If lighter fluid didn’t do the job, though, there were other ways of heating things up: namely, using a cordless leaf blower as a high-powered bellows. St. Romain strode down the line of burning logs, stopping every few feet to put on his wraparound sunglasses and inject a blast of air into the heart of the fire, sending sparks flying from the lumber and turning what had to that point been a modestly-sized blaze into a furnace. It was Cajun ingenuity at its finest.
St. Romain and his team would tend the fire through the night, moving the hogs closer or further from the flames as necessary, waiting for the sunrise to signal the start of the second stage of cochon de lait: the breakdown.