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He wrote the book on barbecue
By JANET K. KEELER, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Steven Raichlen is humming. The waitress at Byblos Cafe places bowl after bowl of Mediterranean specialties before him and Raichlen gushes: "This is one of my favorite cuisines and what I was really in the mood for." He slides a torn corner of pita bread into creamy baba ghanouj, gathering with it a drop of olive oil from the puddle in the middle of the dip. "This is the way it should be made," he says of the earthy eggplant dip. "Taste the smoke? They've grilled the eggplant." He takes a bite. "Hummm. Mmmm." He pinpoints the unusual flavor in the Lebanese iced tea, and it's not the pine nuts floating on the top. "Hummm. It's got rosewater and something powdery," he says. "I don't know if that's sugar that's not dissolved or the iced tea mix but I like it." Raichlen, 49, is one of the nation's foremost experts on barbecue but we are not having barbecue this day. We are sitting at a four-top in cozy Byblos, a new cafe on the trendy stretch of S MacDill Avenue. Middle Eastern music dances from overhead speakers and the sugar packets are stashed in marquetry boxes that look like they should be cradling precious jewels. His biggest seller Barbecue! Bible (Workman Publishing, 1998; $19.95) is a global exploration of cooking over fire and is considered a must-have by grilling aficionados. His 23rd cookbook and the fourth in his barbecue series, Beer-Can Chicken (Workman Publishing; $12.95), is in bookstores this month. He's recently reached the million-books-sold mark. Raichlen (pronounced RYSH-lin) is in town to teach a barbecue class at Apron's, Publix's cooking school at Citrus Park, and to promote Beer-Can Chicken. The topic of the class? He thinks it's about spices but can't be sure until he gets into the classroom and finds out what food has been prepped. He doesn't say it, but he's a busy man. By lunch, Raichlen has already done a TV morning show and another newspaper interview. He needs a haircut before the afternoon cooking class. He's doing a spot on the Today show in several days and won't have any other time between now and then, he says. After the cooking class, he takes a breath and then moves on to New York City, Long Island and Concord, N.H., for interviews and appearances. It will probably be a week before he gets back to the newly built Martha's Vineyard home that will provide respite from the summer heat of Coconut Grove, his primary residence. Raichlen's wife, Barbara, is at the new house dealing with contractors, and critters chomping on some prized designer marshmallows. That would be handmade marshmallows dusted with cardamom or cinnamon; they were bought in Boston. Barbecue has been very, very good to him. "Everyday I pinch myself to think that I actually get paid for cooking and writing about barbecue," says the man who has more than 20 grills. He's about to get busier. In September he will film a 13-episode PBS series called Barbecue University which could make his face as famous as his book titles. The setting will be West Virginia's Greenbrier Resort where he has taught seminars. Raised on TV dinners in Baltimore, Raichlen thinks his love of food grew as a response to the lack of cuisine at home. "My mother was a ballet dancer and extremely culinarily impaired," he says. His French literature degree led him, strangely, to food writing. He won a Thomas J. Watson Foundation grant to study medieval French poetry that sparked an interest in medieval cooking and an idea for a book, which was ultimately never written. In that period abroad, he took courses at the prestigious Cordon Bleu and LaVarenne cooking schools. He returned to the United States as a food writer and eventually settled in South Florida. He soaked up the Latin flavors there and wrote Miami Spice (Workman, 1993; $14.95) and Steven Raichlen's Healthy Latin Cooking (Rodale Press, 1998; $29.95). But it is barbecue that made his fortune. "I remember where I was and what I was wearing and where I was sitting" when the idea for Barbecue! Bible hit. "It was like a calling. And it came to me right away. 'Follow the fire.' " He didn't know how he was going to travel to Indonesia and Asia and South America and all over the United States to document how different cultures cook over open flames. He did know it was a good idea. Eventually, his good idea was gobbled up by Workman Publishing and the backing followed. Beer-can chicken, the technique of barbecuing a whole chicken vertically as it sits on a half-empty beer can, has captured the imagination of the country, he says. Or at least the curiosity. But an entire cookbook? "This one dish gave birth to a whole family," he says. "And I pushed it as far and wide, as deep and tall as I could." That pushing led to recipes for turkey on a 32-ounce Foster's Lager and quail roasting on a tiny pineapple juice can. Raichlen's not done with barbecue yet, though. He's noodling over an idea about an indoor grilling book for people who live in condos and apartments. A novel is kicking around in the back of his head along with plans for a barbecue restaurant. And of course, in the tradition of many successfully baby boom writers (Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry), there's the dream of being a rock star. "I'm not in a band yet but I used to play bass guitar in high school and I'm starting to play again." The haircut appointment draws near and his escort's silver Durango is waiting curbside. Still he wants to sample baklava and Lebanese coffee. He loads the sweets into a to-go box, quick-sips the strong coffee and dashes but not before saying for the umpteenth time how much he loves the food. "I am so happy," Raichlen says. About life and lunch, we suppose.
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
