If you know anything about my early days in NYC, you know that I lived off of canned baked beans simmered with cut up hot-dogs and topped with a handful of crushed pretzels. Fast-forward to my adult life, and I figured it was time to make my favorite food from scratch.
Thick, dark, tomato based, sweet, and tangy. This is by far the most popular of the many varieties of bbq sauce around the country. This sauce owes its pedigree to Memphis' location along the Mississippi River.
From 1730 into the 1750s South Carolina recruited and paid ocean passage for thousands of German families. These settlers brought with them some of their favorite tastes from home, namely mustard.
Think of this as the ur-bbq sauce. When English colonists arrived in America and settled near Roanoke they brought with them some of their tastes from home. Early British cooking reveals a penchant for tart flavors, and this sauce does not disappoint in that category.
Forget the grill, invest in a few clay pots and build a tandoor in your backyard this summer! For about $100 you can build a natural convection oven that will make you the envy of neighborhood bbq's.
Corn bread is the quickest of quick breads. No fussy whisking, no tempering eggs. Just throw the ingredients together in a bowl and stir. And what happens when you remove it from the oven? You remember that the nip in the air isn’t so bad as long as you have comforting food like this. Don't forget to brew a pot of chili to eat alongside your cornbread!
I used to think that coleslaw was an abomination. I’m not sure if it was my childhood aversion to mayo or the connotations of cafeterias and dentures that did it in, but coleslaw was on my “no, no won’t eat” list for a long time. Anyway, do you ever feel like your adult food life is spent making up for the mistakes you made in your culinary youth?
