Part 2 (1/2)
The vestibule of h.e.l.l: The pit room was in fact an infernal chamber, and not a place likely to stimulate an appet.i.te for cooked pig in many people. The residues of fires big and small were everywhere, blackening the bricks, charring the ceiling, puckering the plywood walls. While Samuel and I talked, I could see over his left shoulder a spectral presence emerging out of the smoke, the figure of a slightly bent black man slowly pus.h.i.+ng a wheelbarrow topped with a sheet of bloodstained plywood on which the splayed pink carca.s.s of a hog precariously balanced. I could see the hog's eyeless head, bobbing slightly on the lip of the wheelbarrow, and, as it drew closer, the face of the man carefully inching it forward. It was deeply lined, leathery, and missing several teeth.
Samuel introduced me to James Henry Howell, the Skylight Inn's longtime pit master. Howell made it instantly clear he would be leaving all the talking to the Joneses. He had work to do, and indeed it appeared that the lion's share of the physical labor performed at the restaurant-putting on the hogs late in the afternoon, flipping them over first thing the next morning, carrying them, quartered, into the restaurant kitchen for the lunchtime rush, and then chopping and seasoning them on the big wooden block-was work that James Henry Howell did himself, leaving the Jones men free to hold forth. Which was fine by me, except it meant I probably wouldn't be getting any hands-on experience or how-to instruction here in Ayden. That was going to have to wait.
Back and forth across the pit room Mr. Howell slowly wheeled his hogs, melting into the haze to fetch another carca.s.s from the walk-in cooler, then emerging again with his load, which he would tenderly tip onto the iron grates. Howell worked slowly and deliberately, and when he was done putting the hogs on, he had created an arresting tableau: a smoke-dimmed conga line of splayed pink carca.s.ses, laid out skin side up and snout to b.u.t.t. The interior of the cookhouse now looked like a bunkroom, the sleeping hogs bedded down for the night. Of all the animals we eat, none resembles us more closely than the hog. Each the size of a grown man, hairless and pink, its mouth set in what looks very much like a sly smile, the half dozen pigs laid out in this smoky crypt made me think of many things, but definitely not lunch or dinner.
It was difficult to regard this pit room, filthy and littered with cinders, as a kitchen, but of course that is what it is. And that is why the state of North Carolina has been forced to choose between the equitable enforcement of its health codes and the survival of whole-hog barbecue. Sacred local tradition that it is, barbecue has won, at least for the time being. But this is a most unusual kitchen, one where the princ.i.p.al cooking implements are wheelbarrows and shovels, and the pantry, such as it is, contains nothing but hogs, firewood, and salt. In fact, the entire building is a kind of cooking implement, as Samuel explained: We were inside a giant low-temperature oven for the gentle smoking of pigs. Just how tightly the cookhouse is sealed-even the pitch of its roof-all influence the way the meat cooks.
After the hogs are on, Howell begins shoveling wood coals underneath them, transferring the smoldering cinders, one spade-full at a time, from the hearths, now glowing a deep red, across the room to the pits. Carefully pouring the incandescent coals between the iron bars, he arranges a line of fire roughly around the perimeter of each hog, a bit like the chalk line silhouetting the body at a crime scene. He puts more coals at the ends than in the middle, to compensate for the fact that the different parts of the hog cook at different rates. ”That's just one of the challenges of whole-hog cooking,” Samuel explained. ”Cooking just shoulders, like they do over in Lexington, now, that's a whole lot easier to control.” Samuel snorts the word ”shoulders” derisively, as if cooking pork shoulders was like throwing frankfurters on the grill. ”'Course, that's not barbecue in our view.”
After he's arranged the coals to his satisfaction, Howell splashes water on the backs of the hogs and sprinkles a few generous handfuls of kosher salt-not to flavor it, Samuel said, but to dry out the skin and encourage it to blister, thereby helping to effect its transubstantiation into crackling.
It is a long, laborious way to cook. Mr. Howell will shovel a few more coals around the drip line of each pig every half hour or so until he leaves for the evening at six. Several hours later, around midnight, co-owner Jeff Jones, whom everyone seems to call Uncle Jeff, will have to stop back in to check if the pigs need any more heat on them. The idea behind the line of perimeter fire is to build a lasting, indirect source of heat, so that the hogs cook as slowly as possible through the night. Yet at the same time you want those coals close enough to the pig's drip line so that when its back fat begins to render, some of it will have some nice hot coals on which to drip. The sizzle of those drippings sends up a different, meatier kind of smoke, which adds another layer of flavor to the pork. It also perfumes the air in a way that a wood fire alone does not.
That perfume is what I could smell from the road, and what I was beginning to smell again. Even now, standing here in the middle of this sepulchral chamber slightly starved for oxygen, hemmed between these two serried ranks of the porky dead, I was more than a little surprised to register somewhere deep in my belly the first stirrings of ... an appet.i.te!
