Holidays
Frances Miller Raichlen (right)
Grilling Was My Mom’s Unexpected Superpower
Despite her crazy dancer’s diets and conflicted attitudes towards food, my mother did make a few dishes I still hunger for. One of them had an eerie foreshadowing of the activity I’m best known for today.
My mother was the family grill master, and she brought to this activity an impetuousness that characterized her dancing—and her life.
Our grill was one of the open brazier types with a grate that lowered and raised with the turn of a crank. She’d load it with charcoal briquets and douse it with gasoline. (Do not try this at home!) That lit the grill in a hurry, imparting a subtle, but not completely unpleasant petroleum aftertaste to the food. For many years, that’s what I thought barbecue was supposed to taste like!
Usually, she poured on the gasoline first, then tossed on a lit match. But one time she lit the match first, then poured on the gas. The resulting conflagration almost took the siding off our house. Luckily, our neighbor Pete was standing nearby. He knocked the flaming gas can out of her hand before it could explode, saving dinner and quite likely my mother’s life.
The Steak That Started It All: Pittsburgh Rare
I remember only one of my mom’s grilled dishes, but it was a killer: a sirloin steak which she seared charcoal black on the outside, while leaving the center blood red and virtually still mooing. She called it “Pittsburgh rare,” mindful of the coal-fed blast furnaces in Steel Town (See recipe below). I can still taste that charred exterior and the sweet sanguine tang of the bloody beef in the middle.
My mother never made a sauce I can remember. Her idea of a condiment was an astringent relish of raw cranberries and kumquats. Extreme cuisine before it was fashionable.
No, I didn’t get my passion for food from my mother. In the end, I learned something far more important—an unwavering dedication to one’s craft.
My mother died young (at the age of 38)—long before I became a food writer and TV host. I suspect she would have regarded my career with no small amazement. In our family, the apple fell very far from the tree.
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