FoodNet

Most for your money cookbook

1938

Page 58 · 1 recipe record on this page

Presented as published in 1938. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
For now we've gone native American, and there's nothing that quite fills the hole of hunger like one of those soul-satisfying barbe- cue sandwiches that have turned some of the old Robert E. Lee highways into one mouth-watering sign that reads: "Old Style Pit Barbecue with Green Hickory Wood." The genuine article in this line consists of luscious thin slices of crackling hot roast pork, and pork only, with just enough crisp, mellow fat on it so butter becomes redundant. It has to be gener- ously stacked between slices of good well-knit bread or a split bis- cuit, piping hot and homemade, we hope, and everything lavishly sluiced with a real barbecue sauce that has pep, zest, what it takes and then some! It should taste "the most more-ish," as Nantucket Islanders say of their chicken chowder "squantum," which is an- other specialty of our rekindled outdoor fires. Down South, the mingled savor of pork and hickory wood rising from the pit sets the BARBECUING INDOORS AND OUT IO9 traveler's nose to twitching half a mile away and starts the old taste buds to blossoming out like sunflowers. And when finally you bite into that Old Style Sandwich it answers back sharply to the cave- man appetite that yips and yaps way down deep within the best of us. With many of us catching our meals on wheels, and hardly able to wait for the next snack counter that's always just around the corner, small wonder that barbecue stands have grown as thick as filling stations, especially as we cross the Mason and Dixon Line. And from there on to the Mexican border the sauce gets hotter and hotter. This is as it should be, since those little red peppers that serve as the real base of this All-American culinary art are native to Mexico, and all the way down to the State of Tabasco we find dabsters stirring up salsa de barbacoa. That's the tastiest stuff we've ever dabbled a crackling brown slab of roast pork in. The recipe should be on the tip of every tongue — just get yourself a flock of limes and squeeze out about half a glass of juice; use lemon, vinegar, white wine or sherry if you must, though the result won't be nearly so Mejicano without those limes. But first chop up very fine a discreet amount of garlic with one big onion and cook it tenderly in plenty of butter, anyway a quarter pound. Then toss in your lime juice, with a couple of teaspoons of mustard and of salt, just ahead of two whopping tablespoons of good Texas chili powder, a can of thick tomato soup and half a cup of water. To get that extra foreign savor here's the secret: Crumble a bay leaf with some cumin seed in your palm and sprinkle it in, or try a modicum of sweet marjoramSalsa de Barbacoa which grows as wild as sage along the border. Let all your ingredients get well acquainted by simmering them together for five minutes, stirring the while, and then you've got the real McCoy in meat spreads. Of course the best place to enjoy a real longhorn barbecue is down in Texas, where such parties are thrown to celebrate almost anything from a baptism to a by-election. So let us start out the day before the big party with a couple of those lean, pit-hardened ex- perts who pick out the prime fat steer, or steers, in plenty of time and superintend the digging of the fire holes and stacking of good no MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK