The Village Idiot: Of all the grills I’ve known
There is a theory out there, mainly among men, that there isn’t any food that can’t be improved on by being cooked outdoors over an open flame. What could possibly be better than steak on the grill? Or fish? Or shrimp? If only it stopped there. Cauliflower? Grill it. Mashed potatoes? Grill them. Salad? Grill it. Soft drinks. Grill them. Eggs. Grill them.
Some say it takes men back to their caveman roots. Yet, how many cavemen used propane? Or had stainless-steel tongs? Or drank mojitos? When you think about it, grilling a steak 50,000 years ago must have been a pretty dismal experience. No matches, no starter fluid, no wooden deck, no Adirondack chairs, no citronella candles, no “I’m the Chef” aprons, no portable CD players, no bug zappers. All they had was a dark, smelly cave.
For all the blather you read about men and cavemen, you very rarely hear of a guy adding a cave to his house. Men will add pools and spas and ponds and sundecks and carports, but never a cave.
Why? Because it was no fun being a caveman. Can you imagine having to eat the “Catch of the Day” every day for the rest of your entire life? Pretty boring. And they only had one way to cook it.
“What do you think, hon?” Mr. Cave asks the wife. “Roasted giant lizard over an open fire or roasted over an open fire? When is somebody going to invent poaching? What this cave needs is a good saute pan. And a window would be nice. And one of those trash cans with the pop-up lid. I’m tired of throwing bones on the floor. I hear there’s a new thing over at the Henderson’s cave. It’s called a spice rub. You take a piece of woolly mammoth meat and rub this powder on it, a mix of secret herbs and spices, and leave it on for a few hours and then grill it. Sounds pretty good, huh? Let’s go over there tonight and club them silly and then take it from them.”
“Nah,” says Mrs. Cave, “If we club them, then they’ll owe us a clubbing. I’m not up to cleaning the whole cave just for the Henderson clan. All she can talk about is how smart her children are. Urlak invented bronze. Big deal. Bronze. What can you do with that? What we could use is Tupperware. If he’s such a genius, when’s he gonna invent that? Tamrak invented the wheel. What am I supposed to do — jump up and down? Great, we’ve got a wheel. If he was really smart, he’d invent some place to go. Like a restaurant. Then she let’s the little ones get away with murder. They draw pictures on the walls all day long. Not in my cave they won’t! What a bunch of Neanderthals they are!”
If anything, grilling is an expression of our desire to get out of the cave. Or, more likely, it’s the desire of women to keep men from messing up the kitchen. Or it could just be we like the outdoors. Walk into any home-improvement store and you’ll find that people who have just spent tens of thousands of dollars improving the inside of their homes are now spending tens of thousands more so they can live outside without ever having to go into their house.
I find an ordinary old grill seems to work fine on most occasions. Of course, if someone ever invents a device that yells at me “Warning! There is not enough propane to finish cooking this meal. It will run out when everything is half-cooked and you’ll look like a fool!” I’ll buy one.
Jim Mullen contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at jim_mullen@ew.com.