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Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do
By H. Allen Smith
When I was a boy of ten in Decatur, Illinois, my
mother gave me twenty cents every morning, half of it for carfare to school,
the remaining dime for my lunch. I could have spent that dime on candy or ice
cream, but I can’t recall that I ever did, because it was at this magic and
benign moment in time that I discovered chili.
Day after day I went
to Chili Bill’s joint a couple of blocks from the school, sat at a scrubbed
wooden counter, and for ten cents got a bowl of steaming chili, six soda
crackers and a glass of milk. That was livin’!
I have been a chili
man ever since those days. Nay, I have been the
chili man. Without chili I believe I would wither and die. I stand
without a peer as a maker of chili and as a judge of chili made by other
people. No living man, and let us
not even think of woman in this connection, no living man, I repeat, can put
together a pot of chili as ambrosial, as delicately and zestfully, as the chili
I make. This fact is so stern, so granitic, that it belongs in the
encyclopedias, as well as in all standard histories of civilization.
That is the way of us
chili men. Each of us knows that his
chili is light-years beyond other chili in quantity and singularity; each of us
knows that all other chili is such vile slop that a coyote would turn his back
on it.
My
brother Sam believes that he should be given the Nobel Prize for chili-making. He and
I didn’t speak for a year and a half because of our clash of view on
chili-making. Word got to me that Sam was telling people that our pop had called him
the greatest chili maker in all Christendom. I knew this to be a falsehood; my
father has said that I was
the greatest. My sister Lou tried to deescalate our feud by saying that
pop actually had remarked that he was the greatest chili-maker in the civilized
world.
Brother Sam has gone
along for years making chili without so much as a whiff of cumin seed in it,
and cumin seed is an essential to chili as meat is to hamburger. I was at Sam’s
house once and in a moment of fraternal feeling ate a spoonful of his foul
chili. I remarked helpfully that it had no cumin seed in it and Sam said that I
could leave his fireside and never come back. “One bowl of your chili,” said I,
“would pollute the waters of the Great Salt Lake.” And off I stomped.
Thus began the feud and
it came to an end only after news reached me that Sam was warring on another
chili front. He and I both believe that proper chili should be soupy, with
lots of broth. He has a friend named Van Pelt who composes thickened chili,
Texas style. My chili and Sam’s chili are eaten with a soup spoon; Van Pelt
eats his from a plate with a fork. Sam and Van Pelt broke off relations for
a while after a highly seasoned argument over thin verses thick. Van Pelt contended
that Sam’s chili should be eaten through a straw and Sam said that Van
Pelt’s lava like chili could be molded into balls and used to hold down tent
flaps in a high wind. I was proud of my brother after that; he stood firm
against the wretched sort of chili that is eaten from a plate with a fork.
I voted for LBJ in
1964, but I now renounce that vote, for I didn’t know of his evil ways with
chili. Down on the Pedernales, the President has his chili put together by Mrs.
Zephyr or that piebald old character Walter Jetton, who spends his time at the
ranch barbecuing up a storm and talking in an ignorant fashion about chili. Miz
Wright serves chili without beans. Walter
Jetton has two recipes: in one he ignores beans, in the other he adds beans and
thickens things with cracker meal. There’s an old Texas saying that originated
in the cow camps, concerning any range cook whose grub was consistently
miserable. Of him the cowhand grumbled, “He ain’t fit to tote guts to a bear.”
That, precisely, is what I say of Mr. Cracker Meal Jetton.
You may suspect, by
now, that the chief ingredients of all chili are fiery envy, scalding jealousy,
scorching contempt and sizzling scorn. The quarreling that has gone on for
generations over New England clam chowder versus Manhattan clam chowder (the
Maine legislature once passed a bill outlawing the mixing of tomatoes with
clams) is but a minor spat alongside the raging feuds that have arisen out of
chili recipes.
A fact so positive
as the fact that chili was invented by Texans will, by the very nature of
its adamantine unshakability, get
shook. Lately it has become fashionable to say chili; (contrary to all
popular belief), was first devised by Mexicans and then appropriated by the
Texans. Some of the newer cookbooks come right out and say that chili is the
national dish of Mexico. In Elena Zelayeta’s Secrets
of Mexican Cooking it is asserted that the popular Mexican
dish, Carne en Salsa de Chili Colorado-meat in red chili sauce-is much the same as
the chili con carne of Texas. “It is a famous Mexican dish,” says Señora
Zelayeta, “that’s been taken and made famous by the Lone Star State.” This
lady, one of the most respected of contemporary authorities on Mexican cuisine,
then proceeds to destroy every shred of her authority by suggesting that a can
of hominy goes well in a pot of chili. On the other hand, if there is any doubt
about what the generality of Mexicans think about chili, the
Diccionario de Mejicanismos, published in
1959, defines chili con carne as “detestable food passing itself off as
Mexican, sold in the U.S. from Texas to New York.” The Mexicans in turn get
told off in a 14th Century English Herball, or General Historie of
Plantes, in which is written of the chili pepper: “It killeth dogs.”
