My home was created before I was born, in a country I have yet to visit, with people I will never meet.
It all started with an equestrian gaucho whose father and brother had been killed during the Argentine War of Independence. The gaucho’s mother refused to live throughout the war years. Even in 1825, when the war had ended, the gaucho’s mother rested where she could keep her youngest son close to her body while staring at her husband’s fine horse-riding ass. The gaucho visited his mother in a time before the war and said, “Mama, come back to the present with me, and I will find a wife, and she will give you grandchildren.”
His mother could not hear him.
The gaucho returned to the present, roaming the pampa region of Argentina in search of a wife. He rode his horse all day and night, replacing sleep with mate tea. When the dream world finally entered his withering reality, he found his wife sitting next to some burning coals. Even her modest grey dress couldn’t disguise what the gaucho thirsted for. Her brimming eyes filled with the type of desire that could bring her to do anything. But she wasn’t staring at the gaucho, she was staring at the dark red steak heavily marbled with fat.
Inevitably, the gaucho woke with a pitched tent that finally collapsed when he pissed out the mate. With high spirits, he set out to find his wife. Days turned into weeks that turned into months, but the gaucho knew that love didn’t exist in linear time. Solitude overwhelmed him, and he had nobody to turn to but his horse.
“What the hell am I going to do?” The gaucho asked.
The horse didn’t answer.
“It can’t just be you and me for the rest of our existence, buddy.” The gaucho said.
The horse stayed quiet.
“Please God, tell me what the fuck I should do!”
“Make her come to you,” the horse finally said.
The gaucho thought long and hard about what the horse had said. The answers weren’t coming to him. He began to count all the wild cattle because what the hell else are you supposed to do when it’s just you and a horse? He counted until he reached a thousand, and then it dawned on him. The dark red steak heavily marbled with fat.
At night time, he snuck up behind a sleeping bull and slit its throat, letting the peace of sleep remain in its meat. After he sliced the bull into steaks, removed its delicious intestines and glands, and ripped off its big round balls, the gaucho let the meat cure. As the meat cured, the gaucho searched for a parilla. He found one next to a quebracho tree and bag of sea salt. He attributed the miracle to God which gave him the strength to chop the quebracho tree into little pieces of wood and lite a fire. The meat was cured. The fire had burned to coals. The time was now and everywhere.
He put the sweetbreads on first and showered them in salt. He looked around but saw nobody. Then he looked at sweetbreads, and half of them were gone.
“Who took my sweetbreads? the gaucho asked. “Show yourself!”
The gaucho pulled out his horsewhip, ready for battle. Then the laughter came. It was the laughter of the first guest, his brother.
The gaucho’s brother reminded him how much their father loved intestines. The gaucho immediately threw them on, and moments later, his father arrived with a gust of wind.
With the three boys together again, the gaucho’s mother finally left the past and arrived in the present riding a horse.
“All those years watching me taught you something,” said the father to the mother.
The mother stood up on the horse while it was in full gallop and said, “I think I could be teaching you.” Then she jumped off the horse and blew a kiss to the wind.
The gaucho enjoyed listening to his family laugh and talk and lick the salty fat from their lips, but he was still waiting for his wife. The coals were at their hottest, and it was time to grill the dark red steak heavily marbled with fat. After a moment, the fat started to drip onto the coals forming a small cloud of smoke from which the gaucho’s wife appeared. The gaucho wiped his hands on his pants and wrapped his arm around his wife.
“This is my wife,” he said.
“When did you get married, hijo?” his father asked.
“Tomorrow,” he answered.
“And in five years, we’ll have these little troublemakers,” the wife said and pointed to two little girls playing soccer with an armadillo.
As the night went on, people from neighbouring campos came to eat. They brought wine and stories of love, loss, and hope. Then more people came with more wine and stories of mistresses, war, and politics. The people laughed. The people learned. The people formed a culture. And it all started with an asado.
***
The asado stayed in South America until my grandfather brought it to Belgium. It was the only time his father ever said he was proud of him. He then showed his sons and son-in-law how to make an asado with steaks and merguez from Spain. There was never a need for salad, maybe the occasional tomato. My father then brought it to Canada. A land where the soul of the animal was destroyed by gas BBQs. As the indigenous people of the land, my father knew the power of wood and smoke. We began to use North American cuts and Italian sausages that we covered in curry sauce, blending cultures but holding onto what is sacred. The coals and the people.
Asado. It’s where we talk for hours about food, throw in some sociopolitical discourse, drink, dance, tell dirty jokes, and unite our friends from all over the world. The asado is my home.
Wors Cited
“Argentine Parrilla Grills.” Fenwesco Custom, 17 Jan. 2017, fenwescocustom.com/parrilla-grills/.
Longmore, Anna. “STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO THE PERFECT ARGENTINE ASADO.” The Lomito Steak Sandwich: a National Treasure | Argentina Food, Therealargentina, 15 Jan. 2015, therealargentina.com/en/step-by-step-guide-to-the-perfect-argentine-asado/.