It's all about chili

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

As I write this Sunday afternoon, it’s a blustery day with gusts of wind swirling around the house. It’s a perfect day for something hot and hearty.

I have a small pumpkin baking in the oven, salvaged from the autumn display in my sister’s front yard. It really pains me to see so many pumpkins go to waste. Purchased for jack-o-lanterns or simply to adorn front steps, they’re left to rot down or freeze and then thaw to mush when the weather gets colder. I “rescued” this one when I drove Nancy home one evening and chunks of its sweet flesh will be a delicious dessert when brushed with butter and brown sugar.

The football playoff games are on and Dotty Griffith’s "Wild About Chili" tells us that chili is “most often eaten before, during or after sporting events or on cold, wintry evenings that test the mettle of man and beast.” It seems there’s much agreement that football and chili are an ideal combination. The coupon insert in Sunday’s paper featured recipes for “Game Day Chili” and “Tim’s Tailgate Chili.” Dodie often shares recipes with me and his offering last Friday was “Big Bill’s ‘Win or Lose’ Chili Scores Big on Gameday.”

I was thrilled when I recently discovered "Wild About Chili" in the bookaisle at Care and Share. The author is an awardwinning food writer and long-time food editor of the Dallas Morning News. She points out that chili is a very individual dish but most cooks use good lean beef as the main ingredient. My husband prefers a combination of beef and pork sausage. (He’s the award-winning chili cook in the family, having taken the “Best Overall” trophy in the 2000 Gravette Day chili cookoff, his only time to enter.) Some folks make chili from chicken or venison and the Terlingua World Championship Chili Cookoff has even had entrants who used armadillo or rattlesnake meat.

We prefer beans in our chili. Pinto beans, kidney beans and black beans are all good choices, or perhaps a combination. But it is generally agreed that beans have no place in authentic Texas chili. A friend who was a Texas native cooked for us several times. She cooked beans on the stove next to the chili and served them as a side dish, so we added them to our taste. Cooking chili with beans in the same pot has gained more widespread acceptance, however, and Griffith’s book features a recipe for “all-bean” chili (no meat, although a can of hominy is added.)

Frank X. Tolbert, author of "A Bowl of Red," noted that chili was first cooked in San Antonio in the 1840s. Some speculate it evolved from a mixture of dried meat and spices the Indians called pemmican that was eaten on the trail by soldiers and cowboys. Tolbert organized the first Terlingua chili cookoff to publicize his book. He was the owner of two chili restaurants in the Dallas area, director of the Chili Appreciation Society International and, says Griffith, “the world’s greatest authority on chili at thetime of his death in 1984.” He came by his expertise naturally because his dad was an old chuckwagon cook.

Chili gained in popularity in the 1890s when William Gebhardt, a German from New Braunfels, Texas, invented a machine that ground chili powder from dried ancho pods. When cooks were able to bypass the time-consuming task of hand-grinding the dried chile peppers, the dish spread to the menus of cafes and homes throughout the area. Gebhardt brought his machine from New Braunfels to San Antonio in 1896 and canned the first commercial chili in 1908.

Chili recipes often use cheaper, less tender and sometimes greasy cuts of beef, but generally the leaner the meat, the better the chili. Traditional chili was thickened with masa, the meal used for corn tortillas, but cooks now lean toward no additional thickening. Pureed tomatoes are added for additional flavor and the mixture is simmered to the perfect consistency. One recipe specified that chili should be a thick consistency so that a 10-inch wooden spoon will stand upright in the pot, then sink slowly to the bottom. We prefer ours a little thinner.

Griffith’s final chapter, Beyond The Bowl, showcases recipes for chili tacos, nachos and chili cornbread. There are dishes combining chili with macaroni, rice and hashbrowns and chili “on the half shell” (topping baked potato skins). Given my fondness for eggs, the recipes for “migas con chili” (scrambled eggs with chili), chili quiche and chili and cheese soufflé sound like real winners!

Susan Holland, who works for the Westside Eagle Observer, is a lifelong Benton County resident.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/25/2012