THE BALLAD of RICKY PARKER SOUTHERN, REBORN ISSUE #59 SPRING 2016 FEATURE 28 the ONE TRUE PITMASTER Rien Fertel and Denny Culbert
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$7 • SPRING 2016 • A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION FROM THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE THE BALLAD OF RICKY PARKER SOUTHERN, REBORN ISSUE #59 SPRING 2016 FEATURE 28 THE ONE TRUE PITMASTER Rien Fertel and Denny Culbert 2 52 FIRST HELPINGS THE SOUND OF ONE CHIP DIPPING 6 Phil McCausland PACIFIC SOUL Gustavo Arellano 58 GREEN, I LOVE 10 YOU, GREENS A GHOST IN THE FREEZER Jessica B. Harris Jennifer V. Cole 62 14 LET THEM THE VIPER AND EAT CAKE THE TORTOISE Emma Sloan David Ramsey 66 21 DON’T CALL IT SOUTHERN, REBORN A POT PIE Monique Truong Debbie Moose Cover photo by DENNY CULBERT Houston Cofield Houston southernfoodways.org 1 Spring 2016 GRAVY #59 SPRING 2016 NASHVILLE *Outside of Is the South’s 4th Largest City* Texas, that is. IN PREPARATION FOR THE SUMMER FOODWAYS SYMPOSIUM JUNE 23–25, First Helpings WE LOOKED AT SOME OTHER NOTABLE 4S IN MUSIC CITY. nashville is PUTTING ON known for its meat & threes. THE RITZ word on the NASHVILLE IS street is HOME TO FOUR that the next realized remarkably late trend is the HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES meat & four.* in the game that this edition of AND UNIVERSITIES (HBCUs): Gravy I is about comfort food. Food *We made that up. Fisk, Tennessee State, as solace. Food preparation and con- But wouldn’t American Baptist, sumption as acts that soothe and it be great? and Meharry Medical. restore us. “What’s the theme this time?” asked everyone from Richie, our graphic FOUR THINGS TO DO IF YOU ARRIVE EARLY: designer, to my husband, Kirk, at var- ious points in the production cycle. JUN JUN “We’re not doing that anymore. TASTE The feature is about barbecue, but a dipped or topped Ritz with an un- 18 of 19 Ringo Starr really, there’s no theme. Well, okay, adorned one. It’s a vehicle, yes, but a bunch of the stories are set in the it’s more than that, and must be ap- at the Mid-South. But that’s not a theme. preciated as such. Turn the cracker Ryman We’re not doing themes.” upside down so that the salt lands on Here at the SFA, we’re always doing your tongue. Bite it in half and feel it JUN Visit Athena at themes. flake apart. Savor the hint of butter, Centennial Park’s I’m not a cook who finds zen in a which is surely not real butter at all. Parthenon and let 22 WALK the Goddess of pot of boiling water, nor an eater who A quarter-sleeve later, and the world Eat Nashville’s Wisdom prepare practices mindfulness on a raisin. My is right again. you for three SoBro/Downtown days of learning comfort food is Ritz crackers. By The writers and characters in this FOOD TOUR about the city’s themselves. With peanut butter. Pi- issue find solace in fried corn. In foodways. mento cheese. Regular cheese—fancy cheese dip. In collard greens. In or otherwise. Salami. A hot dip, if the whole-hog barbecue, and in pulled Summer Symposium tickets October 1937 ABC’S NASHVILLE go on sale to SFA members universe is really on my side. shoulder. May their stories comfort is in its fourth season. When possible, I like to alternate you. —SCM on Wednesday, 4/6. Tip No. 59 Are you an SFA member? Join or renew for 2016 at southernfoodways.org. In addition to supporting our work, you’ll be eligible to purchase tickets to the Summer Symposium. Ladies’ Journal, Home Museum; Jennifer Justus Parthenon The 2 | southernfoodways.org Spring 2016 | 3 First Helpings Featured Contributor RIEN FERTEL Rien Fertel (left) and Denny Culbert (right) RIEN FERTEL put seven years of research into his new book The One True Barbecue: Fire, Smoke, and the Pitmasters Who Cook the Whole Hog (which he would sub-subtitle “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Barbecue”). Photographer Denny Culbert was his copilot for much of the journey. The pair conducted dozens of oral histories for the SFA, including the stories of a shrinking number of pitmasters who cook whole hogs over wood coals. Rien chatted with SFA graduate fellow Kate Wiggins about the experience. Take us on a tour of the Barbecue Bus. dynasty. When Bill Dennis opened the area’s first fixed barbecue stall in 1900, his THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO TAMPA It’s a green-certified, diesel-chugging, wife Susan killed, dressed, and cooked the he devil looms large, They rolled this mix into crusts of Mercedes-chassised mini motor home hogs before hauling them via chuckwagon even in the kitchen. In the day-old Cuban bread and water, deep- (sleeps 6!). Though the smell is thankfully to the shop. late nineteenth and early fried them, and either sold them