Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country FROM THE PUBLISHER
It is while eating a plate of funny-looking ribs with thin vinegary sauce in North Carolina that Lolis Elie and Frank Stewart decide to investigate the nation's obsession with smoked meat. Their quest takes them from the barbecued cow heads of south Texas to the barbecued pig snouts (tasty if tough) of East St. Louis, Illinois. From the all-night barbecue binges on Chicago's South Side to barbecue competition circuit events like Memphis in May and Vienna, Georgia's Big Pig Jig, where people spend thousands of dollars to stay up all night smoking meat. They check out famous and obscure BBQ places from Kansas City, Missouri, to Hope, Arkansas, but ultimately come back to Memphis and Hawkins Grill, a barbecue oasis of Frank's youth, which he now mourns as "a dinosaur without a mate". En route, Lolis and Frank introduce us to the men and women devoted to this demanding art, and, of course, to some good eating - with recipes for meat, sauces, and side dishes. With more than eighty photographs, Smokestack Lightning is a poignant and often hilarious story of culinary adventure that will make you very hungry.
SYNOPSIS
It was while eating a big ol' plate of steaming ribs that journalist Lolis Eric Elie and photographer Frank Stewart decided to traverse the country to investigate America's obsession with smoked meat. Their quest took them from allnight barbecue binges on Chicago's south side to barbecue competition circuit events like Memphis in May and Big Pig Jig in Vienna, Georgia, where people drop thousands of dollars to spend a sleepless night smoking meat. In SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING, Elie and Stewart profile the downhome devotees of the barbecue world, painting an anthropological portrait of one of our nation's favorite pastimes. Featuring 50 mouthwatering recipes for such meats, sauces, and side dishes as Oklahoma Joe's BrewBQ Ribs, Moonlight Mutton Dip, and Lady Causey's Overnight Cabbage Slaw, SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING is a unique culinary chronicle that'll make your stomach rumble.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
While traveling with the Wynton Marsalis Band, Elie as road manager, Stewart as the photographer for Marsalis's book, Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, the authors consumed so much barbecue, they decided to go off on their own and write a historical, cultural and culinary study of this type of cooking. Driving through the Midwest and the South in their 1981 Volvo, with a tape of Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lighting" for company, they visited nearly 50 barbecue restaurants, talking to cooks, taking pictures and evaluating the food, most of which was undistinguished. The book abounds in local color and graphic details of barbecue preparations; the description of how cows' heads are cleaned at one place in Brownsville, Texas, is particularly grisly. Stewart's photographs include shots of many of the people they interviewed as well as studies of severed hogs' heads and intestines. Some of this is interesting, but a little barbecue research, like barbecue itself, goes a long way. Recipes, a barbecue bibliography and the addresses and phone numbers of the restaurants they visited are included. (May) FYI: Elie is now a columnist for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.
Library Journal
Can a country controlled by convenience foods still care about real food? This is one of the questions the author and photographer of this work ponder as they set off in search of the best barbecue in America. Traveling from Texas to the Carolinas and points in between, the authors present such passionate and vivid profiles of individual restaurants and barbecue joints that, after reading the descriptions of barbecuing cows' faces and pigs' snouts, some readers may consider becoming vegetarians. While other recent barbecue books such as John Willingham's Real Bar-B-Q (LJ 5/15/96) focus more on recipes and cooking techniques, Smokestack Lightning includes bits and pieces of barbecue history, legends, and lore as Elie attempts to determine barbecue's role in American culture. Libraries with large cooking collections or a special interest in this subject, or those in the barbecue belt, should consider this title.John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., Ariz.
Home
