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Country Feasts
Fiestas Campestres At colorful country fiestas in any of the A B C countries south of us-Argentine, Brazil or Chile-you can eat and drink all day long al fresco; so we have memories ranging from drinking chicha in Chile (it looks as innocent as pink lemonade because it's colored with pomegranates, but it makes your head feel like it's been screwed up with a Stilson wrench) out of beribboned bull-horns swung around our necks, sampling toasted sheep tails sizzling with their own fat, the Pope's nose and jewel strip with the crackling skin cut off the barbecued backs of wild turkeys and macuco; and once in Petropolis, the summer capital of Brazil we 'cued and tried to eat a black mountain lion done to a turn in our own outside clay oven made in the shape of a beehive, but our lion tasted too much like a cat or "roof rabbit" as the more tolerant French call them.
A bang-up fiesta campestre in any Central American tropical spot begins well before sun-up, or at least the preparations do, for the celebrants begin to arrive about tenthirty in the morning and if the barbecue and fixings aren't done to a turn by eleven, they go after the carcass with their own knives and gobble the meat half raw, chasing the tardy chef out of his bosky dell just as they drive a bullfighter they don't like out of the ring.
A big hole in the ground is dug the day before and neatly lined with stones. Other large flat stones for covering are piled at hand, along with plenty of dry hard firewood. The great day begins very much like a Yankee clambake, with the fire having been started around midnight and kept booming in the hole for three hours. When it has been going for an hour and there are plenty of hot coals, the covering stones are thrown on to heat, and more wood is added.
After the three hours are up, the fire and refuse of unburned wood and ashes are taken out. The hot covering stones are laid aside, and both pit and stones are allowed to cool off a bit. Then the hole is thickly lined with leaves; banana leaves in the hot districts; any green forest leaves which have an agreeable taste, in the wooded sections; green corn husks, in the fields; cactus leaves in the desert, or plain succulent grass on the plains.
Meanwhile, the meat has been marinating in a mixture of chopped peppers, hot and sweet, chopped garlic, sliced onions, wild marjoram, salt and a little good vinegar or white wine.
The carcass is taken out of its bath and placed on the leaf lining; more leaves are carefully put on top to completely cover and keep out dirt and ashes. The hot stones are placed over the leafy covering, and a new fire built, not too large or too hot. This is kept going for eight hours, or less in the case of animals smaller than whole beeves. Ashes and coals are then raked off, stones removed, and the thick charred upper leaves taken away. After that, the lowest layer of the covering is removed. Meat cooked in this fashion is always well- and evenly-done, and there is nothing like its flavor. Whole carcasses of young sheep, goats and pigs are prepared in this manner and sometimes deer or only a quarter of beef, the cooking time cut according to size. Flocks of toasted tortillas come on a table spread under a leafy bower, while fresh pulque, plain, or colored pink with pomegranate juice, is drunk. Chunks of steaming flesh are nicked off, and everything is hotsy-totsy.
This is a full pit-barbecue method dressed up as travel writing: dig, heat stones, line with leaves, bury the marinated carcass, cook eight hours. The instructions are sound but assume a whole animal and a free afternoon, so most of the work of adapting it is a matter of scale and of judging doneness without a clock you can trust.
- Never use river stonesThe one thing the text takes for granted and that goes wrong most often. Water-rounded rocks from a creek or beach hold trapped moisture and can burst violently when heated for hours; use dry granite, basalt or lava rock, or commercial fire brick.
- Judge by temperature, not by the eight hoursJudge by temperature, not by the clock -- the recipe gives eight hours for whole beeves and says to cut the time for anything smaller. A suckling pig or a goat kid will be done in roughly half that or less, and the only reliable test is an instant-read thermometer in the deep muscle beside the bone: about 195-203F for shoulder and leg meat you intend to pull apart.
- The leaf lining is functionalBanana leaves, corn husks, damp grass and cactus pads all serve the same purpose: they hold steam against the meat and keep it off the stones. Never substitute oleander or yew, both poisonous. Avoid walnut, cherry laurel and resinous conifers, which can throw bitter or resinous flavours into the meat. Foil under a generous layer of husks is one modern compromise.
- Marinade quantitiesNone are given. For a 15-20 lb bone-in shoulder or leg, figure two heads of garlic, four large onions sliced, half a dozen mixed hot and sweet chiles, two tablespoons dried oregano, a quarter cup of salt and a cup of vinegar or dry white wine. Overnight in the refrigerator, not in the yard.
- Wild marjoramIn Latin American cooking this almost always means oregano rather than sweet marjoram, and in Mexico specifically Lippia graveolens, which is more resinous and citric than Mediterranean oregano. Mexican oregano is worth seeking out for this.
- Macuco, pulque and chichaMacuco is a South American tinamou, a game bird; a small guinea fowl or a pheasant stands in. Pulque is the fermented agave sap of central Mexico and does not appear at Argentine or Chilean fiestas; chicha in Chile is fermented grape or apple must and is considerably stronger than its color suggests. Neither is easily bought outside its home region.
- Scaling it downA pit roughly 3 ft square and 3 ft deep will take a whole lamb or a pig of about 40 lb, enough for a large party served with tortillas. Smaller pits hold their heat less well, and for modest cuts a covered kettle grill or a low oven around 275F is a simpler substitute, though not the same flavour.
- Do not open it earlyEvery uncovering vents the accumulated steam and drops the pit temperature sharply, and there is no practical way to add heat once the stones are buried. Commit to the full time and check only at the end.
What is described here is barbacoa in its oldest form -- meat cooked slowly in a stone-lined, leaf-lined earth oven -- and the English word barbecue is generally traced back through Spanish barbacoa to a Taino term for a wooden frame over a fire. Near-identical pit methods survive across the Americas under local names: pachamanca in the Peruvian Andes, curanto in southern Chile and Chiloe, huatia on the altiplano, and the New England clambake the author reaches for as a comparison, which is the same technique with seaweed in place of banana leaves. The passage is characteristic of a whole genre of mid-century American food writing in which a genuinely useful technique arrives wrapped in a traveler's anecdotes -- the bull-horn drinking cups, the mountain lion at Petropolis, the guests carving at the carcass themselves if the cook runs late. Its geography is loose, sweeping Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Central America into one fiesta, but the pit itself is described accurately enough to build from.