Wanted: Dead or Alive

There was the time...

I was presented a plate at a friend’s house that had four little ribs that had been barbecued over an outside grill laying next to an ice cream cupped mound of potato salad with a little pile of green peas.They were all set on a nice plain white plate. I looked at it and ate them, smiling at my host at the texture of the meat I was chewing, smacking at the just enough sweetness of the potato salad and neatly filling my fork of the green peas.

Then, there was the time...

I got excited over a package of Chimichurri in the frozen section of my favourite London grocery shop. When I got home I pre-heated the over, took out the ingredients, cut the packaging from the mixture of stuff, looked for a bun but there wasn’t one, so substituted some whole wheat bread to make the sandwich, placed the mixture in a baking rack and had to wait way too long to delve into my great memory of Dominican street food. When the time arrived I dished the simple sausage and bag of mixed dark sauces onto the lower slice of bread. It didn’t flow. It just went on the bread and sat there. I put the other slice over it, raised it to bite and bit. It was nice but just nice.

And then, there was the time...

A long time ago I went to a friend’s house to have Louisiana Chili Gumbo and of course I had big expectations that stemmed from my visit to my father’s home town of New Orleans. You know where I am going with this, don’t you? There were the ingredients for a Chili Gumbo on top of rice with each piece of sausage, chicken, onion, celery, tomato identifiable. It was served on a really nice, deep bowel and the serving was not like I was going to starve either.

Now, you ask why am I writing about food I am criticising? Because there are alternatives to our ideas on what we eat and how we eat. There have been times when a life depended on a meal. I mean, life and death depending on a recipe and presentation.

Case in point were my buddies Andre and Bob.

Andre loved a good barbecue. A good barbecue, but he did not like my buddy named, well, we will call him Bob. Well, Bob owed Andre some money, a lot of money, and Andre in seeking to find something he liked about Bob for my sake, said, ‘If you can fix up some good barbecued ribs I won’t break your knees and you will have another week before you need to pay me.’ 

Now, Bob thought that he was a good cook but he knew nothing about barbecuing so he went on line and looked it up and produced what I have above when I went to Bob’s house at Andre’s invitation. I didn’t know anything about the deal, but I also love a good barbecue and Andre knew that. So, when this dish was presented I ate it and smiled and I even asked for more rib. Bob gave me three and Andre wasn’t eating his so I started to think it was a joke, like they were being poncy or something at my expense. After I finished off the ribs, I looked up at them and felt a tension so deduced that there was a bet going on. 

I put down my napkin after barely wiping my mouth and said, ‘Okay, what is this? Why the hooty tooty food, you guys?’ 

Andre answered, ‘What do you think about the rib?’ 

Bob looked a little scared, so I said, ‘Bob, ribs gots to have juice to them, ya know. When they look like this, you know, they look dead. I know they are dead but the smell and the look is what makes the taste seem alive.’ I nodded, ‘You know, barbecue comes from an Arawak-French word, boucain, which is how the first Caribbean pirates, you know, boucaineers, buccaneers, preserved their beef and were able to sell it to passing ships off of the Island now called Tortuga?’

Bob said that he didn’t know that. 

I continued, ‘So, when you think of that and you are cooking, you should think of sauces that drip off of bones with meat hanging with a timing that meets your mouth and flavours that send you to the Caribbean. Get it?’

Andre interrupted, ‘I didn’t know that, man. Pirates, eh? That’s why I love it so much.’ He turned to Bob and said, ‘Let’s go down to Willy’s Kansas City Hickory-kilned Hot Ribs and you see what Walter means. That hit it for me, Walter, and we can tell Willy about it. I bet he thought it was slave food, not free man food. That’s so cool, man.’

On the lighter side...

Now, Chimichurri. I found Chimichurri by accident along the Malecon in Santo Domingo when my buddy Jamie and I were quite intoxicated. That day we had interviewed the wealthiest guy in the Dominican Republic while being a bit off, and he went along with it. He even told us to go to the Malecon, the street bordering the seafront in Spanish speaking seaside towns, and get the best sandwich in the world. Dominican Republic has some of the best food in the world to me, so I took this being an American, as a challenge to our BLT. I had to write the name down though, Chimichurri, to remember it. 

