LOOKING FOR A MELTING POT? TRY THE BARBECUE PIT.
By Jonathan Gold
Washington Post
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Is there anything more democratic than a big-city park on a hot summer
afternoon, the smoke from a dozen barbecues commingling into a sweet
cloud of garlic and charred flesh, a dozen picnic tables groaning
under the weight of iced drinks and pungent salads, children whose
parents come from 20 different countries skipping and shouting and
kicking balls across the green grass?
Stews we make in our kitchens, in the bubbling pots synonymous
with home and hearth. Pan-roasted guinea hen with white wine and
pancetta is eaten in restaurants or among small groups of friends. But
grilling, the act of cooking over an open fire, is primal and ancient,
and there is no culture in the world without its version of the
ritual. Anthropologists write about the differences between pot
cultures and fire cultures — the duties of civilization versus the
more fundamental pleasures of snatching bits of meat off the village
fire — but when we’re all cooking together, the fire wins every
time. Before a smoky blaze, we are all one.
This weekend, even shopping bags made of recycled hemp will bulge with
hamburger patties, family packs of hot dog buns and paper napkins that
could double as bunting. It’s practically a patriotic obligation to
grill on the Fourth of July. But in my neighborhood, what makes it
into those shopping bags is just a bit different.
Within a few blocks of my house (I live in Pasadena, Calif.),
there are meat counters bulging with skirt, ranchera and flap steak
pre-marinated for carne asada; Lebanese butcher shops selling quail,
lamb chops and lule, the meat-bulgur concoction for the grill; places
to get sausages and prepared meats from Guatemala and El Salvador;
and markets with Louisiana hot links and glistening slabs of ribs.
When I get in the car, I’m only a few minutes from Xianxiang-style
lamb skewers and Vietnamese nem, authentic-enough Argentine bife
de chorizo and Spanish morcilla, French boudin and South African
boerwurst, Japanese teriyaki and Cambodian beef sticks that look and
taste as if they’d been soaked in Hawaiian Punch. There isn’t much
of a German community left in Los Angeles, but fresh weisswurst and
smoked pork chops appear wherever they happen to gather.
The boundaries of the Peruvian diaspora here can be traced by
the presence of beef heart, ready to be turned into spicy grilled
anticuchos, in the meat cases of local markets; the Muslim diaspora
by skewered goat. You don’t even have to roll your windows down to
know when you’ve cruised into a Korean neighborhood on a holiday
afternoon — the air is almost blue with sweet, pungent smoke rolling
from charring bulgogi, and wads of blackened aluminum foil can be
spotted in distinctive backyard middens.
One of the biggest promotions at Dodger Stadium is Carne Asada Sunday,
started by former third baseman Nomar Garciaparra a few years ago,
when thousands of fans line up for a chance to eat spicy grilled-beef
tacos and meet the Dodger players. For the first event, Garciaparra, a
Mexican American local hero who grew up in nearby Whittier, supervised
the recipe himself.
On Independence Day, the cookout ritual is as vital as the fireworks
display. And as German American grilling traditions grew a century ago
to become Texas barbecue; as old rancho fiesta menus evolved to become
California patio cooking; as African peppery sauces and genius for
transforming spare parts drove the menus of pits from Alabama to Kansas
City and beyond, the Fourth of July barbecue has expanded to include
the grilled ribs cooked by second-generation Hmong in Minneapolis; the
small birds grilled by fourth-generation Armenian Americans in Fresno;
the garlicky whole pigs roasted in wooden boxes by Cuban Americans
in Tampa; and the marinated boar and fantastic lemongrass-scented
sausages grilled by Thai Americans in California’s San Fernando Valley.
In Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s now-famous 2001 speech
delivered at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law,
she confessed that her Latina identity included Puerto Rican dishes
such as blood sausage, pigs’ feet with chickpeas, and fried pigs’
tongue and ears. At least a few conservative critics pondered whether
her pride in her heritage, including her taste in food, might influence
her verdicts, wondering whether a justice who preferred pernil to
prime rib could be counted on to be impartial and fair.
Food has become inextricably connected with personal identity. But
sometime in the 2040s, the United States is projected to become a
majority-minority country. Texas, New Mexico, Hawaii and California are
majority-minority states right now. Maryland isn’t far behind. And the
crackling, fragrant cooking of the great mosaic on Independence Day
is as authentic, and as patriotic, as the hot dogs and hamburgers
withering to a crisp right now on suburban Webers across the
nation. This culture of grilling is not just Filipino, or Yemeni, or
Polish, or Dominican: It’s American culture, as American as pizza pie.
Jonathan Gold writes about food and restaurants for L.A. Weekly
and Gourmet.