Making the world safe for my father’s chili

Making the world safe for my father’s chili

By COLT FOUTZ

Special to The Vindicator

I believe a man is only as good as his meatballs.

Which is to say that from our earliest days as a species, when chucking spears at the nearest saber-toothed mammal took the place of, say, chucking spent beer cans at the TV after a Browns interception, there has been a primal connection between guys and food.

Tom Hanks, in Castaway, knows what I mean. “I have made fire!” he roars.

The scene left on the cutting room floor is from the next moment, when Tom, weeping, realizes there’s no good flank stank for a thousand or so miles. Somehow, a grilled Wilson volleyball doesn’t go as well with fermented coconut juice.

Simply put, real men cook.

It’s a philosophy I’ve inherited from my father, who spent years slinging meals for my brothers and me while Mom worked evenings.

Dad conjured recipes by trial and error. If not, we might still be sucking down Dinty Moore beef stew with bread, butter and jam.

We ate what he liked: the fried eggs and corned beef hash he shoveled in on business trips; split pea and black bean soups; burgers and brats from the grill; and — until his taste buds unionized and formed a picket — liver and onions.

Usually, our favorite dishes were ones he improvised. Throwing together macaroni, green peppers, onions and hamburger, smothered with ketchup — he called it slum-goullion. Or the way he made sloppy Joes — with hamburger, a can of gumbo, a couple spoonfuls of minced onion, ample squirts of ketchup, mustard, and the secret ingredient: love.

A family thing

Love made the inevitable burnt offerings go down a little easier.

Dad’s most ambitious project involved replicating the chili-spaghetti he craved as a student at the University of Cincinnati. You can’t walk a block in that city without stumbling upon a parlor serving up a spicy-sweet sauce over pasta, topped with mountains of shredded cheddar. But Dad’s favorite version, Sky Line, had him stumped.

Life as a guinea pig grew gastronomically perilous as Dad tried deer meat, ground salami, even chili soup over rotini to unlock the secret flavor combination. My brothers and I made indignant faces and reached for the oyster crackers.

The likely savior emerged — a woman with a printed recipe. Grandma clipped and sent instructions for Cincinnati Three-Way Chili from Arizona Trailways magazine, Dad made minute adjustments, and the meal became a favorite.

We soon had to make birthday dinner requests at least 72 hours in advance — time to stock the spice rack, simmer the sauce all day, set it out overnight, skim the grease in the morning and give the pot an extra stir before achieving Sky Line nirvana.

Eventually, it was time for me to outgrow Ramen meals and dishing up Spaghetti O’s with frozen French bread pizza to college girlfriends and take a crack at Dad’s recipes.

In the male tradition, my cooking has involved hardly any guidance of the frilly, wedding-shower-recipe-card variety. It’s nearly all improvisation.

It’s genetic

What can I say, ladies? We’re men; we like to tinker.

But as much as certain culinary customs are seared into my genes — Dad’s boiling brats in beer before grilling; his opera singing while fashioning meatballs (“I-a make the meat-a ball!”) — my own cooking has involved breaking with paternal ritual.

My bratwurst, for example, receives a generous basting of “Three B’s” — beer, butter and barbecue sauce — while plumping over the charcoal flames, a practice that prompts headshakes from Dad. And I always serve brats in garlic-toasted buns.

I hold off basting barbecued chicken until the end, unlike my grandfather, who erected an elaborate cage over his grill to roast the birds, only to blacken them to the consistency of shoe leather.

And though I appreciate my father-in-law Gary’s grilled delicacies, resorting to propane seems too much like cheating.

As for my father’s Sky Line, it’s a staple. I’ve got a dedicated stew pot for it at home.

Unfortunately, the variety of ingredients in its creation — garlic, cumin, clove, cinnamon and cocoa, anyone? — are exceeded lately only by the number of stomach gyrations concluding every serving. So I halve a tablespoon here, decline to double there.

The result

Is it the same chili? Well, maybe not. But it’s mine.

So, while I want to tutor my own son, counsel him to build up a tolerance to garlic salt early, maybe I’ll hang back a bit. Let him stand at my elbow as I work the spatula, glean whatever tricks of technique he can, and then tinker away, in his own way.

After all, the secret ingredient is still love.

XColt Foutz, an Ohio native, is a freelance writer based in Chicago. His first book, “Building the Green Machine,” was published in December. For more, visit www.cavaliersbook.com.