Me and Jamie actually forgot about the sandwich on our night on the town that was continuing from the day on the town but we both were attracted to a smell that became a bouquet that became an aroma that became a street stand that faced the sound of the ocean beating against the stone sea wall. The stand stood under a yellow street lamp which sort of made the scene inviting. We followed the aroma to the sound, between the sea crashes, of sizzling and popping. The cook was turning over thick sausages, sliced into two sides for a smartly dressed couple who were waiting patiently for their servings. I spotted a beggar-looking guy sitting on a bench on the other side of the street stand gnawing ferociously on something in a white wrapping. In the yellow light he looked like a lion with his wild hair and the tearing at whatever was in that wrapper.

The couple moved away with similarly wrapped sausage in buns and their faces were all smiles and they greeted us with approving nods. We looked at the other sausages grilling and secreting juices onto a charcoal bed that shot up little flames with blue and orange twists of colour. The aroma made my jaw water. Ever have your jaw water? Both of us pointed at the sausages and the cook named the order, Chimichurri and I nodded grateful that he knew the name. I was a bit rummed up and only remembered that he would naturally know the name if he was cooking it. Anyway, he turned a couple of them over and my stomach was trying to get through my mouth to pull them in but I restrained it.

The cook put two opened buns on a heated pan that smelled of onion and butter. He then picked up one bun and laid it opened on a wooden platter that had square sheets of the white paper waiting. He softly laid the sausage on the bun as though putting the halves to bed. I thought of putting my daughter to bed. He took a wooden spoon and dipped it into a large open mouth jar and scooped out something sort of red in the yellow light and gunked it onto the sausage. Gunked is the only word I can use. He gently put the other half of the bun on top, wrapped it up and handed it to me. I handed him some money, not sure how much but he gave me change as I was inhaling what was in my hands, for I was holding it with both hands, and had to part one hand to get the change that I stuffed in my shirt pocket. 

I couldn’t wait for Jamie and bit into it and the sauce spurted out along the white paper and inside my hand between the thumb and forefinger. I licked that while chewing not wanting any of whatever this magical taste was to be wasted on a proffered napkin that I refused. I kept eating and it was gone. The paper was empty and a bit torn by my teeth. I needed another fast before the hollowness took over. What hollowness? I don’t know. I just knew there would be a hollowness. 

Jamie was starting in on his and I almost grabbed it but saw that the cook was already at the last stage of making another which he wrapped and offered to me with a giant smile. When we finished, and though they were the size of a good hamburger, I had eaten four. We both had the sauce on each of our fingers and I enjoyed licking mine while walking down the street, like a mobile second sitting. Finger licking phenomenal. I did take one with me for breakfast, but, forgot it and later got it all mushy in my backpack and I had to do a lot to get the sauce out. It didn’t smell too good cold after a couple of days.

And now the  coup de grâce...

You see, I have to say that I was spoiled by my Big Mama’s Chili Gumbo and that is not the way to try anybody else’s, but when I finally got to New Orleans I found that they knew how to cook it too. Those cooks, or I should say, chefs knew that little secret of okra to add a good amount of sliminess to the overall sauciness in the stew. It is a stew and everything is sort of what was left over from previous meals and seasoned to make the present meal different and the old meals not even noticeable. Mixing seafood with birds and meat and vegetables and making a sauce that needs a giant napkin is almost the food music of the bayou in Haitian melodies.

My Big Mama’s recipe was revolutionary and never exactly the same and I think that is what created the foundation for my way of life and my love of sailing. She would be singing those Christian songs and turning them into love ballads while cutting up beans and celery and meat and deftly breaking up crab shells and gouging pig marrow with steam flowing up from three different pots toward a picture of a white Jesus whose eyes looked at you no matter where we were in the kitchen.

She was a Creole with them sayings about how to hypnotise crocodiles and using snake tails to stir in the pepper sauce and stuff like that.