The first item on our list is a plant which originated in Mexico. The second is a Texan dish. The third is a South American country. The thing they all have in common is their name. It’s not spelled the same, but it sounds the same, and that’s sometimes pretty confusing.
A chili pepper is not actually a pepper. It is the fruit of a plant in the nightshade family, originally grown and used extensively in central America and the southern parts of North America. As with many other things, the name got screwed up by some confused Europeans whose heads hadn’t quite stopped ringing after they’d bumped into some continents.
I’m talking, of course, of Christopher Columbus, who was so excited about finding a westward route to India (and the pepper he would find there) that the first place he happened upon was of course his destination. It wasn’t his fault, really, though people of his occupation realized in those days that the earth was actually round, they didn’t know how round (or rather, how extensively round). The reason I find it so ridiculous is because it seems to me that he should have done a bit more research about the general vicinity before he started pointing at things and naming them like a fifteenth century Adam: “Look, Indians! Look, pepper!”
Chili “peppers” come in a range of spiciness known as the Scoville scale. The many different varieties are used in many different dishes, one of which is quite popular in Texas and has spread to the rest of the United States (and the world beyond).
Chile con carne takes its name from its ingredients: chili, with meat. If they’re going to be that specific about the ingredients in the name, I don’t know why they don’t add “y tomate y sal” to it, although maybe they thought it would be too long at that point, or maybe if they’d gone that far with the length and information that they would have felt obligated to include the instructions to make it in the name as well.
The dish isn’t complicated to make, but the problem is that opinion differs widely (and rather insistently) on which ingredients to use. There is a staunch camp which defends the use of beans, and another which just as staunchly insists on their being excluded. Its side dishes also create some controversy, and the argument over saltines, tortillas, and corn bread rages.
I make my chili by browning some ground beef, and adding a can of tomatoes, a can of kidney beans, a cup or so of cooked pinto beans, in addition to salt, cumin, and chili powder. I don’t have any strong feelings about the use or non-use of beans, I just know that I’ve had chili (con or sin carne) made by other people, and I have determined that the way I make it is the way I like it.
A map of South America is always fun to look at. Brazil, looming huge on the east coast, Chile, slipping down the west coast, and all the others huddled around, poking out the south eastern and northern edges. Chile is a beautiful country that is only a little more than 100 miles across and has many interesting tourist spots, including the famous Moai on Easter Island.
Its name could have come from any number of different places, but the outcome was of course decided by a European that shoved into the area. It had something to do with a valley, and something the Europeans heard the Incas calling it, “Tili,” after a native chief. Or maybe it was because the valley was similar to another one in Peru that had a town in it called “Chili,” or maybe it was the fact that the leader of the expedition, for whatever reason, decided to call the Mapocho River valley “Chile.” The word itself could have come from any number of different words, from the different groups of native people who lived there, and could mean either “the ends of the earth,” “the deepest point in the earth,” or maybe even “snow.” Or it could be none of those and instead be the onomatopoeia of the cry of a local bird.
The names of these three things sound exactly the same but are very different. Of course, in context, you wouldn’t necessarily get confused, but if you walked up to someone and asked them to give you the history of chili, they wouldn’t automatically know what you were talking about and could end up giving you details about botany, gastronomy, or politics.
But heaven forbid you attempt a conversation about adding a certain ingredient to your Texan stew when it’s slightly cool outdoors in a certain South American country. (“Don’t forget to put a chili in your chili when it’s chilly in Chile.”)
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