later).

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Ingredients:
10-15 navel oranges
10 lemons
10 limes
6-8 Seville (aka Sour) Oranges
6 pink grapefruit
10-20 gloves of finely chopped garlic
Ground cumin
bay leaves
Pork leg/shoulder/picnic ham

Directions:   

Juice all the above citrus into a large pot. We use one of those large buckets in which your grocery store deli get its potato salad, etc. Drop by and ask them for one! Ours is only used for the Christmas Eve pork.

The citrus mix should be sour, but with a strong hit of sweet (the navel oranges and grapefruit really help with that). You should have enough citrus juice to fully cover your piece of pork. Once you’ve tasted the sweet/sour mix, then add 3 to 4 bay leaves, about a half cup of garlic (less for a smaller piece of pork) and about 1/4 cup of cumin. Mix this all up.

Take your piece of pork and make multiple slits in it so that the marinade can penetrate into the meat. Place the pork leg in the citrus juice, cover and refrigerate. You’re probably wondering how I keep that big a bucket cold? Put the bucket in one of those big party tubs, place it in your garage (which should be slightly colder anyway) and fill the tub with ice. It should be icy cold in the morning unless you are in a really hot environment in which case you will need to keep on adding ice to keep the meat cold.

In the morning (around 6 a.m. or so) pre-heat the oven to 425. Remove the pork from the citrus and place it in a large roasting dish. Keep some of the citrus juice, bay leaves and garlic for use as a marinade. Discard the rest. Ladle about 1 to 2 cups over the pork and then stick the pork into the oven for one hour at 425. For a small piece of pork, cut down this initial high temp roast accordingly. For ten pounds make it around 30 minutes, anything smaller than that no more than about 15 minutes.

Do not baste the pork during this high heat roast.

When the high heat roast time is up, baste the pork and lower the oven temp to 325. Then cook until the meat pulls away from the bone in the leg and is starting to fall off. Marinate every half an hour during the cooking process. For a 25 pound pork leg, I will cook it for about 8 to 9 hours. The pork will turn this beautiful mahogany brown and just melt in your mouth.

For smaller pieces of pork, adjust the cooking times. A 10 pound picnic ham may take only about 4 or so hours. The key is to keep on basting and cooking at a low temp to keep the meat juicy.

If the pork begins to brown too much, just cover with aluminum and keep on cooking until the meat is fork tender.

I hope you’ll try my family’s roast pork recipe one day and I hope you all have a lovely Christmas.

As I mentioned, my latest release is Stay the Night, a sexy story about Navy Seal Rafe Castillo who is coming home after spending months away from his wife.  They’ve been married for five years, but have spent more time apart than together.  In that time, Elena, Rafe’s wife, has grown and changed and Rafe is afraid that he’s been left behind.

Stay the Night is a touching, emotional and very sexy story about how a husband and wife take a chance during one night to see if their love is strong enough to keep them together for the future.

You can purchase Stay the Night at the following retailers:
Amazon | Nook
Kobo | iBooks
All Romance

Thanks again to Talina for letting me visit with her and I hope you all have a fabulous holiday!  To help make your holidays a little better, I’ve got a giveaway for you!  Leave a comment about one of your favorite holiday traditions for a chance to win a $10 gift card and an e-copy of the Take a Chance box set.

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giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you for being here today Caridad, and thank you, readers, for stopping by! Please share this giveaway with your friends! Send them over so they can get a chance at awesome prizes.  :) Stop back in at 10 a.m. for our next last giveaway!