![]() ![]() I just didn’t know if I had a place in this world of barbecue because I didn’t want to copy anybody. ![]() I didn’t want a mashup of pulled pork from over here, ribs from St Louis, brisket from Texas, though I loved all of that too. ![]() And I came home, and I suddenly felt disappointed-I had eaten so many things I loved, and I wanted to do barbecue, but I didn’t want to re-create whole-hog from North Carolina, though I loved it. So I travelled the country and the world, eating all these different kinds of food. I came home and decided that that’s what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I had to dive deeper and learn more before I could really do my own thing. A few months after I realized how much that interested me, I walked into Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor Texas, which completely changed my life. That was such a spark of fascination, and inspiration. I remember being really struck by watching people, particularly in Latin America, cook meat over open flame. I spent years traveling around the world as private security. You still get to taste every part of the dish. And I think about it from a couple different angles, like the fact that when you’re actually eating in the restaurant, you’re definitely enveloped by the smell, but when you take a bite, it’s just that kiss. I think that’s what separates great barbecue from the rest- whether smoke overpowers the dish just so people know that you’re smoking things, or whether it’s treated delicately, and intentionally. You don’t want it to overpower anything, but you want its character to shine. It’s a flavor and should be treated as a balanced component like any other ingredient in a dish. Smoke is absolutely my favorite ingredient. I guess I’m a bit of a sommelier of woodsmoke. They all have their own characters and behave their own ways. I can make distinctions between them, maybe better than I can do with wine! Some are sweeter smokes, some are more harsh. I thought about all the different kinds of wood and the characters they have-maple, ash, oak, birch-they all have such distinct smells when they burn. I think it was somewhere in my subconscious when I started coming up with ideas around food. Certainly I couldn’t have known then that it would tie to food later in my life, but that aroma was definitely very intoxicating for me at a young age. He’d chop down trees to make a fire, and those smells really stuck with me early on. The fascination with woodsmoke came from the other side of the family. She still spoke Norwegian her whole life, and would make us some Norwegian dishes like thin, crepe-like Norwegian pancakes, but we’d just run for her Italian cooking. I think it’s amazing that she so completely adopted the culture of the place and people where she moved, but never let go of her Norwegian heritage too. You’d walk in and the whole place would smell like braciole, and tomatoes, and spicy sausage, and meatballs and fresh bread she’d bake-those memories were my first of being completely transfixed by food. Every Sunday we’d head to her house in Staten Island, and the smell of her sauce, which we called Sunday gravy, just blew me away. Honestly, my Norwegian grandmother was one of the finest Italian cooks on the planet. ![]() Her father was employed by an Italian family in the area, and she was raised in a very Italian neighborhood. She was an amazing woman-she immigrated to Red Hook in the early 30s from Norway. Billy Durney: My fondest food memories from childhood are definitely of my grandmother. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |