SC - Its All Geography (Was: Carne con chile)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Michelle Groulx wrote:
> 
> ----Original Message-----
> From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
> 
> >According to Frank X. Tolbert, author of "A Bowl Of Red", for many years
> >the official Bible of Tex-Mex cuisine, oregano and garlic, in addition
> >to the ingredients you mention, are essential. Onions, tomatoes, beans,
> >Bell peppers, chocolate, tequila, masa harina, epazote, old shoes, beer
> >and small children are not.
> 
> After travelling as much as I have, I have come to the conclusion that Chili
> is basically a geography thingy. No matter who I've talked to, nor where
> I've gone, the RIGHT AND CORRECT recipe\ingredients are right where you're
> at at any given moment.

While that may be so, these are uninformed opinions by dint of being
out-of-region. I have a friend who ate in a Chinese restaurant in Idaho,
run by two little old Swedish ladies who had eaten in a Chinese
restaurant in, I think it was, Chicago, and they thought it would be fun
to serve what they thought was a close approximation of the foods they
had encountered in Chicago. The results, which involved
sauerkraut-filled blintzes, among other things, were, at best,
interesting. While they may have been right in that particular town in
Idaho, these ladies were trying to recreate a cuisine typical of another
region, and they were ill-equipped to do it, just as a lady in a pueblo
in the American Southwest might not be the best source for a recipe for
Swedish cloudberry panckes.

As Clint Eastwood says, "A man's got to know his limitations..."

In the case of chili, it may be right and correct in Cincinnati to serve
chili with beans over pasta, but it still bears little or no resemblance
to the dish invented by Texas chuck-wagon cooks in the mid-to-late
19th-century, in imitation of various Mexican stews, some of which have
beans, and some even chocolate in their original forms. 

Or, to put it another way, this evening I had some chicken wings in a
restaurant which claimed that the said wings were prepared in a manner
similar to one commonly employed in Buffalo, New York. The wings arrived
deep-fried, seasoned with some kind of vaguely spicy powdered stuff on
them, possibly cayenne-seasoned flour, but probably something far less
like real food than that, served with a little ramekin of a sort of
barbecue sauce on one side, and another of what may have been some kind
of blue cheese slad dressing, but tasted suspiciously like buttermilk
ranch dressing with added blue cheese. No celery or carrots.

They tasted okay, but they weren't Buffalo wings, and since it's pretty
well documented that Buffalo wings were invented in 1979, after hours in
Frank and Irene's (I think) Bar in Buffalo, by the son of the owners,
and according to a pretty specific recipe, it would be silly for me to
attribute the differences I experienced to geography, wouldn't it? I
mean, this is a dish that is part of the regional cuisine for the area,
and when taken out of the region, variations that might be acceptable in
places like my neighborhood near the eastern edge of New York City
(quite a ways from Buffalo) would be regarded in Buffalo as, at best,
simply a way to make some other dish, with no bearing on the way proper
Buffalo wings are made, because they aren't Buffalo wings.

If people want to put chocolate in their stew, or anything else along
those lines, it's fine, and often yummy, but one might argue that
they've left the realm of what can be legitimately called chili by
Americans. Local variations might apply, but I'd be inclined to consider
the method as used in the birthplace of the dish as we know it (i.e.
Texas-style chili, rather than the Mexican stews similarly named, and
often featuring pork, turkey or chihuahua) as the real McCoy.       

Hey, I don't make these rules, and often I don't even follow them, but
that doesn't mean they don't exist ;  ) . I'm reporting the tradition as
reported by Tolbert and many other sources. It could be worse. In
Germany the Rheinheitsgebot was enforced as _law_ for centuries.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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