I am a frequent
visitor in Mexico, and once, in a sportive mood, I decided to introduce chili
into Mexico, get the Mexicans to making it in their homes and setting up chili
joints along the highways. I have a good friend, once a novice bullfighter that
failed at that trade, who is maitre d’ hotel of a large restaurant. When he
found out what I was doing, he spoke to me in soft and liquid accents: “If I
ever hear you spick the words of chili con carne one more time in our beloved
raypooblica, pues, I am not in the custom of spitting in the eye of gringos,
but I will spit in your eye with glory and speed and hardness.” He didn’t make
it with the bulls but I felt that he would make it with me, and so I gave up
the chili-con-carnization of Mexico.
One present-day
dabbler in chili lore has come up with a shocking discovery which he believes
is proof that chili con carne had its origin in Mexico. Cited as the classic
work by Denal Diaz del Castillo, which chronicles the invasion of Mexico by
Cortez and his conquistadors in the 16th Century. Diaz reports that
he witnessed a ceremony in which some of his Spanish compadres were sacrificed
by Aztec priests, and then butchered; chunks of conquistadore meat were thrown
to the populace and these people rushed home and cooked them with peppers, wild
tomatoes, and a herb that apparently was set down as the true origin of chili.
I dislike having to way it, but if you are going to adopt this recipe, it must
begin, “First, catch yourself a lean Spaniard.”
I know of only one Texan
who has the facts straight on the origin of chili – Charles Ramsdell, author
of an excellent history of San Antonio. It is clear from the delving, as well
as my own, that chili con carne had its happenings in San Antonio. Was it a
dish contrived by Mexican of old San Antonio de Bejar? No. Was it put together
by white Texans? Not at all. You’d never guess in eight centuries. Chili
was invented by Canary Islanders. In the 1720’s the Spanish were in command
of the town, which they had founded, but
the French were pushing in from the East and an appeal went out to the
King of Spain to send some settlers. The king obliged half heartedly, shipping
sixteen families out from the Canary Islands. They established themselves
in rude huts on the spot now known as the Main Plaza. In their homeland,
these people were accustomed to food made pungent with spices. They liked
hot peppers and lots of garlic and they were acquainted with oregano. So they
looked around to see what was available in foodstuffs in their new home and they
came up with a stew of beef and hot peppers and oregano and garlic and, I make
bold to believe, tomatoes and onions and beans. It is my guess, too that they
managed to get hold of some cumin seed, which comes chiefly from North
Africa. That’s the way it happened and any Texas historians who dispute me can
go soak their heads.
There are friends
incarnate, mostly in Texas, who put chopped celery in their chili, and the
Dallas journalist Frank X. Tolbert, who has been touted as the Glorious State’s
leading authority on chili, throws in corn meal. Heaven help us one and all!
You might as well throw some puffed rice, or a handful of shredded alfalfa, or
a few maraschino cherries.
Let it be understood
that I am well disposed toward Texans and enjoy visiting their state; I’m
tolerant of all their idiotic posturing, of every one of their failings, save
only this arrant acclaim of superiority in the composing of chili. Mr. Tolbert
of Dallas, who appears to be spokesman for the group called the International Chili
Appreciation Society, declares that acceptable chili should contain no
tomatoes, no onions, and no beans. This is a thing that passeth all
understanding, going full speed. It offends my sensibility and violates my
mind. Mr. Tolbert criticizes Lyndon Johnson’s chili recipe because it leaves
out beef suet and includes tomatoes and onions. Yet the President’s chili
contains no beans. To create chili without beans, either added to the pot or
served on the side, is to flout one of the basic laws of nature. I’ve been told
that when I was a baby and it came time to wean me, I was fed Eagle Brand Milk
with navy beans frapped into it. Thereafter, all through childhood and
adolescence, I ate beans three for four times a week. If Chili Bill, back there
in Illinois, had served his chili without beans, I would surely have deserted
him and bought chocolate sodas for my lunch.
Texas has at least one
chile scholar owning a glimmer of intelligence: Maury Maverick, Jr., son of the
former Mayor of San Antonio and Rooseveltian Congressman. The younger Maury is
a lawyer and a true chili man in one respect – he speaks out against other
chili cooks saying, for example, of California chili: “With all that goddamn
sweet stuff in it, it’s like a strawberry sundae.”
As for Southern
California, my friend Fred Beck, a gourmet and semi-professional wine taster,
adduces evidence to suggest that Los Angeles is the chili capital of the world.
(The title, by the way, is claimed by San Antonio and by the little town of
Terlingua in the
Big Bend country, and lately by Dallas.)
