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"  Hers is not like the chili I knew before I knew her. Not like the varieties that come out of Texas, not like the brutally hot recipe I learned when I worked in a Cajun place twenty-five years ago, or the chili I wolfed down after softball games when I was young in Rochester, New York. She uses a little cinnamon, for one thing. At first, that combination of cinnamon and meat reminded me of food I&amp;#039;d known in other places \u2014 Turkey, Greece, Morocco \u2014 but it doesn&amp;#039;t anymore. Now it reminds me only of her. I&amp;#039;m certain some people would say she&amp;#039;s doing it wrong. She favors an extremely lean ground beef, uses a lot of mild green peppers, and allows all that to simmer a fairly long time with a good bit of water. Hers may be a bit less of an occasion in that first bite \u2014 not as much salt, no exotic peppers, not even cayenne \u2014 but she makes it to comfort, not challenge. Every chili I ate before I met her was, at its root, a concoction, each of them deeply, hopelessly red on the tongue. Hers is green, soft on the palate, somehow vegetal in the mouth, giving me the feeling that it grew somewhere nearby. She makes the recipe her mother taught her, written in her mother&amp;#039;s hand on the pages of a bound book that sits two shelves above our coffeepot. She&amp;#039;s been around a kitchen long enough that she consults the book less often now. Never when making chili. But there are afternoons when she will hook its spine with her finger, pull it down, and look for something new, something she hasn&amp;#039;t tried in forever. Bananas Foster. Crab Louis. Spoon bread. I&amp;#039;m not there when this happens. But I know there&amp;#039;s a measure of devotion in it \u2014 to the past, to the cooking, to me. She always serves her chili with little bowls of chopped onions and cilantro, shredded cheese, salsa. I&amp;#039;ve learned to use less of that stuff, since I&amp;#039;ve found it mashes down the taste of her chili. And I always want that taste, that thing I never knew until her. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a8382/the-perfect-chili-recipe-0910/>