Warning: Stop reading now if you’re one of those people who spews your drink if you laugh too hard. What I am about to share is embarrassing, but true. Not “true” like as in “it almost happened and I am pretending it did.” True like as in Bible true. Like as in Moses and the Hebrews really walked across the Red Sea on dry land—that kind of true.
We had never even heard of Cajun deep-fried turkey. We had no experience whatsoever with deep frying something that big. My wife and I were living in West Virginia while my mother and most of my brothers and sisters were in Louisiana. We would go at least once a year to visit. One year my mother told us about Cajun deep-fried turkey. She said it was getting popular down there, and it was delicious. I told her it sounded great and we should try to fix some on our next visit. Did I mention we had never tried that before?
On a holiday visit, we set about to fry the big bird. We had bought the big pot and other supplies. We seasoned and injected the thawed fowl. We put the bird and the peanut oil into the pot, and put the pot on the stove. We turned the flame to its highest setting. Nothing happened. A temperature gauge wand was present (inserted through a tiny hole in the lid of the pot.) The needle was not moving. At all. We waited. A long time. Still nothing.
Until then, none of us had the knowledge that a normal range (stove top) could not come anywhere close to providing enough flame to do the job. It was a simple mathematical matter of too little heat energy versus too much mass of meat and oil.
I advised Mama that it was not happening in the current setup. This was so slow that bacteria could have completely consumed the turkey while we waited for the oil to get warm. I asked how the Cajuns do it. They use big burners powered by LP gas (liquid propane). As we all stood around and scratched our heads, one of my brothers said, “We’ve got a roofing torch in the shop. It uses propane.” They left to fetch it.
I had no solid idea of what a roofing torch was like. The name conjured images of a handheld propane soldering torch, albeit perhaps an oversized version. I was not prepared for the monster they carried in. It was like a deadly military-strength flame thrower from some past world war. The bell at the head was perhaps ten inches across! The propane tank attached to it was also ginormous. I asked if it was safe to proceed, and was assured it was. “There’s a knob on here, see?” I was shown. “It allows us to control the flame,” I was told. My brow was then less wrinkled, and we pressed ahead.
We lit the flame thrower. It threw flames. Huge flames. I asked if we could turn down the volume. My brother said, “It’s at its lowest setting. That’s just the pilot light!” We were doing this in the kitchen. Indoors. We were pyromaniacs ready to roast a bird. Safe. Uh huh.
The pilot light blast was directed at the bottom of the pot. Tongues of fire licked up around all sides of the pot and threatened the wall. Then a rising tide of fire began to threaten the overhead part of the range. It was like the blaze was getting an extra boost from somewhere. In serious concern for everyone’s safety, I suggested that we should turn off the torch. We turned it off.
Yet the towering inferno at the pot continued to burn.
With a sickening realization, it dawned on us that while the stainless steel range top was spotless on the outside, there must have been years’ worth of grease buildup on the inside, in the inner zone between the top and bottom, where the natural gas lines were stored. Apparently grease from that area was now on fire. Flames were shooting out of multiple burner cut-outs, and the intensity was increasing.
Being the brilliant geniuses we are, someone yelled for water. Thankfully, someone else hollered, “No! You don’t put water on a grease fire!” No water was fetched. We all watched helplessly. And, being the brilliant geniuses we are, no one had pre-thought whether we should have a fire extinguisher on hand. (We had none.) I’d like to think that, within seconds, someone would have surely called 911, and we would have begun evacuations. But at that moment we were simply top scholars doing nothing except watching impotently.
But then things suddenly turned our way.
The laws of physics tell that fire must have both fuel and oxygen. This fire’s fuel source (the thin layer of hidden grease inside the range) was rather limited. It was being consumed, and there was only so much. So, as quickly as the fire started, it abated. The height of the flames died down. With a loud puff, the fire finally died. We all heaved a sigh of relief.
The laws of physics also show that metal expands when heated. All at once, we heard a big metallic PONK, and the once-level range top suddenly caved downward, forming a dip, much like the impact crater after a meteor makes it to earth. The huge pot of oil and meat began to slide off the burner, toward the center of the stove. I quickly grabbed it and moved it to a safe place on the counter top.
Finally all was quiet on the western front. Silence.
Awkward.
Then my precious Mama, who can roll with the punches of life better than anyone I’ve ever known, breached the stillness with these comforting words: “Well, I’ve been wantin’ a new stove for a long time.”
Everyone began to laugh nervously and recount their view of the harrowing events. We then discussed the under-articulated fact that the Cajuns who know, do this sort of stuff outside. (The Cajuns who don’t know are all either homeless or dead.) We pondered how we might take the fight outside.
While we talked, the metal range top was cooling off, and the metal was contracting. Suddenly, the stove top gave another loud metallic PONK as it returned to its original shape. My Mama used that same stove for many more years.
Cajuns are all about improvisation. They are a crafty, adaptive bunch. They can hob-cob things together like nobody’s business, using whatever they have on hand, to get the job done. It’s an admirable—if unadmired—trait. We were not actual Cajuns by either blood or upbringing, but hey, we were raised in Louisiana, after all. Close enough, right? Why not be Cajun about it? Why not find a way to use what we had (a roofing torch and… what else?) to get the job done?
One of my brothers thought of something. Sometime in the past, he had rescued a wheel-less, two-wheel dolly (hand truck) from the trash heap at his place of employment. The wheels had been worn off this thing, and rather than repair it, they had thrown it away. My brother had scooped it up and brought it home. He decided to explore whether it could be used as a platform to hold the pot over the flame of the roofing torch. He laid the dolly down on its back, horizontal-wise on the ground, and positioned the pot on it. The pot would stand there, but it was unstable. To stop the wobble, he then grabbed a tire iron from the shop, and wedged it in under the unsupported part of the pot. Voila! Instant turkey frying rig. “Fire it up, bro!”
We were then genuine, Cajun pyromaniacs, ready to deep fry a bird outside. Safer than before. My youngest sister stood on “Dignity Patrol” addressing pedestrians who stared or laughed at the sight. You’d have to know my youngest sister to understand. She fearlessly taunted passersby, saying things like, “Yeah, y’all laughin’ at us now, but in a few minutes we gonna be eatin’ tasty fried turkey and y’all still gonna be hungry on the street, wishin’ we’d invite y’all in. But no. We ain’t gonna invite y’all in, ’cause y’all laughin’ at us now!”
Sure enough, quite soon we were eating highly-tasty, wonderfully-juicy, downright-delicious, smack-yo-mama-with-a-roofin-torch turkey, fried on a steel dolly (with no wheels) over fire from a roofing torch. It was the inception of our now-famous dish: Turkey A La Tire Iron. At that moment, somewhere in Cajun Land, a Yoda-like Cajun grandmaster pronounced, “Mmm. I sense a disturbance in the Cajun Mojo, like a family graduation from non-Cajun to Cajun.” (Of course, he did not say it like that. That’s the English version. Since it was spoken in true Cajun—which is actually an eclectic mix of old words including French, English, Spanish, African Slave, and Native Original Peoples—I am not able to show you the actual phonetics, so I’ve translated it for you. After all, I am still just a Cajun Padawan learner.)
We used that same rig to fry turkeys for several more years. Mmm. Good stuff. What memories. If you wish to ever become a true Cajun master, learn to improvise, my young Padawan.
No comments:
Post a Comment