SC - Greetings and Chicken

[Wendy]

"Michael F. Gunter" wrote:
> 
> I've been following this whole thread with some amusement living here
> in what people consider the most Texan of Texas, Dallas. The fact is
> that it is rare indeed to find a decent bowl of chili in this town.
> I've even been to Tolbert's Chili Emporium and not had real chili. You
> can get something similar in a few of the true Mexican places. Yesterday
> I went and had a wonderful Guisada Puerco in this little hole-in-the-wall
> where most people had English as a second language. This same place
> also offers tongue, tripe, and liver dishes. All wonderful stuff. But no
> real chili.

I've been waiting (with some anticipation/embarrassment) for any of the
Ansteorran folks to enter this discussion, half-expecting to be told
that the Original Classic contains heretical item X all the time, and
nobody cares. On the other hand, I've been doing a little research with
some fairly old and authoritative texts (quotes from ad copy from the
nineteenth century, Tolbert's book on chili, H. Allen Smith's rebuttal
to Tolbert's rebuttal to Smith's articles on chili, and complete minutes
of the original chili cookoff in Terlingua, which had a lot to do with
the whole beans/tomato controversy), so I'm reasonably confident in my
information, even though I'm not a Texan. 
 
> Even at the Terlingua Chli Championships (The Indy 500 of chili cooks) most
> chili is meat, tomatoes, peppers, cumin, liquid (usually beer or tequila),
> and spices.

I believe Wick Fowler [the Texas champion in the first cookoff, the
"good guy", as opposed to H. Allen Smith, "bad guy" and last-minute
substitute for Dave Chasen, L.A. restaurateur, who was the original "bad
guy" on the grounds of his use of "questionable" stuff like beans and
tomatoes, and who had been billed as good guy and bad guy because the
promotions were a spoof of the then-more-popular-than-now sport of
professional wrestling] used tomatoes for color, so they might somehow
be seen as being more acceptable than beans. 

> Chili with beans is accepted but is considered in bad form.

I believe the justification most commonly given by the range cooks was
that chili is a meat dish, not a stew, and as such should consist of
seasoned meat, not meat bulked out by significant vegetable additions.

Now, H. Allen Smith, BTW, who was born somewhere in Illinois, I believe,
had been writing for years about the legitimacy of a Midwestern-style
chili, which seems to be the original for the ground-beef, bean, tomato,
etc., dish, and in fact claimed that the original style was in fact the
Midwestern version. He was joking, too, it must be admitted, as were the
Texans who opposed him, because while there is some historical
justification that the Texas original (or rather, the earliest known
versions from Texas, which predate the earliest known versions from
anywhere else, but which may conceivably not be the original) would
generally have been a simple dish of cubed beef in a spicy sauce made
from chilies, cumin, garlic, and oregano, all of which grew wild on most
of the cattle ranges, as did the beef, one might say, there is no real
hard and fast rule.

However, logical or not, many Texans do feel strongly about what they
classify as "real chili" (including some Ansteorran Royalty, I gather),
and might look askance at deviations from that method, for almost as
long as it would take to ask for some more chili ;  ) .

> Another common chili dish is the "Frito Pie". Basically a bag of fritos corn
> chips is torn open and then chili is ladled over the chips and topped with
> shredded cheese and onion. It's a little league standard and even served
> as school lunches.

Comment A) what's the average Texas kid's blood pressure like?
Comment B) sounds pretty good, though...I've seen the cafeteria food at
my son's school
 
> As for the Buffalo Wing controversy. I'm with you guys. The best hot wings
> I've had are true Buffalo Wings. Plain wings deep fried with no batter and
> then sauteed in a sauce of margarine and tobasco. Served with real bleu
> cheese dressing and celery sticks. Nothing compares. Everything else is just
> a pale imitation. Maybe I'll make some later and drive Sara out of the house.
> The smell of so much vinegary tobasco sauce drives her nuts. :-{)}

I confess to a variation that doesn't so much compromise the ingredients
as the technique (although I use butter, not margarine): I heat my
Louisiana hot sauce (the original was Rich's, I believe, but Tobasco
certainly works) in a big stainless-steel mixing bowl over hot water,
like a double boiler, and beat little bits of butter into it with a whip
until it is thick, creamy, bright orangey-red, and still murderously
hot, but not greasy. I then toss the fried wings in that bowl and plate
them up. The original dish is, I believe, just melted butter or
margarine with the hot sauce stirred into it, but this has a tendency to
break and allow fat to sit on top of the hot sauce, leaving hot spots
and greasy spots in the sauce. I discovered the method I now use when
asked by some manager in a restaurant I worked in to send some Buffalo
wings out to the bar (really ingenious to send unlimited quantities of
free food to the bar when you're trying to sell the food on the menu,
huh?). The executive chef, as was his habit when asked to do demeaning
stuff like that, claimed to be ignorant of how Buffalo wings were
made...so I had a chance to experiment with making Buffalo wings that a
four-star restaurant should be proud of. Hey, we made more of them that
night than all of the other food on the menu combined, so either I did
something right or something vastly wrong...and the exec chef finally
broke down and asked for a written recipe. 

Adamantius Pragmaticus
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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