Horsing Around

Imagine a spring afternoon in may, most likely a Saturday, sometime in the late 1930s. Imagine a couple hundred people gathered in a tractor-mown clearing at the back of somebody’s farm just outside Springfield, Ky., population 2,000. Sheets of plywood have been laid across sawhorses: Those are the picnic tables. The soft air is laced with the meaty aroma beckoning from the cavernous iron caldron suspended over a wood fire. In it simmers a stew so hearty that one portion of it could sustain a man pitching hay for a day and a half. More a concept than a recipe, this is Kentucky burgoo--the signature dish of the Bluegrass State and a staple of political rallies such as this one for the election of the county clerk. A ritual repast of the Kentucky Derby, the dish is all but served by the cargo container, alongside enough mint juleps to float a river barge.

Any pot of it was Noah’s ark in miniature, containing a democratic assembly of game large and small: venison, opossum, squirrel, rabbit, mutton, beef, veal and poultry, along with onion, corn, okra, tomatoes and potatoes. But, unless you’re sitting down to it with someone who has hunters in the family, you’ll probably be treated to a more domestic version of the recipe, favoring chicken and pork over game.

Would those at the rally have bothered to show up without the added incentive of a steaming bowl of burgoo? Maybe. Politics was entertainment, and sure they came for the speeches and the jokes and the high jinks. But as much as anything they came for the burgoo.

Imagine my grandfather, John Smothers, slight of build and, though only just turned 40, limping into the clearing with the aid of the cane that was his constant companion. On this spring afternoon, as the burgoo bubbled ferociously, Hobert Spicer, a local farmer, said to him: “Stick your hand in there, John, I give you a dollar.” John, who was running for office, mulled the proposition. “I don’t think I’ll stick my hand in there. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll dip my foot in it.” Hobert Spicer, whom I’m told was a corpulent man with little gondola-shaped bags of fat under his eyes, let out a whooping laugh. “Well, you dip your foot in it, I give you two dollars. Hey, ya’ll. Whatcha give John Smothers, he dip his foot in that pot of burgoo?” At this there ensued a flurry of bet-laying and dollar-waving until the group of men, mostly farmers and their churchgoing wives, fell silent in expectation.

Hobert Spicer of all people should have seen it coming. He knew as well as anyone that John Smothers’ left leg was wooden, owing to the fact that a childhood injury had deprived him of his real one. My grandfather often joked that instead of using garters to hold up his socks, he made do with a pair of thumb tacks.

So it was the wooden leg that he dipped into the gurgling pot of burgoo. I wonder if he even bothered to give a speech after that.

I have never actually gone to the Derby. I can’t keep the horses straight and getting there always seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for something that lasts the duration of a sneeze. Nonetheless, the Derby party itself--preferably held in the backyard--is for me and other Kentuckians a matter of religious observation, and burgoo is part of the sacrament. I don’t dip my foot in it, but nobody gets to eat until I tell them about the man who did.

Bluegrass Burgoo

Serves 10

(Adapted from “Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine,” Cumberland House, 1998)

1/2 pound baby lamb, cubed

2 pounds beef cut from the shank into cubes (include soup bone)

1 medium-sized chicken, skin removed, cut into pieces

4 quarts water (use more if stew cooks too thick)

Salt and black pepper to taste

2 cups diced potatoes, such as Yukon gold

1 red pepper (or more to taste)

2 cups diced onions

2 cups fresh or frozen butter beans

3 carrots, diced

2 green peppers, diced (remove seeds)

3 cups green corn, cut from cob

21/2 cups okra, diced

12 tomatoes, diced or 1-quart can

1 clove of garlic

1 cup minced parsley

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Place the lamb, beef and chicken in soup kettle with tight-fitting lid along with water, salt and black and red pepper. Bring to a hard boil, reduce the heat and simmer about 2 hours with the lid on. Add potatoes, onions and, at intervals of 10 minutes, the butter beans, carrots and green peppers. Then add corn and simmer for 2 hours, skimming fat occasionally, or until mixture seems very thick. Watch so that mixture does not stick. If necessary add water, but only small amounts. Add okra, tomatoes and garlic and let simmer for another 11/2 hours, or until these last vegetables are also done and blended with the others. As soon as stew is taken from stove, stir in the parsley. Remove chicken bones. The stew improves by standing and keeps for a long time in the refrigerator.

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Martin Booe last wrote about Spain’s tortilla de patata.