A Tradition Of Cooking Out Of Doors Is Present In Many Places

I have been very fortunate in my time that I have had an extremely cosmopolitan working life

, having had other people from all over the planet. I can declaim with some authority that I have never met an Australian I didn't like, and having lived in a land that's full of them when I was in Canberra, it's no mean feat not to have fallen over one unpleasant example. Of course, Canberra isn't like the rest of Australia as it is an artificial environment built for government requirements, but still.

From 2000 forwards, I found myself largely in the presence of South Africans, lots of whom were leaving the homeland as circumstances deteriorated both economically and socially. Plenty had played their trump card of British passport qualification via immigrant grandparents or other circumstances of ancestry. But also plenty were Afrikaners and black Africans who don't have that built in way to leave but still decided to take their skills for better rewards elsewhere.

To a man and woman I have found them, as opposed to the famous "Spitting Image" song, delightful, good humoured and great fun to be with. Also to a man and woman, they remain steadfast that it was South Africans that came up with the idea of cooking outdoors. The braaivleis (Afrikaans meaning roasted meat) is a cultural institution on a par with rugby and diamonds.

In the past, people would hike into the veld, hunt down antelope such as springbok, gemsbok or Cape buffalo for the larger party. They'd shoot it, skin and butcher it, dig a hole and build a fire and roast the meat, usually whole. They can't do that very easily any longer as the wildlife is rather better protected and hunting is strictly licensed, but the tradition of the braai remains as a pivotal social event which no summer party of any size is complete without.

Australians are equally confident that they invented the idea through the barbeque. Although the hunting part is mostly missing, and made difficulty by not being as varied as in the South African tradition. Kangaroos are very tasty but very fiddly and time consuming to get the meat right (it has to hang for at least two weeks which rather loses the element of spontaneity) and most other possibilities are too small (wallabies), cute (koalas, wombats), inedible (dingoes, platypus) or too lethal (practically all other wildlife on the continent) to consider, the Aussies take enormous pride in the outdoor tradition.

Here, we don't have wildlife hunting and eating but we can still make the best of the barbeque, and in recent years the equipment available has got better out of all proportion. For example we have manufacturers such as weber bbq who build weber gas grills which help take out the randomness of building an old fashioned fire and replace it with reliability and the ability to use the equipment in all weathers should the need arise.

Some of the weber gas grills now come with complete portability which means that you can transport them with you on a trip out to the beach or picnic which further gets rid of the annoyance of old coals being left behind on the picnic spot which is a regular hazard of the disposable barbecue or lightweight charcoal burners.

Of course the colonials can row and have their beliefs over the origins of the invention, but in the reign of the Mongol hordes, as Genghis Khan ran amok throughout the known world of antiquity, his troops did not have a weber bbq so instead they used to cook on upturned shields over an open fire and cook their meat on there, and so probably have the better claim overall.

by: Jon Izzard

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