Most for your money cookbook

Old-time pit barbecues on Southern plantations are much more ladylike than one that Senator Maverick might throw. They are staged in shady groves equipped with picnic tables on wooden trestles, stretching from one county to the next and carefully covered with starched linen, hallmarked silver (if there's any left in the family), all set forth with pickles, fresh biscuits, jellies, watermelon and cake, besides the whole pigs, lambs and chickens roasted instead of the Texas steer — and with plenty of scuppernong wine punch in place of red-eye. But in barbecuing we have gone soft, for nowadays it doesn't really matter to most of us whether this unique kind of jamboree is held indoors or out, and compared to the pioneer and frontier feeds a small modern barbecue is a cinch. As a matter of fact, it doesn't take much more time or trouble than spitchcocking an eel or steaming an impromptu clambake on the beach, if not actually in the living-room fireplace. An indoor barbecue is done right at the kitchen range, either on a spit or in a roasting pan, perhaps in the dining room on one of those spiffy electric rotisseries, even in the lady's parlor over a charcoal grill that shoots its fumes up the fireplace chimney. In fact, such a citified version can be held in a sky-scraper, as was recently demonstrated by Mrs. Helen Angell, who walked off with the $500 prize at the national cooking contest on the strength of barbecuing a leg of lamb in the ultramodern kitchen of a mid-Manhattan hotel. There's not much of the outdoors left in Mrs. Angell's barbecue of lamb, of course, except the tang of the sauce; and that's too expensive. But here's how it's done: First rub salt and pepper over the leg and make a few slashes in it so the juice will run, then slap it into a roasting pan and leave the cover off so it can be constantly basted with this lavish sauce — half a bottle each of Worcestershire, A-i sauce and ketchup, with two tablespoons of butter and half a pound of fat, everything melted together and flavored with sugar, vinegar and a squirt or two from the Tabasco bottle. Then tie a whole sliced onion together with three cloves of garlic in a bit of cheesecloth, drop it into the exciting mixture and begin twirling your basting spoon. At the finish, all pan gravy is poured over the roast, so not a drop of meat essence is wasted. But to cheapen this sauce use soy and ground chilies in place of the more expensive Worcestershire and A-i to get just as salubrious an effect. Chicken may be barbecued in the same painless fashion. Just slit a broiler down the back, put it in a well-greased pan and sear it on both sides beneath a blistering fire. Then slow down the fire and when the bird is golden brown try this old Pennsylvania Dutch sauce for a change: Melt half a cup of butter and snap it up with a tablespoon of tomato paste, then toss in a third of a cup of vinegar, a tablespoon of soy, with some onion juice, salt, pepper and paprika, never forgetting those three buds of garlic, which should be taken out before serving to save the sensitive feelings of some who fear they'll get a sprained nose from a passing whiff of it. A paintbrush is excellent for daubing this on, and at the finish you'll have extra-fine dripping in which to dunk sippets of bread and fresh hot biscuit.