Churrasco

God never send'th mouth but he sendeth meat.

John Heywood c.1497 - c.1580

Via cell video calling I visited with some friends in Brazil this week. They were at a churrasco (shur-has'-ko), the ubiquitous weekend pastime of American picnics with roasted meat and drinks. They often include rice and beans with the meal, and it's not rare to see boiled mandioca.

But it's just the meat, roasted on a spit over an open hardwood fire, that is the mandatory fare. And cold beer - there has to be cold beer.

The town dentist in Barra do Bugres was a gaucho from southern Brazil, where churrascos are even deeper in the culture than in the rest of Brazil. I fell in with him when he needed help and eventually was able to manage the roasting of two steers, using only a butcher and a couple other men.

Sadi and I oversaw the barbecue of 40 steers when they inaugurated the 1000th agency of the Banco do Brasil in Barra. It took 200 liters of diesel just to start the fire. I helped butcher and quarter six steers one hot afternoon - all in a dusty, manure filled corral.

We cut the beef into pieces of about a pound, and put two or three on each bamboo spit. We used hardwood for the fire and let it burn until it emitted no smoke, then the meat was laid on a barbed wire mesh over the coals.

Sadi was a purist and didn't believe in complicated sauces and seasonings. We used only olive oil, chopped onions, garlic, black pepper, and coarse rock salt. After we poured the mix over the meat, we sprinkled the rock salt on it, then put in on the fire. When we took it off to serve, we gave it a rap with our knives to knock the extra salt off.

We went from person to person with each spit. The guests were able to choose from very rare to burned from the same cut. After the spit being had cooled we fetched another from the fire while the other cooked again.

Most of the meat is eaten with the fingertips, and both rare and well done can be taken from the same spit. With enough beer and rice and beans and such, people visited and picked from the spits almost all afternoon. There was no rush.

The pace and style of Brazilian churrascos don't allow them to be real popular with American culture. I've done about a dozen small ones, but with rare exceptions, the Americans never adjusted to the ritual.

I, in turn, developed a minor distaste for most American barbecues. Brazilians allow neither wood smoke nor smoke from the drippings falling onto the coals. Our hamburgers turn into a mix of both charred and raw muscle tissue while totally enveloped in the smoke of bovine body fluids. But in Brazil, the beef is roasted in the open, where the wind can move any smoke away.

From what I've noticed, Americans think a steak should be the thickness of a baby's arm, served blue and cold in the middle, but charred to black dust on the outside. The meat is most often served in one huge piece, and cools before a bite can be cut with a plastic knife.

Then there's the tempo. Sadi and I often served beef for hours while the guests visited, drank and ate. We Americans prefer to eat in a hurry, then rush home to mow the lawn and complain about not having any time to rest because we have to mow the lawn. The barbeque sauces do little more than put sugar on the meat which rapidly becomes is cold, and leaks blood onto a soggy paper plate.

When I lived in Barra do Bugres in the 1970s, I hosted a small party for some World Bank people. We had a new MD in town. He was from southern Brazil, where the social rules are more european than in the rest of the country.

So I invited the doc, and when he asked the time, I told him that we'd start about noon, when I really planned to begin about 2 p.m., allowing for the Brazilian custom of not worrying about any starting times. The chagrined fellow arrived at my house at exactly noon. I was barefoot and wearing just a pair of bermudas, while the young man had dressed himself up for the doings. The poor guy was embarrassed, so I poured him a stiff capirinha, and then another. By party time the chap was very comfortable with the world.

This last time I was in Barra do Bugres, I ran into him. We chuckled about his social transgression of forty years ago, when we were both learning about the real Brazil.

I miss those non-urgent times, with no radio, TV or newspapers forcing us to listening to the tragic tales of others. In those days we worried more about a good spit of beef or an icy beer.

It was better then.

I was better, too.