Knife anil Fork.
Barbecue Is a Noun
if
«/
m:il Morgan
(In Z7;e North Carolina Leader)
I'm not one who grows nostalgic
about the cooking "back home" before
I moved to cosmopolitan California.
Hut I spent the first 20 years of my
life in North Carolina, and lately it's
astonished me to find most of the
staples of my diet in those days being
described as "soul food."
SVe knew them simply as turnip
greens and corn bread, squash and
okra and butter beans. We were not
above tucking some chitlings into our
hoe cake, and the night of the feast
was usually marked by a great vat of
Brunswick stew or barbecue.
It has taken me more than 20 years,
ever since I left the South, to realize
what is wrong with barbecue in Cali¬
fornia. Out here it's a verb. In the
South barbecue is a noun. In Cali¬
fornia barbecue is a flavor, a smoke, or
a sauce: barbecuing is something done
on a spit or over open coals.
Down South barbecue is a thing, a
finished product ready to be eaten:
crisp bits of pork clcavcrcd from a pig
that has been roasted slowly over an
open oak fire and basted over the
hours with a sauce of vinegar and red
peppers and butter. It is served with
cole slaw and corn bread, and it leaves
a sturdy impact on those who cat it.
Not long ago I wrote to Sam Ragan,
a southern newspaper editor who took
me in as a college boy and patiently
taught me the rudiments of my trade
(under the stern old-fashion atmo¬
sphere of apprenticeship in which I
was known to most editors as "Red"
or "Strawberry." depending on which
word they thought dismayed me more).
Ragan has lingered in North Caro¬
lina — he has just bought his own
weekly newspaper in Southern Pines, a
delightful winter resort community —
and remained loyal to the traditions
of the South. ( He is my closest friend
in the South, and yet even Sam finds
it impossible to understand why I do
not return to the land of pincy woods
and tobacco fields, of magnolia blos¬
soms and. not incidentally. Brunswick
stew and barbecue. )
In my letter I told Sam that my
wife and I had gone to dinner the night
before at Love’s Barbecue, one of a
chain of franchised restaurants that
have become popular in California,
and that we had spent most of our
mealtime discussing what barbecue is.
My wife was born in Oklahoma, and
she grasps the California concept of
barbecuing a pig or a chicken, a steak
or a hamburger. NVc agreed that bar¬
becue in any case requires a great deal
more than drowning some meat in a
tangy hot sauce. But I tried without
much success to get across to her the
Carolina idea of barbecue.
Ragan was quick to send news out
of the South.
"Barbecue IS a noun," he wrote,
"and I wish that I could get a few
pounds of it to you. still fresh, so that
your lost youth could be recaptured for
a while, and your wife could be intro¬
duced to one of man's greatest culi¬
nary achievements. Your memory docs
not play you tricks, and I am truly
saddened by your deprivation."
He sent along a few recipes. He
also mentioned my problem of barbe¬
cue identification in his newspaper,
and then a flood of kindly letters be¬
gan to reach me.
One was from an old "revenooer"
— a Treasury agent charged with
breaking up the illegal corn whisky
stills that scent the pincy woods of the
South. He wrote that he recalled gath¬
erings throughout his life where bar¬
becue and Brunswick stew, cole slaw
and hush puppies made up the menu.
Eastern Carolina barbecue, lie wrote,
takes its distinctive flavor from the
restraint of the cook in limiting the
sauce to vinegar and water, black and
red pepper, butter and salt.
"In some distant parts of the coun¬
try," he wrote with similar restraint,
"an overwhelming use of sugar, ketch¬
up and mustard, chili sauce and lemon
juice destroys the flavor."
Like most of the recipes sent to me.
his began with the words. "Dig a
pit. . . ." The pit is for the oak coals,
and the pig is placed on iron rods
across the top of the pit. It is cooked
for 12 hours on one side and then
turned for another few hours until
roasted. Then the meat is chopped with
a cleaver (so that juices are not ground
out), more sauce is added, and the
barbecue is served.
The recipes for Brunswick stew that
reached me have much in common with
other southern slows, especially the
burgoo of Kentucky. They are note¬
worthy for the volume of ingredients,
for a Brunswick stew is best made in
large quantities in cast-iron pots over
open fires.
“Take four lbs. stew beef. 10 lbs.
hens. 2 lbs. lean pork chunks." one
recipe began. "Two squirrels make an
excellent addition. Add one gallon lima
beans, one gallon kernel corn, one gal¬
lon tomatoes, five pounds cubed po¬
tatoes. three pounds chopped onions,
and two pounds mixed vegetables."
From then on it is a matter of sim¬
mering. and in the South there is still
lots of time for simmering.
Since we arc short on pits in the
ground and on squirrels where we live.
I don't guess we'll be establishing tra¬
ditions for barbecue or Brunswick stew
here in California. But it is nice to
know that those faraway memories arc
not yet unreal.
THE STATE, March 1. 1969