It is a powerful thing, the scent of meat roasting on an open fire, which is to say the smell of wood smoke combined with burning animal fat. We humans are strongly drawn to it. I've had the neighbor's children drift over ”for a closer smell” when I've roasted a pork shoulder on the fire pit in the front yard. Another time, a six-year-old dinner guest positioned himself downwind of the same cook fire, stretched out his arms like an orchestra conductor, and inhaled deeply of the meaty-woody perfume, once, twice, and then abruptly stopped himself, explaining that ”I'd better not fill up on smoke!”
Apparently the same perfume is equally pleasing to the G.o.ds, whose portion of the animals we sacrifice to them has traditionally been not the flesh of these animals but their smoke. There are two good reasons for this. Humans must eat to survive, but G.o.ds, being immortal, have no such animal needs. (If they did, they would also need to digest and then, well, eliminate, which doesn't seem terribly G.o.dlike.) No, the idea of meat, the smoky, ethereal trace of animal flesh wafting up to heaven, is what the G.o.ds want from us. They can and do fill up on smoke. And besides, if the G.o.ds did demand cuts, how would we ever get their portion of meat to them? The fragrant column of smoke, symbolizing the link between heaven and earth, is the only conceivable medium of conveyance, and also communication, between humans and their G.o.ds. So to say this aroma is divine is more than an empty expression.
People have known that the smoke of roasting meat is pleasing to the G.o.ds at least since the time of Genesis, where we learn of several momentous sacrifices that altered man's relations.h.i.+p to G.o.d and disclosed divine preferences. The first such sacrifice was actually two: the offerings of Cain and Abel. Cain, a tiller of the fields, sacrificed a portion of his crop to Yahweh, and Abel, a shepherd, a choice animal from his flock-and G.o.d made it clear it was the sacrifice of domestic quadrupeds he prefers.* The next momentous sacrifice came after the waters of the Flood receded, when Noah, back on dry land at last, made a ”burnt offering” to Yahweh. This is a type of sacrifice in which the entire animal is burned to a crisp-i.e., turned to smoke, and thereby offered to G.o.d. ”And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake ... neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” (Genesis 8:21) If there was ever any doubt about the efficacy of animal sacrifice (not to mention the sheer power of scent), Noah's experience should have put it to rest: The aroma of burning meat is so pleasing to G.o.d that it tempered his wrath and moved him to take the option of worldwide doom completely off the table for all time.
It's striking how many different cultures at so many different times have practiced some form of animal sacrifice involving the roasting of meat over a fire, and just how many of these rituals conceived of the smoke from these cook fires as a medium of communication between humans and G.o.ds. Anthropologists tell us some such practice is very nearly universal in traditional cultures; indeed, you might say it is the absence of such a ritual in our own culture that is probably the greater anomaly. Though it may be that the faded outlines of such rituals can still be glimpsed in something like whole-hog barbecue.
But the prominence of smoke in rituals of animal sacrifice suggests we need to add another myth of the origins of cooking to our growing pile: Maybe cookery begins with ritual sacrifice, since putting meat on a fire solves for the problem of how exactly to deliver the sacrificial animals to their heavenly recipients.
What the G.o.ds have demanded from us in terms of sacrifice has gotten progressively less onerous over time. So what started out as a solemn, psychologically traumatic ritual eventually evolved into a ceremonial feast. Human sacrifice gave way to animal sacrifice, which in turn gave way to partial animal sacrifice in a happy series of dilutions culminating (or petering out) in the modern backyard barbecue, where the religious element is, if not completely absent, then pretty well m.u.f.fled. It's not a big conceptual leap to go from the observation that the G.o.ds seem perfectly happy with a meal of smoke to realizing that maybe we don't have to incinerate the whole animal in a burnt offering in order to satisfy them. The G.o.ds can enjoy the smoke of the roasting animal, and we can enjoy the meat. How convenient!
But keeping the best cuts of sacrificial animals for human consumption is an innovation hard won, at least in cla.s.sical mythology, and the figure responsible for it paid a heavy personal price. The Prometheus legend is usually read as a story about man's hubris in challenging the G.o.ds, the theft of fire representing the human a.s.sumption of divine prerogative-costly yet a great boon to civilization. All this is true enough, but in the original telling, by Hesiod, the story is a little different. Here, it turns out to be as much about the theft of meat as it is about the theft of fire.
In Hesiod's Theogony, Prometheus first incurred Zeus's wrath by playing a trick on him during the ritual sacrifice of an ox at Mecone. Prometheus hid the best cuts of beef inside a nasty-looking ox stomach but wrapped the bones in an attractive layer of fat. Prometheus then offered Zeus his choice of sacrificial offerings, and the Olympian, deceived by the ”glistening fat,” opted for the bones, thereby leaving the tasty cuts of beef for the mortals. This set a new precedent for animal sacrifices-henceforth men would keep the best cuts for themselves, and burn the fat and bones for the G.o.ds, as indeed is the custom observed throughout the Odyssey. (What Henry Fielding called ”Homer's wonderful book about eating.”)
