Barbecue
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday February 20, 2007
We may think Australians invented it but "barbecue" comes from "barbacoa", an indigenous Caribbean word for a "rude framework for sleeping or for drying meat over a fire" (to quote Caribbean authority Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz). By the 1800s, the Texans had adopted the rude framework as an outdoor grill, inventing hickory smoking and two thousand kinds of barbecue sauce along the way. Mexicans kept the name for the spit or pit roasting of a whole animal. The Argentinians also roast a whole cow in bits and call it asado, Brazilians slide it on skewers and call it churrasco, Australians poke it too often and call it a barbie. We're unified, however, by what the late British food historian Alan Davidson calls "a cultural circumstance". "To wit," he amplifies, "the general practice of having men rather than women do the barbecuing."
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald
