Amo, Amas, Amat: Chili, Chile, Chilli

Saturday was beautiful. At the house, hungry and still in possession of my meager poker winnings - the wife didn't anticipate a pre-noon rising - I declared to my dog that we would be making chili again. Now, I've been making chili almost once a week for the last couple of months trying to work out a basic chili template based on the local resources. Back from the market, stocked and ready to go, I continue the chili custom of cooking and comfort.

A few words need to be said about what chili is and is not. It's not a sauce and not a stew. It's not a soup. It is not spicy Prego. Chili is chili. Let's look at the main, and sometimes only, ingredients: meat, chiles and fat. Tomatoes and beans were later additions. Looky here for a good primer on ingredients. Click here for recipes, history and the prevalent Texan view of beans (lower left sidebar). Chili was invented by carnivores, for carnivores. Keeps your belly and backbone from bumpin'. Eat it with broken-up soda crackers and cheese, with a thick slice of sourdough, on some hoagie bread, on rice, next to eggs or straight up. It's the everyman's accessible art. I'm not talking about the Simpson's standard-lowering Hooray For Everything! Nor is it the incomprehensible "genius" of Christo. This is Dogs Playing Poker art. Like grabbin the ring on the merry-go-round. Won't get it every time, but the chance is available to all, always.

The cooking part should remain simple. Stay with the basics and add one or two extras. The best and most challenging variant is the chiles. Fresh, dried and powdered. Now, our options in Taiwan are limited. Mostly, I stock up on different powders when I'm back home. Look for powders that leave a stain on your fingers when you rub it. That tells you the essential oils (flavor) are still there. Meat is important just for the sake of being meat. The cut is secondary. My last batch, and the best of these last couple of months, used beef shank and ground pork. For the fat, you could use oil, but I prefer lard or a strip-of-fat-strip-of-lean from the pork belly (Bart, butter your bacon!). As for the extras, bourbon, bittersweet chocolate, beer and coffee are all players.

Now to the comfort part. After getting it started, you would move on to what Smoky would call his 3rd Basic Position of Barbecuen' (Chili Makin). Being sunny and clear, I assumed a reclining position with a half twist on my patch of grass in the front. Flanked by my dog and my beer, listening to Fowler, Cagle and Hank, I settled back and did not-a-damn-thing for an hour. Rinse (your parched throat), repeat and eat. A beautiful Saturday.