Great Bowls of Fire

It was dale who got me hooked in 1982, in Tucson, Ariz. Dale, who wore cowboy boots and counterfeit mirrored Ray-Bans. Dale, who was always going off to meet people with names like “Slade” and “El Gourdo.” That Dale.

Dale was not unsophisticated, but he was a man of powerful appetites. Where food was concerned, his sense of taste had been toughened up by filterless Ducado cigarettes from south of the border and tequila that went down the throat like a swarm of hornets. His palate was like a remote swath of desert that had been hardened by nuclear testing. It took strong flavors to make an impression on him.

For me, it started with the jalapenos. We were sitting in a dusty bar in Nogales on the Mexican border when Dale signaled to the waiter, who quickly sent a small dish skidding across the table. On it a triad of miniature emerald torpedos glinted ominously in the harsh Southwestern light. Being from corn bread country, I’d never tried a jalapeno before. But like a kid brother wanting to impress the older guys, I bit squarely into one. It set my mouth aflame, as if my tongue had been stung by a scorpion. Dale flashed a wicked grin that reminded me of a figure in an Hieronymus Bosch painting; all he lacked was a pitchfork. Then we broke into a fit of maniacal laughter, with tears streaming down our faces. Today this would be called male bonding, but we didn’t think of it like that back then. Dale was not the kind of guy who engaged in group hugs.

I was hooked. The sensation of all that capsicum hitting the nerve endings in my mouth and activating the central fire alarm in the cerebral cortex was a dangerously exhilarating rush that I had never before experienced. But that was only the beginning.

The next afternoon, Dale went to work in the kitchen. He was making chili, but instead of using the ground beef that embodied all I knew of chili con carne, he began slicing up a slab of lean beef that was soon flung into the bottom of a pot to brown in hot butter. Pinto beans simmered in a kettle on the stove, thick-sliced bacon sizzled in a skillet, and a variety of exotic dried chiles--I would later come to recognize them as pasilla, ancho and cascabel--soaked in a bowl of water. Dale cryptically mentioned that the recipe had been given to him by El Somebody amid a vaguely sinister transaction, but his conspiratorial gaze warned me off from inquiring further.

That night we sat down to incendiary bowls of the most incredible food I’d had in my life. I don’t think Dale had a name for it, but I ended up calling it Dale’s Damn Hot Chili, which these days kind of rings nicely against all those yuppie hot sauces they have now with overstated names like Hellfire Inferno. This was great stuff. There were multiple dimensions of flavor: garlic, onion, even the subtle flavor-enhancing power of coffee and the nutty aftertaste of the dried chile puree, all mingling with the bacon, beans and beef. But there was more than that: There was heat so fierce that you transcended your worldly cares and fell into a blissful state of self-forgetfulness.

As somebody once said, abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones, and I was soon on my way to a life of culinary crime. Over the years, I became immune to the suffering of others, unable to control my urges to amp up vegetable soup with just a “pinch” of cayenne. On so many nights I sheepishly lowered my eyes to the plate of Santa Fe pepper-spiked ratatouille or pork chops doused in an improvised chipotle sauce as one or another in a line of rapidly defecting girlfriends would wail abjectly at yet another betrayal of my promise to keep things cool. How could you? You know I can’t stand spices! It was inconceivable to me that not everyone had my tolerance for the burn. One night several years ago, Dale’s Damn Hot Chili nearly sent a Canadian, two Brits, and an Austrian to the emergency ward. Little did they know.

To all I’ve injured, please believe me: I’m truly sorry. I am a chili head, and I can’t help it. Until my recent reformation, my friend Barak Zimmerman was the only person who dared eat my cooking. We had formed sort of a two-man gastronomic Fight Club, the object being to prepare dishes hot enough to knock each other out of our respective senses. But nothing topped Dale’s recipe.

Needless to say, large supplies of cold beer are necessary, and don’t give me that nonsense about bread or milk being more effective to put out the flame. Just you remember, all you young whippersnappers with your first shot of habanero marinade still dripping from behind your ears: all this started before you were lining your shelves with hyperbolically-titled bottles of designer hot sauce that became paperweights once the first squirt sent you crying to Mommy. Me and Dale, we were into capsicum when capsicum wasn’t cool.

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Dale’s Damn Hot Chili

Note: to make this fit for human consumption, use fewer jalapenos and milder varieties of dried peppers.

1 1/2 cups dry pinto beans

8 cups water

3 to 4 each of dried pasilla, ancho, cascabel peppers

1 pound bacon

2 large onions, diced

6 to 9 cloves garlic, minced

6 to 9 peppers

2 pounds sirloin chopped into 1/2-inch cubes

3 tablespoons chili powder

2 tablespoons each ground cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper

1 cup leftover coffee

3 cups beef broth

1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

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Soak chiles, seed and puree. Rinse beans and cook until tender, about 2 hours. Fry bacon in skillet. Remove bacon and chop, reserving 1/4 cup of bacon fat. Over medium heat, saute onion, garlic and jalapeno in reserved bacon fat until onions are soft, about 5 minutes. Add meat and spices and cook mixture on high heat for another 5 minutes. Add coffee, beef broth and pureed chiles and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, and continue simmering for about 2 hours. When meat is tender, add beans and bacon. Stir and cook for 15 minutes. Add salt, pepper and cilantro to taste.

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Jalapeo Corn Bread

2 cups yellow cornmeal

1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

3 eggs

1 cup milk

4 small jalapenos, minced

1/2 cup unsalted butter

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder, and mix with a whisk. In medium bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and jalapeno. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir until blended. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Pour melted butter into cormeal mixture and stir until blended. Pour cormeal mixture into hot, unwiped skillet. Place skillet in oven . Cook until golden brown, about 25 minutes.

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Barbecue Sauce

Adapted from “Weber’s Art of the Grill”

(Chronicle, 1999)

1/4 cup orange juice concentrate

1/4 cup mild chile sauce

2 tablespoons dark molasses

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons whole-grain mustard

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

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In small saucepan, combine orange juice concentrate, chile sauce, molasses, soy sauce, mustard, white wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce and salt. Bring to boil, then simmer for about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Serve with barbecued chicken, chili and corn bread.

Martin Booe’s last feature for the magazine was on Bishop Charles E. Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in South-Central.