for long gone, the “Oink if you love BBQ!” T decals remain. My family is from Wilson, and I grew up twentieth centuries, a confluence of five or ten cents or served them at eating barbecue from Parker’s and Bill cultures provided Tampa with its own home as an inexpensive meal. Whole hog barbecue has traditionally been Ellis’s. While I’ll concede that the version of the croquette. SFA oral The tradition remains in the Tampa a masculine domain. Did you come across wood-cooked stuff is better, my bigger historian Sara Wood learned that this area. For more on the devil crab’s con- many women? issue is this: Do any of these places have spicy street food earned its name for tinued life in Florida foodways, check corn sticks? I found that though, yes, barbecue is a being “hot as the devil.” out the oral histories, available on mostly male-centric enterprise (and is too Corn sticks, hushpuppies, and cornbread: During strikes, Italian, Spanish, and southernfoodways.org. often marketed and discussed as such), barbecue ain’t often found without a side Cuban cigar factory workers incorpo- women have left and continue to leave of maize-based bread. But my favorite is rated their culinary traditions into Gravy’s summer issue will feature a their mark. The Dennis/Jones clan of the sweet potato muffins from Bum’s preparation of the plentiful Tampa Southern food named after its Ayden, North Carolina, famously pride Restaurant in Ayden—no barbecue themselves on being the oldest whole-hog accompaniment needed. Bay blue crabs, adding sautéed onions traditional five-cent price. Slugburger Cigar City Magazine Cigar and peppers (known as sofrito), oral histories go online April 25 at An excerpt from Rien’s book begins on page 28. tomato sauce, and red pepper flakes. southernfoodways.org. Katie Culbert Katie Courtesy ONE BIG SELF: CREOLE FEAST UP IN THE OLD HOTEL AN INVESTIGATION by Nathaniel Burton GRAVY BOOK CLUB by Joseph Mitchell by C.D. Wright & Rudy Lombard SFA staffers read more than The late Robeson County, This book-length poem Lombard set out to record North Carolina, native and cookbooks. In this space, we is inspired by the late the unheard black voices New Yorker writer profiled the poet’s interviews with of New Orleans’s recipes, share our favorites. Oral beauty of eccentrics and the incarcerated men and culinary traditions, and historian Sara Wood offers places fading into the margins women at three restaurants. It is a gorgeous of the modern world. this issue’s recommendations. Louisiana prisons. oral history of the city itself. 4 | southernfoodways.org Winter 2015 | 5 Good Ol’ Chico its jambalaya, ribs, and mint juleps, Southern standards. Popcorn Diego Velasco ushered in the era of the celebrity shrimp fill tacos, pulled pork sits holds court behind the chef in OC, and fostered a nascent on Hawaiian rolls, and the bar at music scene by bringing in DJs po-boys come slathered in a Sri- Memphis and bands that created a new na- racha-spiked mayo. He can do a Café. tional image for the region—a mean crawfish boil and a fine place USA Today would go on to shrimp and grits, but Velasco— call America’s “capital of cool.” who, with perfectly tousled hair Here’s the funny thing: Memphis and an immaculate soul patch, Café isn’t named after Memphis, looks more music producer than Tennessee. It’s named after chef—doesn’t claim authenticity. Memphis, an Italian arts and fur- “Whenever Southerners come niture collective from the 1980s in, I tell them my food is Southern that café co-owner Dan Bradley cuisine for an Orange County studied as an arts undergrad at the demographic,” the forty-three- University of California-Los year-old says, almost apologeti- Angeles. And that Memphis, in cally. “I’m intimidated whenever turn, isn’t named after the city but a Southerner comes in! I tell rather “Stuck Inside of Mobile them, ‘Before you throw the book with the Memphis Blues Again,” Bob Dylan’s seven-minute epic about…something, anything, except Memphis, Tennessee. PACIFIC SOUL Southern culture has stood for STUCK INSIDE OF ORANGE COUNTY WITH many things, but this particular interpretation is a beautifully THE MEMPHIS COOL AGAIN postmodern one: The idea of by Gustavo Arellano Memphis helped a Chicano from Southern California teach one of the squarest places in the U.S. kentuckian named william spurgeon founded my adopted how to be hip. Gimme a Hammond home of Santa Ana, California, in 1869. Magnolias bloom every spring around B-3 organ riff courtesy of Al A the Old Orange County Courthouse, planted there over a century ago by Green, and let’s begin this tale… at me, realize where we’re at. It’s pioneers who brought with them the most fragrant memories of the states they left a resemblance.’” behind.