Posted on 10/03/2009 1:53:18 PM PDT by JoeProBono
You've read in my five previous columns history is all a matter of perspective. Well, today I'm going to challenge your perspective with the most serious topic you'll ever see in this space.
Chili.
That's right. With the season just changing from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, a steaming pot of chili looms on my horizon, and on many others.
There's nothing better on a cool day than a bowl of chili. It’s more American than apple pie and the hot dog. And, in that same context, I'm going to break one of the cardinal rules of journalism. You never talk about people’s politics or their religion. It just invites an argument and trouble.
Well, there is an unwritten cardinal rule ... you never disparage someone else’s chili recipe.
Until today, that is.
While America debates health care, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, it’s safe to say a person’s chili recipe should rank right up there among the world’s most pressing debates.
I’m not here to cast aspersions on anyone’s chili recipe — that blend of meat and spices and aroma that lures us into overindulgence during the cool months — but I’m afraid this area of our state is chili challenged.
I come to this conclusion, for want of any other proof other than my own observations, because people in this area of Oklahoma tend to make casseroles and call it chili.
If there was an 11th commandment, it would be: thou shalt not throw together a bunch of stray ingredients that sear the palate, meld it with barbecue sauce, hot sauce or beans and then call it chili.
For my expertise and pedigree, I offer the following.
My chili recipe actually comes from the Civil War — the four years this country couldn’t agree on just about anything and killed each other to prove it. So why should the topic of chili prove any different?
My great-great-grandfather was a Texas sorghum farmer, living just south of Greenville.
From family stories handed down generation to generation, he was an exceptional cook for his unit, the Confederacy’s 22nd Texas Cavalry, to the point he apparently concocted the Christy chili recipe for his company between battles.
Anyway, he handed down his chili recipe to his son, Jim Christy, who served four years in the Texas Rangers back in the 1890s, and who moved to southwest Oklahoma and opened Jim’s Lunch in Granite. And, of course, chili was the mainstay of pre- and post-Depression lunch counters the nation over.
No less an authority than renowned Daily Oklahoman & Times columnist Ray Parr wrote in his “Parr for the Course,” on Aug. 17, 1975, about my great-grandpa’s chili:
“For deluxe dining, Jim Christy served chili for 10 cents per bowl — and it was a man-sized bowl, with plenty of crackers. Old-timers around Oklahoma City still talk about Baxter’s (restaurant) chili. But that’s because they never had a sniff of the real stuff, Jim Christy style. When old Jim got his chili simmering on the stove you could smell it the entire length of Granite’s booming business district. I was 12 years old before I knew restaurants ever served anything but hamburgers and chili. During my expense account years, I have tried out gourmet eating from New Orleans to San Francisco. But none of it has ever approached that Jim Christy chili.”
That recipe was handed down to one of his two sons, my great-uncle Barney, who operated Christy’s Lunch on Weatherford’s Main Street for many years. I’m sure anyone who went to college at Southwestern would attest to his legacy of fine chili.
And, about a year before he died in 1987, we made a trip to Weatherford for our last visit with him. As was his habit, it was one big genealogy lesson and bull session. Plus, he handed down the family chili recipe to me.
It came written on brown kraft paper, penciled on an old, worn paper bag. But, it was like the Shroud of Turin to me — entrusted with the family recipe for “Texas Red.”
And, I was sworn to its secrecy, on penalty of my everlasting soul, with the caveat I never make my chili too spicy, use exotic meats or other assorted road kill, put beans in it or divulge the ingredients.
Colleagues here at the paper have asked for the recipe, but it’s still safely tucked away. Not even my wife knows its secrets. And, someday, I’ll have to decide which of my three sons to pass it along to — for posterity.
So the next time someone tells me they make a good bowl of chili, I’ll just have to shake my head and chuckle.
That’s right, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, drawn a line in the dirt, questioned your heritage and your veracity ... and your chili.
Nahhhh...
Once you pile in the beans and the hot chili sauce and the LaVictoria Salsa Ranchera, it’s chili.
GREAT chili, believe me.
(I’m making myself hungry!)
Pennsylvania is not known for its chili. Great cheesesteaks and pretzels, yes; chili, no.
All of the foods I mentioned are chili.
Chili can contain beef, pork, lamb, venison, chicken, veal, buffalo,turkey, fish, etc. and beans, peanut butter, tomatoes, rice, corn, potato, cheese, chocolate, squash, onion, hot peppers, sweet peppers, pineapple, mustard, lime, orange, oil, beer, wine, corn meal, brown sugar, molasses, salt, black pepper, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, cilintro, garlic, pasta, and just about any other thing one choses to put in their chili.