Mr. Beck tells me
that chili was once called “size” in the town known to him as Lil-ole-ell-ay.
“Size” came into usage by way of one Ptomaine Tommy, once proprietor of the
largest and best known chili parlor in the city. Ptomaine Tommy served straight
chili and an epical Southwestern variation, a hamburger smothered with chili. He
had two ladles, a large and a small. When a customer ordered straight chili, he
got out the large ladle. When he wanted the other, he usually said
“Hamburger size.” So Ptomaine Tommy put up one sign that read HAMBURGER SIZE 15¢,
and another that read CHILI SIZE 20¢. Other chili joints followed suit and
before long chili was know throughout Los Angeles as “size”. They’d say, “Just
gimme a bowl of size.”
Mr. Beck speaks, too,
of the era when the architecture went kooky in Los Angeles and commercial
structures were designed to suggest the nature of trade conducted within. There
was a building on Pico shaped like a coffeepot, with steam issuing from its
spout. A weenie stand on La Cienaga was a large hideous representation of a
frankfurter. Then came the chain of Chili Bowls. It was quickly noted by the
always perceptive Angelenos that these structures were shaped like giant
chamberpots, san handles, so it became customary to say, “Let’s drive over to
the pot for a bowl of chili.”
During my probings into
the story of chili, I stumbled on a fact that made my heart leap. There is a
town in called Chili in my state, New York, Texans pay not even lip service to
their chili, for they have no town of that name. As for the New York community,
just west of Rochester (there is also a North Chili nearby), I was soon
disillusioned.
I telephoned my friend
Judge Ray Fowler of Rochester, “Why did they call the town of Chili by that
name?” I asked him. “Never heard of it,”
he replied. “How do you spell it?” I spelled it. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “ you mean
Chy-lye. The early settlers named it in honor of Chile’s breaking away from
Spanish rule.”“So,” I said, “they
misspelled it and then mispronounced it. And it has nothing whatever to do with
chy-lye con carne?” “Nothing at all.”
Just writing about this
makes me disconsolate, so let us pass on to the chy-lye that comes in a bowl.
The secret of making superior chili lies first in the ingredients and second
in the genius of the cook. Nothing should ever be measured. Experimentation
is the thing. Those blessed Canary Islanders in San Antonio wouldn’t
have known a measuring spoon from an electric carving knife. Spanish cookbooks never
issue peremptory orders, for that would not be polite. They speak of “maybe
fifteen centavos’ worth” of parsley, a handful of so-and-so, and maybe a bunch
of butter and a few “teeth” of garlic if you have some in the house.
My daughter follows my
haphazard methods and turns out chili that is the sensation of her set. She
says she passes my recipe along to her chili-loving friends and converts the
ignorant to it, and all hands proclaim it to be the best of all possible
chilis. That’s what she tells me. Whenever I hear those heartwarming reports I
feel so bucked up that I give her a trip to Mexico or Puerto Rico. Much the
same thing happens in the case of my son, though he tells me he composes my
chili with the doors locked and the shades drawn. He lives in Texas. For a
time, I wanted to establish that lovely tradition, the old family recipe, a
secret that wild horses couldn’t drag out of my descendants. A family is not a
true entity unless it has in its archives a fabulous secret recipe. But, my formula
is out and rapidly spreading, so I give it to the world…..
Chili H. Allen Smith
Get
three pounds of chuck, coarse ground. Brown it in an iron kettle. (If you don’t
have an iron kettle you are not civilized. Go out and get one.) Chop two or
three medium-sized onions and one bell pepper and add to the browned meat.
Crush or mince one or two cloves of garlic and throw into the pot, then add
about half a teaspoon of oregano and a quarter teaspoon of cumin seed. (You can
get cumin seed in the supermarket nowadays.) Now add two small cans tomato
paste; if you prefer canned tomatoes of fresh tomatoes, put them through a
colander. Add about a quart of water. Salt liberally and grind in some black
pepper and, for a starter, two or three tablespoons of chili powder. (Some of
us use chile pods, but chile powder is just as good.) Simmer for an hour and a
half or longer, then add your beans. Pinto beans are best, but if they not
available, canned kidney beans will do – two 15-17 oz. cans will be adequate.
Simmer another half hour. Throughout the cooking, do some testing from time to
time and, as the Gourmet Cookbook puts it, “correct seasoning.” When you’ve got
it right , let it set for several hours. Later you may heat it up as much as
you want and put the remainder in the refrigerator. It will taste better the
second day, still better the third, and absolutely superb the fourth. You can’t
even begin to imagine the delights in store for you one week later.
I deem it a pleasure
to have given you my recipe for chili. I can only say in conclusion that some
people are born to the tragic life. There are three distressing physiological
mistakes made by nature: the vermiform appendix, the prostate gland and the
utter inability of many people to eat chili because of delicate digestive
tracts. I really bleed for them.
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