WITH the rise of late night food stands across Fiji, Chef Seeto delves into the myths and history of some of our favourite handheld foods and shares some delicious recipes to enjoy at home or to sell on the street.
In the final part of this series, we return to the original Fijian street food — the barbecue. The Fijian barbecue at festivals and by the roadside are a fun spectacular of cooks juggling and grilling lamb chops, sausages and onions, but sadly, many of these local barbecue stands lack flavour.
Drowning the barbecue meats in tomato sauce (and most often watered down!) only serves to mask a lack of culinary imagination, while the ubiquitous dark soy sauce marinade harks back to a time in Fiji when fresh herbs were largely unknown and cooking knowledge was limited.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love the occasional barbecue pack of meat, egg and root crop, but it’s more to satisfy insatiable hunger than a culinary journey. However, a quick look at the history and development of the barbecue overseas may inspire a new generation of Fijian barbecue recipes borrowed from the Americas, Africa and Asia, but adapted to South Pacific technique and flavours.
The American barbecue
Barbecue is as American as apple pie, but it wasn’t invented there. Travel to every corner of the US and you’ll find a town with their unique barbecue recipe of slow cooked meats with their own special marinade and sauce; from the Atlantic to the Gulf, bordered by the western outposts of Texas and Kansas City, the area of the US known as the “barbecue belt” houses four distinct barbecue traditions — Carolina, Texas, Memphis and Kansas City.
From where did these traditions come, and how, in a relatively small region of the country, have they evolved along such different paths?
The history of American barbecue is as diverse as the variations themselves, charting the path of a Caribbean cooking style brought north by Spanish conquistadors, moved westward by settlers, and seasoned with the flavours of European cultures.
The Spanish witnessed indigenous tribes cooking meat over an indirect flame, created using green wood to keep the food and fuel from burning too fast and called this new style of cooking, barbacoa.
Not to be confused with grilled meats, the traditional American barbecue is slow cooked over charcoal with smokey meats dry rubbed with lots of spices and basted in a sticky sauce towards the end of the cooking process. When I think of an American barbecue, I’m dreaming of Jurassic-sized pork ribs smothered in a thick, sweet and tangy barbecue sauce!
Bulgogi, it’s
Korean barbecue
It may sound like an Italian car, but bulgogi is Korean for barbecue. It literally means “fire meat” — bul is fire and gogi is meat in Korean.
This savoury dish, typically thinly sliced beef marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, garlic, ginger, onion, sugar (or honey), sesame oil and black pepper, is grilled in front of you at the table, with sliced leeks and mushrooms. It’s served with side dishes of cooked or pickled vegetables that range from crunchy and cool to sharp, tangy and spicy and has become a popular style of Asian barbecue.
Until recently, bulgogi was considered a celebration dish, eaten on birthdays and at weddings or served to guests. But with South Koreans migrating to all corners of the globe — including Fiji — their cultural dish has become an everyday staple, found in practically every Korean food venue, from fast-food joints to fancy four-star restaurants.
The meat used to prepare the dish is cut very thin and marinated in pepper paste and traditionally sweetened by onion or pear juice. Many Koreans make bulgogi at home, by pan-frying the marinated meat on a regular stove but in restaurants, this barbecue dish takes on the tone of a social activity like sitting around the grog bowl!
Diners cook the meat on a grill or griddle placed in the middle of the table and enjoy them with kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage), shredded radish and lettuce leaves for wrapping the meat.
There’s no one right way to eat a bulgogi barbecue. Eat some pieces of meat straight off the grill; wrap others in lettuce with some of the side dishes with a little fat marbled through it to keep it moist. Korean sauces are available at most Chinese shops including a ready-made bulgogi sauce to spice up your next barbecue.
African braai
A braai (pronounced “bry”) is a South African barbecue whose name is taken from the Afrikaan word braaivleis, which means barbecued meat.
Being in Africa, your typical meats of beef, chicken and lamb are supplemented with wild game. Fancy a side of zebra, ostrich, wild boar or those cute jumping impalas you see on the Discovery channel?
If you’re turned off by the thought of eating cute, wild animals, the spices and rubs used in braai cooking is sure to tempt even the faint of heart. Strong herbs and spices are used to help mask and compliment the gamey flavours of wild meats, even in their boerewors; a thick beef sausage filled with herbs and spices and grilled in a coil shape.
Braai recipes are full of ideas for the Fijian barbecue including the use of pineapple juice as a sweetener and tenderiser, as well as beer, ginger beer, pickle juices and vinegars.
Yakiniku barbecue
In Japan, barbecue is called yakiniku and literary means grilled meat in Japanese. It’s a popular style of barbecue that originated in Korea but has become one of Japan’s national dishes. Each yakiniku restaurant presents thin slices of the best beef or meat cuts, served with their own dipping sauce called yakiniku no tare or simply tare.
Tare is the key seasoning or barbecue sauce for Japanese barbecue meats as they do not typically marinate the meat prior to grilling. For yakiniku, delicate bite-sized meat and vegetables are grilled over charcoal, and then dipped in a sauce. While very expensive in Japan, the concept of yakiniku may inspire some adaptation in the Fijian barbecue, if only to replace tomato sauce with a nicer, homemade one such as the yakiniku barbecue sauce.
Future Fijian barbecue
If there is one thing that must remain the same for the Fijian roadside barbecue, it is the showmanship! Like a street theatre version of the Japanese teppanyaki grill, the throwing and flipping of food is what makes the Fijian barbecue fun.
However, variety of meats and vegetables, coupled with delicious flavours and sauces is what is going to entice more people to enjoy our local barbecue. Instead of just root crops, add cobs of fresh corn, zucchini or marinated eggplant to the grill to balance the protein-rich meal. Instead of plain tomato sauce, serve your next barbecue with a homemade relish, chutney, sauce or herb verde such as a chimichurri.
And why is it mainly those fatty, imported lamb forequarter chops, which are no doubt cheap but boring. What’s wrong with using local chicken, pork or fish marinated in spices and served in generous bread rolls with loads of salad and lashings of homemade sauce.
Maybe it’s time to head down to the supermarket and stock up on some new spices. Now that’s what I’m thinking a Fijian barbecue should be.
