I’m Not Allowed In The Kitchen Either

After the debacle that was My Mother’s Chili (it’s a title- it gets capitalized), tadalafil my mother was never allowed into the kitchen without competent supervision again. Or, ambulance at least, unhealthy she wasn’t allowed to make anything more complicated than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For myself, I made a vow that I would never commit the same sort of blasphemy against the art of cuisine.

Skip ahead a dozen years. I’ve graduated high school and am studying Education at the University of Akron. My wife and I have recently moved out of a shoebox-sized apartment (when I tell you it was so small that I could stand in the living room and reach the kitchen and the bathroom without actually having to stretch, it’s not really an exaggeration) and into our first house. I won’t go into detail about this house except to say that when we had it appraised, the building inspector gave it thoughtful stare and said, “Well, you can’t exactly call it a fixer-upper; we’re going to have to invent a new word…” We paid less on our mortgage for that house, near the heart of the town, than we had for the little rodent-infested apartment we had just moved out of, and it’s arguable that we were still being robbed.

In any case, though, it was an investment; our money was going into a sinkhole that would someday actually belong to us. In the meantime, though, we were so broke that we had to panhandle outside elementary schools in order to scrape up enough change to buy gas so that we could go to work and school. I’ll tell you, there’s nothing quite so depressing as realizing that the average five-year-old child has- in his pockets- roughly double your net worth…

At any rate, we decided that we would, with the purchase of this new house and with the installment of a couple of friends as renters, throw a little get-together. Everyone was to bring a side dish except for me and my wife, who were providing the entrée. Like my father before me, I was the primary cook in the house and I decided to make (you knew where this was going) chili.

Pause for a moment to recollect what I was saying about being po’- we were rolling-pennies-for-gas poor, so poor we couldn’t afford the last two letters of the word. We were so poor, in fact, that we decided to mix many of our own spice blends in order to save money. Chili powder is a spice blend, and it is fairly simple to make. It consists of one part each of dark red Hungarian paprika, ground cayenne, and ground oregano mixed with two parts ground cumin and garlic powder. There are dozens of other recipes out there, but this is the one I’ve used for ages, and it’s pretty good- so long as you use the right peppers.

Now I traditionally make chili powder pretty much as described above- I substitute two parts ground ancho chili pepper for one part ground cayenne, but that is the only real difference. In terms of spiciness, ancho chilis are much weaker than cayennes; ancho chilis typically rate about 1,500 Scoville Units while cayennes rate as high as 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units. In other words, I make a chili powder which is really very mild compared to what most people are used to; I derive the spiciness of my chili almost entirely from the two finely sliced cayenne peppers I place in the pot to simmer with the tomatoes and beans.

In preparing for the feast, things got kind of busy and my wife went out and procured spices for the chili powder. She then mixed up the chili powder, something I trusted her to do because she also cooked and was Italian to boot and so had a fine understanding of food preparation and spices. Having prepared the spice blend, she placed it in a small, sealed jar along with a label that read, “Chili Powder: Use two tsp.”

In time, I eventually got around to making the chili. I browned the meat, I tossed in the minced onion and garlic, then reached over and poured a generous dollop of the spice blend into the mix. I stirred and turned and mixed and, eventually, added everything to my pot of boiling tomatoey-and-bean goodness, turned down the heat and added another dollop of chili powder along with a couple shakes of dried basil and a couple bay leaves. I stirred it around a few times, then put the lid on it and went to meet my guests.

The odor of the chili permeated the house. My guests arrived and we sat around and talked and occasionally shooed whichever of the six cats or two dogs was making a nuisance of itself back out of the kitchen. Eventually, the growling from our stomachs became overpowering and we all sat down at the table. I went into the kitchen, grabbed my oven mitts, and proceeded to take the glowing pan out to the dining room table. I didn’t notice it, but my wife swore that she noticed the bottom of the pan starting to deform…

As I said, I didn’t notice that, but I was slightly more aware that when I pulled out the spatula I had been using to stir the concoction with, all that came out was the handle- apparently the flat head had been lost (melted) in the chili. That was alright, though- I wasn’t going to use that to serve the stuff, anyway- I had a stainless steel ladle. I went around the table dishing the chili into each of the ceramic bowls that we had for formal occasions. I can only thank God that that was what we chose to use; had we used plastic, someone may have been seriously injured.

My wife, always a wimp about spicy food, had lined the bottom of her bowl with boiled rice, a method she often employed to reduce the exposure of her mouth to the assaults of my spicy cooking. She was the first to try the chili. With a gleam of anticipation, she raised the spoon with the chili-drenched rice to her lips. She sniffed it and a wide, eager grin spread across her Irish-Italian features. She opened wide her mouth and slipped the spoon inside. She spit the stuff right back into her bowl and looked at me with a wounded expression; “Honey,” she cried, “this is awful!”

Don’t hold back, I thought, tell me how you really feel! What I said, however, was, “What’s wrong?” and then, knowing my wife’s dislike of anything with even the mildest amount of capsaicin in it, I ventured a guess. “Too spicy?”

She nodded vigorously as she guzzled milk.

The girlfriend of my renter reached for her bowl with a wide smile. Her words- I kid you not- “I like spicy food!”

*GULP*

The color drained from her face. Her lips went white. Her eyeliner and mascara melted and ran down her cheeks. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead and her naturally wavy hair instantly straightened down her back. Her pupils shrank to tiny red dots, smoke poured from her nose and ears. She covered her lips with her hands and only barely managed to avoid setting the tablecloth alight with a gout of flame from her mouth.

She fled into the kitchen and, moments later we heard the sound of the kitchen tap going full-bore. My renter followed her more slowly, stopping by the refrigerator to take out a pint of Guinness.

No one else was even brave enough to attempt the chili except for me. I put a very cautious bite in my mouth. It was unbelievably hot. I had and have a reputation as a man who is capable of ingesting near anything and surviving the experience. Raw jalapeños? No problem. Soy sauce on vanilla ice cream? I’ll try it (and I recommend that nobody else does- it was awful.) Mushrooms growing in the back yard (and the syrup of ipecac that was provided for me when I discovered they were actually toadstools) I was doing that stuff when I was four, man. Damned if I was going to let a biteful of Infernal Chili defeat me!

I swallowed. I nearly gagged, but I managed to force the entire bite down my throat. “It’s…” my voice broke and I was forced to start again. “It’s a little…warm,” I managed.

Yes- I am the master of the understatement.

It turned out that my wife had substituted a different pepper for my beloved ancho chilis; she had laid hands on the dreaded habañero. She had taken this concentrated dose of ground molten rock and replaced my benign Anchos at a one-to-one ratio. My wife, no dummy, had even written explicitly how much was safe to use in my chili-“Chili powder-Use 2 tsp”- but I, assuming that it was standard chili powder, had treated it in exactly the same manner that I’d always dealt with chili powder and had dumped in probably four good-sized tablespoons.

My wife, upset about the ruination of the chili, asked me what I had been thinking. My mind naturally went back to my Mother’s infamous line: “Id diddud sbell hod eduff?”

We ordered in pizza and had a fairly good dinner in any case, but I never forgot how my failure to heed directions had led to a chili even more diabolical than my mothers.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Guest Story. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.