HEALTH PLUS:Barbecues are our challenge to the elements
THE BARBECUE is the summer symbol of hope. It is representative of Irish optimism that we buy extensive and expensive barbecue paraphernalia, despite the scarcity of opportunities to have barbecues. In this country most barbecues end in a scurry indoors. Intriguingly, they often involve creating indoor conditions outdoors or outdoor conditions indoors, in order to eat outside with the comfort that indoor eating provides.
As the decking becomes more extensive, the furniture more comfortable, the parasols sturdier, the heaters more numerous, the lighting more subtle and the pergolas and shelters more variable, one could be forgiven for wondering if it might not be easier to eat inside.
Of course the barbecue is not just eating al fresco. The food is different. It involves exotic marinades and delicate skewering. It requires things like teriyaki steak and spicy shrimps and salmon, and alternating red, yellow and green peppers brightening diced meat. It is the smell of smouldering chicken. It is soy sauces and sugar preserves.
The barbecue is about big baked potatoes burnt to perfection. It is corn in tinfoil oozing butter. It is prawns sizzling on skewers. It is seasoning and spices, colour taste and texture and the slow burn of charcoal and wood pellets that flavour food in a unique way.
The barbecue is primarily male territory. It is visceral. It is cooking outside the cave. It is community. It is sharing with the clan. The hunters have returned. They have been successful, the fire has been lit, the spoils prepared and shared. The food is also basic: big steaks and chicken wings and rough vegetables tossed above the flame. It is watching food cook, waiting, salivating, choosing, combining flavours, mixing textures, savouring the pure taste of simple food cooked simply.
The barbecue is the comforting sight of red smouldering coals when the meal is done and darkness descends. It is the hiss of meat remnants spitting on the grill and the intimacy of being within the ring of light when outside the circle the pitch-black of night closes in. Barbequing replicates how we have eaten together since time began.
The barbecue is primitive. Even the word is strange. It defines the method of cooking, the food that is cooked, the object on which it is cooked and the occasion to which friends are invited to partake of this special meal cooked outside.
There may be no greater evidence of the degree to which we Irish remain optimistic than the barbecue and that is why we continue to organise them even when common sense would say that that we should eat indoors. Barbequing is psychologically reassuring. It is seasonal and associated with summer.
That is why we persist in this country with barbecues, regardless of the weather and in spite of the rain. That is why we organise barbeques despite the risk of gales and gusts that topple parasols, fling chairs, lift tablecloths, scoot glasses on to decking and send napkins careering away.
We persist in the same way that we wear summer clothes in freezing temperatures, brave cold seas for swims and huddle behind windbreakers on windswept beaches. We persist because we in the northern hemisphere need to believe that we have a season called summer. If we cannot have the weather we would like to have, we can at least pretend that we have the season of summer by doing the kind of summer things that we do. If summer will not entertain us we will feign summer and the barbeque is one of the best ways to do it.
The modern barbeque is, therefore, about optimism. That is why it survives. It is about psychological strategy: finding ways to defeat the Irish weather and claim the right to eat outside in summertime. It is about lifestyle, casual clothes, conviviality and inviting family and friends to share a meal.
For some it is the joy of accoutrements, the extra-long utensils, the rotisseries, the grilling baskets, meat thermometers and the charcoal chimney starters. It is big aprons, silly slogans and elbow length "welders" gloves. It is about assuming a role, acting as chef and providing nurturance for the group.
Barbeques today may need high-powered, turbo gas cookers with grills, smokers and variable settings. They may need patio heaters and awnings and a dozen ways to avoid the cold and rain. The barbeques of today may be a long way from our ancestors cooking their food in pits of burning wood, but they replicate emotionally all that early ritual entailed and at the same time they are our visible challenge to soggy summers and overcast days.
• Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the UCD Student Counselling Services