WHEN STEVEN Raichlen envisions America, he sees one big glowing grill.
Out on the western edge, lamb chops and salmon are sizzling. Beef brisket, cooking low and slow, dominates the middle, with pork shoulders and whole chickens smoking on the southern rim. Along the eastern boundary, mussels, clams and soft crabs bubble over a glowing fire. Grilled vegetables and other "sides" appear hodgepodge throughout the landscape. What a country.
As Memorial Day weekend approaches, and lots of folks wheel the kettle grill out of winter storage (although some of us never put it away), Raichlen is doing some major wheeling of his own.
He is rolling out a thick new barbecue tome, BBQ USA: 450 Fiery Recipes (Workman Publishing Co. Inc., $20 paperback, $35 hardcover), and he soon will be motoring to some 25 cities in a tricked-out school bus sporting three grills. A companion 13-week television series, Barbecue University, is being distributed by Maryland Public Television this summer.
I caught up with Raichlen, a graduate of Milford Mill High School, by telephone in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where he was charging his batteries before heading out on a combination book tour and barbecue feast.
Having already penned three barbecue books for Workman Publishing - the massive The Barbecue! Bible (1998), the instructive How to Grill (2001) and a small, hilarious description of the various things a good griller can do with a chicken and a can of beer, Beer Can Chicken (2002 ) - Raichlen told me he saw his latest book as a consolidation of barbecue wisdom and techniques. While the Bible quoted cooks and recipes from around the world, this work concentrates on the cooking of fortress America.
"Very seldom is America numero uno in any cuisine, but that certainly is the case when it comes to live-fire cooking," he said.
Raichlen leaves no ember unturned. He gives a quick, yet compelling history of barbecue. He traces the etymology of the word barbecue back to a framework of sticks that the Taino tribes of the Caribbean used in the 1500s both as a device to cook meat and as a resting spot, a place to stretch out and take a nap. That happy practice of simultaneously snoozing and cooking continues in back yards to this day.
He has fresh historical accounts, turned over to him by Kansas City barbecue historian Rich Davis, showing how early Americans marked major events in their lives - anything from marriages to the opening of the first railroad bridge across the Missouri River - by throwing a barbecue feast.
