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South of the Border Barbecues

Although our own Southern and border states throw some pretty swell barbecues you'll have to cross the Rio Grande to be in the real home, on this hemisphere, of the most primitive form of meat cookery. And then you can keep going on barbecues alone to the tip end of Patagonia with a continual change of menu from that typically Mexican spitted kid to a huge Argentine ox buried and roasted whole in the ground, some of which we have reported in our South American Cookbook as follows:

The very words "kid" and "barbecue" suggest high gastronomic revel, the romance of the Spanish Main, those greedy, colorful buccaneers of old, Captain Kidd and that other pirate, John Silver, who was nicknamed Barbecue by the playful crew. Indeed the mere mention of this most elemental form of feasting has suggested culinary adventure ever since those French corsairs dubbed their favorite catchas-catch-can cooking style de barbe à queue. And to get into the true swing all you have to do is recall Bo Bo, that great lubberly Chinese boy, the hero of Charles Lamb's "Dissertation on Roast Pig," who burned down his father's hut one day over a "fine litter of nine new farrowed pigs." Thus by accident Bo Bo was first to taste the "crackling" of suckling pig, and after that not only his father's but all the neighbors' huts were burned down accidently on purpose every time a new batch of pinkies arrived. And Lamb wasn't the only English author interested in this subject, for the poet Pope has one of his characters cry out, "Send me, gods, a whole hog barbecued," while other merry beef eaters of old England record the common custom of roasting oxen in their hairy hides, even sheep in their wool to save the trouble of skinning them.

In our wanderings through Latin-American countries we have tried every kind of barbecued animal at least once, except snake, iguana and alligator, which didn't happen to be on the menu when we chanced in, although these are esteemed delicacies not only in South America but on Florida ranches devoted to raising some of these charming pets. From country to country barbecue styles differed considerably, and we even found some imported from far places, such as the Hottentot way of tendering elephant trunks and feet, which is used all over the Argentine for barbecuing beef. The hide, hair and all is left on in this style and the steer buried whole in a stone-lined pit where it's put to bed at twilight and left to roast all night. Of the same ilk is the pampas ranger's carne con cuero (beef barbecued with its hide on) that Argentine epicures go for, consisting of the tenderest cut of a steer, since he has the whole animal to choose from, buried in a hole in the ground that has been heated and raked clean of ashes and coals. It is eaten very rare, and therein lies the skill, for it takes not only a good cook but the cattleman's instinct to know the exact moment for digging it out.