Infuriated, Zeus retaliated by hiding fire from man, making it difficult, if not impossible, for men to enjoy their meat. Indeed, without the cook fire humans are no better than animals, which must eat their meat raw.* Prometheus then proceeded to steal it back, hiding the flames in the pith of a giant fennel stalk. In retribution, Zeus chained Prometheus eternally to a rock (where his liver became the unending feast-the raw meat-of another creature) and sent down to mortal men a world of trouble, in the form of Pandora, the first woman.
In Hesiod's telling, the Prometheus story becomes a myth of the origin of cooking, an account of how animal sacrifice evolved into a form of feasting, thanks to Prometheus' daring reapportionment of the sacrificial animal to favor man. It is also a story about human ident.i.ty-how the possession of fire allowed us to distinguish ourselves from the animals. But the fire in question-the fire that elevates us above the beasts-is specifically a cook fire, and what had been strictly a religious observance-a burnt offering of an entire animal to the G.o.ds in a gesture of subservience-becomes a very different kind of ritual, one with the power to bind the human community together in the sharing of a tasty meal.
The dining room of the Skylight Inn could not be much less ceremonial: wood-grain Formica tables scattered beneath fluorescent lights; a sign over the counter with old-timey snap-in plastic letters listing your options; faded newspaper and magazine clippings about the establishment, and portraits of the forefathers, decorating the walls. By the door, a gla.s.s case proudly displays the restaurant's James Beard Award from 2003.
But there is one ceremonial touch: Directly behind the counter where you place your order sits an enormous chopping block, a kind of barbecue altar where one of the Joneses, or their designated seconds, officiates at lunch and dinner, chopping with heavy cleavers whole hogs in full view of the a.s.sembled diners. The maple-wood block is nearly six inches thick, but only at the perimeter. So much pork has been chopped on it that the center of the block has been worn down to a thickness of only an inch or two.
”We flip it over every year or so, and then, when that side wears down, we have to get a new one,” Samuel told me, with the glint I'd learned to recognize as a sign that a tasty BBQ sound bite was fast approaching. ”Some customers look at our chopping block and say, Hey, there must be a lot of wood in your barbecue. We say, Uh-yeah, and our wood is better than most other people's barbecue!”
The dull rhythmic knock-knock-knock of cleaver hitting wood is the constant soundtrack of the Skylight dining room. (”That's how you know you're getting fresh barbecue,” says Uncle Jeff.) Above the chopper's head, the menu board lists a succinct handful of choices: Barbecue sandwich ($2.75); barbecue in trays (small, medium, and large, from $4.50 to $5.50) and barbecue by the pound ($9.50); along the bottom, the sign promises ”all orders with slaw and cornbread.” A few soft drinks, and that's it. The only things on the menu that have changed since 1947 are the prices, and those not by all that much. (The price of a barbecue sandwich at the Skylight Inn undercuts that of a Big Mac-$2.99-at the McDonald's in Ayden, one of the few instances where slow food beats fast food on price.) The next Skylight sound bite goes like this: ”We got barbecue, slaw, and cornbread, that's all,” Samuel recites. ”When you come here, it's not what you want, it's how much of it you need.”
As I waited at the counter to place my order (a barbecue sandwich and an iced tea), I watched Jeff chop and season barbecue. Seasoning consists of salt and red pepper, a generous splash of apple cider vinegar, and a few dashes of Texas Pete, a red-hot sauce that, curiously, is made in North Carolina. (I guess ”Texas” is a superior signifier for spicy and authentic.) Wielding a cleaver in each hand, Jeff roughly chops big chunks of meat from different parts of the hog. This is what makes whole-hog barbecue special.
”See, you got your ham, which is lean meat but can be a little dry, and then you got your shoulder, which is greasier [p.r.o.nounced greazier] but more tender and moist, and of course there's the belly meat, which is probably your juiciest cut. 'Course, there's always some nice bark here and there.” Bark is BBQ terminology for the singed outer edges of the meat. ”And then you got your skin [skeen], which lends some nice salty crunch. Chop them all together, not too fine, throw some seasoning on there and mix it in good, and that's it right there: whole-hog barbecue.”
Uncle Jeff insisted that I also take a tray of unseasoned barbecue, so I could see for myself that what's going on here at the Skylight Inn does not in any way, shape, or form depend for its flavor or quality on ”sauce.” This is a word he p.r.o.nounces with an upturned lip and a slight sneer, suggesting that the use of barbecue sauce was at best a culinary crutch deserving of pity and at worst a moral failing.