Strictly Chili: Cooking the Best Bowl of Red

by A.D. Livingston

Book Overview

This book deal with the chilli arguments that rage in cookoffs and home kitchens -- with beans or without, tomatoes yes or no, minced meat or cubed -- providing a wealth of recipes, expertise and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158080117X
• ISBN13: 9781580801171
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Burford Books
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Funny cookbook and more

Although I haven't yet made any of the recipes in this book, I enjoyed reading it immensely. It isn't just the author's compilation of recipes, but his comments on them that differentiates this book from other collections. He is hilarious and informative. In the chapter titled "Other Ingredients--for Better or Worse", he uses mesquite blossoms as an example. "Hell, they put everything else in...." The only thing missing from the book are suggestsions for making your own chili powder from scratch (although he discusses several kinds of commercial ones). Even if you're not a cook, this is a must read for anyone who loves to eat chili.

Great Christmas gift for chiliheads!

Having grown up in San Antonio and spent all my adult life in Dallas, I've been a chilihead for a long, long time. I used to hit most of the old-time chili parlors on Commerce Street and still, three or four times a year, I brew up a big pot of chili to fill the freezer. Several years ago, I even wrote the original article on chili history and culture for Wikipedia. I've read a bunch of books about the art of making chili and this is easily one of the best. First, the author is a cook (he's a food columnist with nearly a dozen previous cookbooks under his belt), not a chef. He's interested in good taste, not pastel colors and building towers with your food. He's also willing to go back to basics: "Chili is simply a meat stew defined by chile peppers. . . . Using lots of mild dried chile peppers and plenty of meat is the key to a superior and authentic chili." The chiles, he points out repeatedly, aren't just a spice; they're the vegetable that accompanies the meat. Do that part right and you can experiment with adding a little of this and a pinch of that, and often you'll come up with a pleasing riff on the original. What bothers Livingston is that most modern chili recipes leave too many things out. To remedy this, he leads the reader through the choice of meats (beef is basic, and venison is good, but even chicken works), the kinds and amounts of chiles (much more easily available these days, even outside the Southwest), the required spices (there's no such thing as too much camino), and the various major variations (New Mexican chili verde, even that weird stuff from Cincinnati). And he considers the major points of contention: Beans or no beans? (Or beans on the side only?) Better fresh or better the second day? He brings in the historical experts, including Wick Fowler and H. Allen Smith (a distant relation of mine, actually), and he doesn't hesitate to quote from earlier works. He's also not "religious" about it; if it sounds interesting, he'll try it. On the other hand, none of the several score recipes here includes oysters or tofu or lemongrass -- all of which I have actually seen in recipes for appalling concoctions purporting to be chili. This one is now on my cookbook shelf, right next to _A Bowl of Red_.

An incredible diversity of chili recipes

A.D. Livingston if the food columnist for "Gray's Sporting Journal". In Strictly Chili: Cooking The Best Bowl Of Red, Livingston has brought under one cover an incredible diversity of chili recipes that range from the traditional to the modern. Of special interest for the chili connoisseur are the unique recipes that include rattlesnake, muskrat, wine, soda, whiskey, and other unusual ingredient. From Chili with Soy; New Mexican Red; and Tampa Bay Three-Bean Chili; to Swampman Dan's Deer Meat Chili; McCormick's 20 Minute Chili; and Ham Hock Chili with Beans from Scratch, Strictly Chili is a mandatory addition to any true and dedicated chili enthusiast's personal cookbook collection!