On the Lighter Side

by emptypockets

Something fun for your day off. I scribbled it several years ago in Golden Gate Park.
Let's call it the second entry in The emptypockets Anthology of Short Fiction.

"Any excuse for a barbecue! That's what my grandfather would say, ash on his apron and sparks in his hair. He was good, too, a real hamburger Hephaestus. But he never moved out of the classical. He'd learned it old-school, black coals and red dogs, with grey smoke over everything.

Now my father was weaned on those weenies but he moved on as a young man. It caused great tension between him and my grandfather, and when my dad grilled his first portobello they didn't speak for six years. My pop was the Picasso of the Weber, he reinvented the grill. Mushroom and salmon shishkebab with garlic butter and dill. Upside-down buffalo burgers with avocado chili. Even desserts -- grilled dandelions over vanilla ice cream would have crowned the collection of any gustatory Louvre.

So when he presented me my first set of tongs in a small ceremony, close family only, on my thirteenth birthday, I was intimidated by them to say the least. In my dreams I was turned over a low fire all night, waking covered in sweat and charred on one side.

My first attempt on the grill, under my father's watchful eye, was an unmitigated disaster. I had started out, as he had, with wieners, which he'd said would teach me every fundamental I would need. By the time I was done the coals were the tastiest thing in the grill.

I despaired. I prayed, I meditated, I looked deep within the barbecue pit of my soul. I came to accept that I was not my grandfather or my father, that their art was not in me. I had to find my own path.

After a brutally failed attempt at pointillistic barbecue, I slowly made the move towards minimalism. I tried to be scientific, to reduce the variables to one, to a linear equation, straight as the lines of the grill, and, having perfected it, move up to functions as complex as the contours of a toasted bun.

I began with shishkebab, the most modular of foods. I charted my course: to get to mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, cubes of beef and chicken on a skewer, I wrote out each variable I would explore. I would move the art of the grill into the age of reason, da Vinci in a chef's hat! I made a list: the size of the skewer, the shape of the meat, the geographic origin of the mushrooms. No more magic, no more art! Cold reason and hot coals would prevail.

I never got past the skewers. I would barbecue skewers first only on Saturdays, recreationally almost, and devote the rest of the week to reading trade journals and planning my experiments. I began with wood. After four months, I settled on pine. After two years, I found 1/8" diameter skewers were ideal. After a decade, and by my calculations over one trillion charred skewers, I knew that soaking them in water with 5% table salt for four hours ten minutes prior to use was the only acceptable approach. We built an extra room on our house to store my notes -- 1,000 volumes as I write this, every skewer along the way preserved, filed, catalogued.

My son, I like to think after my example, is developing in a post-modern vein. He is cooking dinner tonight. I'm told it will be grilled sole, roasted slowly over a fire of 300 weenies. If only his great-grandad cold see him -- any excuse, indeed!"

Comments

[jonnybutter]

Great stuff EP.

grilled sole, roasted slowly over a fire of 300 weenies

HA. That actually sounds like a modern, overwrought, gourmet-but-downhome-because-we're-not-snobs dish you might see on a menu at a restaurant in a Lifestyle Center.

[John Casper]

What jonnybutter said, EP, thanks.
Reading your post really fired up my appetite

[free patriot]

you think you got it rough ???

due to intestinal problems, my mother can't eat onions, garlic, and bell peppers

I was 14 before I learned you could put onions in food before you cook it

I've managed to overcome my garlic disfunction, buit I may never master the art of cooking with bell peppers

I'd tell you more, but I just heard of this wonderful thing called curry ...

btw, my test subjects say that any claims of cruelty to dogs are unwarrented (the dogs have never complained about my cooking)

[MissLaura]

Imagine my grief as a child whose parents didn't want to grill ever. Everyone else in the neighborhood would be out grilling and we'd be inside eating, like, veal stew, or curry. Not what you want as a kid. The neighbors ultimately started taking pity on me and having me to their barbecues.