First and Last Competition

Mondays we have to get the kids up and off to school so Sunday is our only sleep-in day. This past Sunday saw us up at dawn and herding the kids out the door to set up camp in fair park for the state fair chili cook-off.



We pulled into gate 11, found a space and unloaded our plethora of equipment. It looked like a pretty good turnout - maybe 30 or so other tents were already set up. I noticed that everyone seemed to know everyone else as I hauled the grill stand, chopping block and coolers out of the 4-Runner. After a brief battle with a borrowed Coleman pump stove we had the bison browning and I began to chop onions. I tossed the onions in the pot and started on the garlic. Another contestant, a cherubic middle-aged lady, made her way over to our canopy and peered in the pot.



"Uh oh! Ya'll are going to be DQ'd!" she said with an easy drawl. We looked at her quizzically. "Disqualified!", she exclaimed. It was around that time that I began to feel a bit uneasy, like showing up shirtless to a job interview. I was the only one with a cutting board and fresh vegetables. Fran and I watched as a few other cooks got out plastic bags with various powders and dumped them in their pots while stirring furiously. We turned back to the cook-off regular who was looking curiously at our stash of Holland habaneros. She had come from a very decorated canopy with many ribbons proudly displayed.



"Well, if we get disqualified, would you taste our chili?" Fran asked. "It looks like you've won a lot of competitions and we'd be glad for the input."



"Oh my!" said the chili veteran, "I don't LIKE chili! I just do this for the fun of it."



Let me take a step back and acknowledge that we should have studied more, we should have read all the rules. We didn't. We were totally blindsided by what has become a strange and insular culture of chili contests all culminating in a grand showdown in Terlingua Texas. Here's the deal; let's assume I paid off all the judges to vote for my chili. I would grease each palm with a genuine five dollar bill and say, "Just look for the sample with the jalapeno chunks!" The powers-that-be of chili contests have become so paranoid of such a scenario that they have systematically turned competition chili into a grand quest to duplicate Wolf Brand.



Anything identifiable is known as a "marker" and surely placed there not for flavor but to alert your carefully bribed judge to give you high marks. Red "gravy" and meat is all that is allowed to be sent to the judging tent. Needless to say, Fran and I were straining our chili into the Styrofoam cup. Our other major faux pas was spice; we added roughly the same amount of habaneros as we would add to our regular spicy chili at the kitchen. "The chili out here is pretty bland", confided another cook-off regular upon tasting our batch and reaching for his beer. At least we weren't disqualified. We didn't place, but we certainly shocked a judge or two. As an aside, I took a keg of homebrew - a basic red ale - which was very well received by the assembled cooks. Everyone was extremely friendly and I can certainly see how these competitions can become addictive; it would be easy enough to formulate a recipe which would please the judges and bring home ribbons - but why?

To quote the Beastie Boys "Sure Shot" -

You think I'll change up my style just to fit in?

Nah.

Football, Peppers and Notoriety!

We are now selling tamales from The Tamale Company - come on in and get some ready-to-eat doused in our chili or pick up a frozen dozen (or two).

Speaking of coming in - where has everyone been this week? Fran reported that she only did $38.63 in business on Wednesday. Should I blame the economy on the fact that I get to eat leftover stuffed jalapenos on slow days? When you pull up to the Taco Joint and the crowd is spilling out the front door remember we are right down the street on our "grungy" corner of Worth and Carroll. The magnificent ten square foot patio is particularly inviting on these early fall days.

David Lee Roth famously said, "People who say money can't buy love don't know where to go shopping" and we agree. Actually, you may not get love but we have reports of popularity, high fives and grown men reduced to tears when their humble football get-together is blessed with trays and trays of Chapman Chile stuffed jalapenos. This Sunday Dallas plays New York so get your order in as soon as possible - popularity for the mere pittance of one dollar per pepper.

Bison Rustling and Willkommen Christina

A call came in before the crack of dawn on Wednesday from our alarm company saying the motion detectors had been tripped at Chapman Chile and the police alerted. Someone had cut the power to the building and smashed through our laminated glass front door. Fran and I were wondering what they could have been after since the place barely makes enough money to pay for itself and we would never leave any cash in the register. A friend suggested they may have been bison rustlers - a possibility I suppose since Frontier meats told us we couldn't get any bison until Friday. On the bright side the power was restored before we lost any food.

I think I had the temerity in a prior post to suggest that disasters like this have been happening about once a month. I take it back! It would be nice to have an uneventful fall, although if things remained mundane for too long I would get really nervous that something truly awful was lurking right around the corner. I can picture the Guide headline: "Chapman Chile Kitchen Reduced to Smoking Crater by Mysterious Force from Outer Space!"

This weekend is the confluence of farmer's markets. Fran has bamboozled some good friends of ours into working the Celebration market while she toils at White Rock. If you read this and stop by Celebration, say hello to Christina - or rather say "guten tag." Christina and family are calling Texas home for a couple of years before returning to Germany.

The chicken salad has returned to the menu, so definitely give it a try. Another salad made with couscous, pomegranates and roasted nuts is coming later in the fall.

Wherefore art thou, green chile stew? I must apologize that with all the upheaval I haven't managed to roast any New Mexico peppers. Hopefully I can get that done this week.

Electric Weekend!

Sunday was Hannah's 9th birthday party, it was also our KNON event. Hannah's shindig was a pool party in our backyard. We tossed about 50 frozen water balloons into the pool; thankfully no one tried to throw them at each other until they thawed. After shooing everyone home we changed and headed down to the Kitchen to pack up our stuff for KNON.

We arrived about fifteen minutes before five and there was already a sizable crowd. The opening band was on stage and sort of noodling around. Fran was getting tables, warmers and the oven set up as quickly as I could haul them in. The first batch of peppers were in the oven. Chili and wings were in the warmers when the band fell silent. Our equipment had been plugged into the same circuit as the PA system. We unplugged our stuff, the band continued and a mad scramble ensued for extension cords and alternate places to plug in. After what seemed an eternity we were ready to begin serving. I looked up from our table in the back of the room and saw the line for food stretching nearly to the front door. Fran and I began to fumble with food tickets, serving bowls and lukewarm chili. We looked at each other with growing unease as the crowd loomed. That's when Paul stepped in and really saved the day.

Paul Wackym aka "The Baker Man" aka (on KNON's website) "Wackman" was with us to promote his cookies which we sell at the Kitchen. He was, of course, ready and waiting at the Pearl Room venue long before we showed up. Paul has helped in many ways; offering a table for the farmer's market, jumping in and helping us stock our large fridge after we had it moved in and giving us kind words and promotion.

Paul sensed our growing distress and positioned himself at the front of the line and expedited orders, collected tickets and handed out bowls and napkins. We finally got into a rhythm with me cooking peppers and warming chili (our warmers only hold about 10 servings of chili), Fran dishing up and Paul orchestrating everything. It took nearly two hours but we got everyone served and managed not to trip any more circuit breakers.

We got everything back to the kitchen by about 10:30 that night and went home exhausted. On Monday Fran went in and cleaned all the equipment. Today she went in early to make bison burger patties and stuff peppers. I got a call from an extremely stressed-sounding Fran. Evidently the workers gutting our new space had tripped a breaker (sound familiar?) and cut power to our refrigerators. Everything had to be thrown out. I suppose this is part and parcel of running a restaurant - disasters just come with the territory. The worst part is that Fran had to turn away some customers but as usual she had nearly everything back to normal by the afternoon.