“Food always tries to have it both ways. It is always about the past, and it is always about presence, at least when we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing when we eat, that is enjoying ourselves, using our senses and our spirit…But if food is about presence, food and its traditions are also about memory. What meal can we cook that is not an attempt either to recreate or to avoid recreating our mother’s table? Presence and absence are inextricable, a woven braid. Memory is about absence, things no longer in our lives, and the effort to bring them into presence. Presence is about the here and now, ignoring, or seeming to ignore, past and future.” Randy Fertel

The night before we buried my dad in Memphis, I sat down for a dinner of his favorite barbecue ribs at Silky O’Sullivan’s with one of his many longtime golf buddies and partners in crime. Silky’s may not have the best ribs in Memphis (they are not mentioned in the guidebooks I have consulted), but dad liked them because he liked Silky and, more importantly, he believed that Silkie liked him. Silky’s ribs, like those at the more famous Charlie Vergo’s Rendezvous, are coated with a spicy, dry rub and served with sauce on the side. 

Dad was adamant in his belief that this was the proper way to serve ribs, no sauce or, if you must, some sauce on the side. So adamant, in fact, that he once made a horrible scene in front of me and my young son Emmet at a restaurant in Pittsburgh, Penn., over a plate of ribs that were served bathed in sauce. While not his worst performance (not even close), it was still a wrenching experience, seeing my son get a taste of dad’s sometimes toxic combination of unwarranted anger and public spectacle. We left the restaurant and stood in the parking lot waiting for dad’s temperature to decrease. 

The three of us were visiting Pittsburgh to attend the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. Dad had last been to Oakmont CC in 1953, when he was 12 years old, to watch his dad and my son’s namesake, Emmett O’Neil “Buck” White, compete in the same tournament. My grandfather, a Memphis native, was a journeyman pro golfer who won three professional tournaments and finished a respectable sixth in the 1949 U.S. Open after finishing the third round one shot out of the lead. Grandaddy Buck, as I called him, played in more than a dozen U.S. Opens, two Masters and multiple other major golf tournaments.

Personally, I love barbecue, and barbecue sauce, in their many manifestations, but I don’t love ribs as much as dad. When it comes to barbecue, I prefer smoked pork shoulder, pork sausage, and beef brisket, all served with a range of sauces (a topic that merits its own post someday). I have also had only limited success in making ribs at home, indoors or out.

My preference aside, I thought it appropriate for viewing last week’s U.S. Open, played at Winged Foot just outside New York City, to make ribs in honor of dad, along with some stir-fried collard greens and the classic White family appetizer of cheese and crackers. Traditionally staged over Father’s Day weekend, the U.S. Open is an important event in my family’s annual calendar. This year’s tournament was rescheduled as a result of the pandemic.

I opted to make the ribs in the oven, as opposed to smoking them in the Big Green Egg, because I wanted no part of anything approaching smoke after being locked in the house for two weeks because of smoky, hazardous air caused by nearby wildfires. The recipe I chose, another Craig Claiborne special, calls for cooking the ribs in the oven and serving them covered in a vinegary, Memphis-style barbecue sauce.

The sparerib recipe suggests cooking the ribs for approximately two hours at 400 degrees, basting them halfway through the process with a homemade sauce. The ribs were tasty enough, but the consistency was a bit off, fall-off-the-bone tender in some spots and tough in others. I would cook them longer, at a lower temperature, to get a more consistent texture, if I were to repeat this recipe. Fortunately, the tomato-based barbecue sauce was perfect. The sauce incorporates soy and brown sugar and has a sharp vinegar kick, reminiscent of other Memphis-style sauces I have tasted. The full recipe can be found here.

We also stir-fried collard greens, with garlic and pinch of sugar and a splash of Vietnamese fish sauce as a substitute for oyster sauce. This recipe was created by a prominent culinary family from Mississippi, the Chows. The original version can be found here.

Our pre-meal appetizers included toasted bread slices with heirloom tomatoes and buffalo burrata and a brie-style cheese with Raintree crisps, an upscale version of the cheddar cheese and saltines we ate at my grandparents’ home while watching golf tournaments and football games during my childhood. 

The quote above, taken from a charming essay written by Randy Fertel about his colorful, larger-than-life mother Ruth Fertel, founder of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain, expresses well the tension between past and present (or presence). In that same essay, Fertel argues that his mother’s success lay in part in her ability to create sacred spaces where people could come together to break bread and find release from the traumas of their past and the anxiety over their future. For what it’s worth, one of the most pleasant evenings I ever spent with dad was a dinner with him and my wife Abby at the original Ruth’s Chris in New Orleans in the mid-90s.

Watching this year’s U.S. Open felt bittersweet. I was grateful to be watching the tournament, given earlier concerns that the pandemic might cause all golf to be canceled this year. But the experience of watching a tournament with no live spectators and the evolution of what was once a shotmaker’s challenge into the bomb and gouge fest that was this year’s championship left me feeling a bit empty and out of touch. Fortunately, we had ribs, even if they were slathered in sauce, and other good food and the prospects for attending future U.S. Opens, along with the memories of my father and his father and all those Sunday afternoons spent watching golf so long ago swirling through my consciousness like the smoke blotting our skies of late.

This week’s donation of $25 went to the Oregon Food Bank. Thanks for spending a little time with me.