I acknowledge your Texas position regarding beans but chili long ago surpassed Texas. Chili is more a state of mind that cannot be reduced to any one recipe or any one state of mind.
The beautiful large cast iron pot of chili pictured in the post is found on a web site featuring an award winning chili recipe, Linda's Chili Con Carne, which contains beans.
So now you’re the forum moderator, as well as the only one that knows anything about chili? Just as soon as someone puts you in charge of anything, you can suggest where I may or may not belong. Until then, get over yourself.
I have a pot stewing right now. I would not have had the stuff to make except I have been prepping for the Obamapression.
That site has some good advice.
I’ve heard of “wine snobs,” but “CHILI-SNOBS”???
Good grief!
If you make it, and you like it, and you want to call it chili, ...it’s chili.
(After all, it’s origin was just to cover up the taste of rotten meat in prisons. It’s not exactly gourmet food.)
Hank
I don’t know who wrote that history, but this:
“Fact: Chile peppers were used in Cervantes’s Spain and show up in great ancient cuisines of China, India, Indonesia, Italy, the Caribbean, France, and the Arab states.”
Unless by “ancient” is meant about 600 years ago, this is impossible, since Chiles, like potatoes and corn, are New World vegetables, unknown in all those places before 1400.
Hank
Chili bump
Are you on the weekly gardening thread ping list? We have a very knowledgeable group and there is always something to be gleaned from the threads.
Nope, sorry. Words have meanings. If you make a pie with apples, you can call it a “peach pie” all you like, but it remains an apple pie. Same with chili.
And whoever told you that chili began as prison food is wrong. Chili is cowboy food, born on the trail.
You do not seem to care all that much about the meaning of words, their use, or etymology.
From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry;_ylt=AnscV5B6jAJOiYVtXSH2_.WugMMF?id=C0293500
chil·i also chil·e or chil·li
NOUN:
pl. chil·ies , also chil·es or chil·lies
1. The pungent fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum, used especially as a flavoring in cooking. Also called chili pepper .
2. Chili con carne.
Chili does not refer to any particular dish, but to what we commonly call “peppers” but in most other parts of the world are simply called chillies.
Chile is actually the name of a country, not a vegetable.
From the same dictionary:
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/chili%20con%20carne
chili con car·ne
NOUN:
A highly spiced dish made of red peppers, meat, and often beans.
Words really do have meanings. You just don’t know what they are.
Hank
1 or 2 pounds ground beef, the best
1 standard can tomato paste and sauce and whole peeled tomatoes
1 large green pepper
1 large white onion
2 ribs celery
2 to 10 Jalapeno peppers, the canned in oil kind
½ a raw potato
1 can Bud beer
1 shot or two of olive oil – do not use cooking oil (I use Contadina brand)
1 standard envelope chili mix, such as McCormick’s or whatever, but not some weird, esoteric brand…just the plain stuff and a half envelope of taco mix
Some Oregano and Thyme and crushed red pepper and black pepper and a bay leaf or two and some grated Parmesan cheese, such as in the green cardboard tube, and salt and, as to the spices, I use around a ½ a teaspoon or more – it’s up to you as are all the quantities and it’s also your problem or pleasure, don’t blame me.
Method of Preparation:
New simplified directions!!!
Brown the beef a little bit, not a lot…leave some pink. Dump everything into a pot and add water sufficient to keep it from burning while you simmer it for an hour or so.
Now, I must add, for the sake of decency that prior to the dumping you must have finely chopped, sliced and diced the vegetables.
Got that?
Do it.
Dump together as noted and so forth, and by now it’s simmering nicely and you’re keeping an eye on it and adding a bit of water here and there and the lid’s on the pot, slightly askew, a sprinkling of Parmesan and always stirring and sampling and simmering and, three hours having passed, you let it cool and poke it into the fridge and wait until the next day and that’s that.
You want beans? Fine. You also tell unfunny jokes, force your dog to wear rubber booties on rainy days, and are basically miserable. However, if you must….please use drained and rinsed kidney beans and their name is sufficiently disgusting to me or, even better, drained and rinsed black eyed peas, though I recommend neither and how do you spell recommmmmmend anyway?
I figure it may take a lifetime for you to get this right, so forget it. You go on and read that junk in the papers on Thursdays and clip coupons and buy cookbooks.
I don’t care.
You really must mess with this thing a few times to get it to your taste and if you’re the type who follows recipes exactly, I’m already thanking you for not inviting me to your table even though I said change nothing in this recipe. If that intimidated you, don’t cook this chili that isn’t chili.
I think I’ll pass on that one...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.