Where there’s smoke there’s supper

“Make an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings..” — Exodus 20:24,

Some things are simply an abomination.

As a dedicated eater, I am a dedicated reader of the food sections of several publications – including this one. However, if in a misguided attempt to be gustatorily inclusive by catering to the perverse whims of the dietarily correct and digestively woke the editors inflict on me one more tidbit featuring char-broiled egg plant or brussel’s sprout BBQ, I’ll be using all future issues as so much fish-wrap. The back-yard grill is evil enough when put to its intended purpose – to further sully its reputation with cauliflower flambe’ is nigh-on to blasphemy.

And what is its intended purpose? No doubt an archeologist of the far distant future, excavating a suburban development entombed Pompeii-style by some unfortunate accident of nature, would conclude that the ubiquitous grated contraptions at the rear of nearly every dwelling were clearly altars upon which the head of the household offered up Porterhouse and Windsor chops as burnt offerings to placate the various domestic deities in arcane rites lost to the mists of time.

And y’know, they wouldn’t be all that far off…

In the hands of the average householder, your basic Weber is the fastest way known to turn hamburger into a hockey puck. Now Google might credit Chef Paul Prudhomme as the originator of blackened cuisine 30 years ago at his upscale New Orleans eatery, I will attest to eating blackened burgers in my own backyard no less than 30 years before that.

Sorry, Dad, but some memories just stick with a guy.

It wasn’t just in our backyard. All across America, men whose culinary expertise pretty much maxes out at closing the microwave and punching “start” have been convinced that on Father’s Day and the Fourth of July they are instinctively empowered to grill a burger better than either Mac or Don – a claim that is a flame-broiled whopper if there ever was one.  The result is a surfeit of blackened, petroleum-flavored fare discretely fed under the table to a soon-to-be dyspeptic pooch while the diners fill up on Mom’s potato salad and baked beans.

I guess we could blame the whole thing on Henry Ford. More than 100 years ago, when Henry got serious about cranking out Model Ts, a lot of the parts on your contemporary Toyota that are plastic, aluminum or even steel were carved out of wood which resulted in a whole lot of wood scraps and sawdust for Ford to dispose of. Now Henry, being the parsimonious sort, looked for a way to turn a buck getting rid of that scrap and hit on the ingenious plan to have folks pay for the privilege of burning his scrap wood for him. All he had to do was turn the scraps into charcoal and convince all of America that a pile of charcoal in the backyard would make a better supper than the gas range in the kitchen.

Fifty years later Ford had another great idea – they called it the Pinto.

But technology has done Henry Ford one better. For Homo suburbicanus  who has so totally lost the survival skills passed on from Og the Caveman he can’t get charcoal to light, there is the gas grill – essentially a kitchen stove hauled out onto the patio allowing the smoke to billow into the open air rather than the living room.

And smoke there will be. Be it charcoal or propane or scraps of wood foraged from the forest the American ethos of more is better is invariably applied to the cooking fire with predicable results – a chunk of animal flesh or a disjointed dead bird seared to ash and leather on the outside while near the bone it still carries the chill of the deep freeze. At best, it’s fare in the style favored by the ancient gods, which is, perhaps, why we quit inviting Zeus down for dinner.

So if he’s not coming, can we stop cooking for him?