[Sca-cooks] Chili dishes...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Michael Gunter:
>>I'm personally partial to chili con carne Mary of Agreda over 
>>frijoles and to posole with pork and green chili sauce.
>
>I have to admit some of my favorite chili dishes.
>Chili burgers: a good sized meat patty, medium rare, with lettuce,
>tomato, onion and mustard.
>
>Frito pie: a bag of Fritos Corn Chips torn open and topped with
>chili and cheese.

Is there any truth to rumors you're supposed to eat this directly 
from the Frito bag? Like those little one-serving boxes of corn 
flakes they used to (and presumably, still do) have, with the dotted 
line that says, "cut here and add milk", or some such? And to what 
extent is this (or not) a co-opting of nachos?

>Tamale Pie: No tamales. Chili on the bottom of a casserole dish
>with cornmeal batter poured over the top and baked. Cheese
>is nice too.

Do people put tamales in tamale pie? I thought the whole point was to 
avoid the labor-intensive wrapping and the hours of steaming... and 
if not, how does what you described differ from the usual variant?

>Chili should never have beans. Although when I hosted the Ansteorran
>Chili Party at Pennsic one year the one I liked the best was my "Vegetarian
>Chili".

Look, guys. It's really simple. You don't steam the rye bread with 
the pastrami, or boil it with corned beef. You cook them 
appropriately, _THEN_ combine them on your plate. And "combine" is 
not a synonym for "mix"! Sheesh!

>Corn bread is the only thing allowed to be crumbled into the chili.
>Saltines denotes a child, wussie or Carpetbagger.

Hmmm. I'd understood saltines to be what urbans got at chili parlors, 
and corn bread what a chuck wagon cook or other rural-type 
practitioner gives you...  but you'd know better than I.

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04