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Students and
villagers take McKinney chili challenge
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| Anna Haller, right, waiting
for a cup of chili from Michele Click, as Lance Jordan also filled
a cup, at the McKinney School Chili Cook-off on Saturday. |
To bean or not to bean was one of the big questions
at the McKinney School PTO’s 10th annual Chili Cook-off last Saturday
night at Yellow Springs High School.
Nearly 150 people came to try the likes of Cowboy
Chili, Rainey’s International Tingler and Emilio Garcia Chili, to
name a few, and vote their way down taster’s row for this year’s
chili champions.
The 22 student and 12 adult chefs had serious choices
to make about the level of heat, the kind of meat, alcohol content and sweetener
to use in the 26 different chilis on parade. Seventh-graders Ethan Brown
and Asa Casenhiser weighed their choices carefully and settled on Bob Evans
sausage and grape jelly to add kick to their mildly sweet and highly textured
concoction.
Ethan and Asa figured they were safe using a tried-and-true
recipe that had won chili competitions for 10 years in a row. However, Ethan
said, the duo’s inexperience with chili or the kitchen environs forced
them to spread the cooking over two days in order to take the half hour
they needed to chop an onion.
As students and adults filed by their pot, the team
eagerly handed out plastic sample cups with smiles that would surely win,
even if their chili didn’t. Within a half an hour their chili was
gone, and the cooks read the few beans at the bottom of the pot as a sure
win.
“It turned out pretty good, and a lot of people
came back for seconds and thirds,” Asa said. “We’re gonna
start our own company.”
One of the judges, their friend Dylan Sage, described
their chili as “chunky” and “zesty” with a “homemade”
taste. Though Dylan refused to disclose his vote, he assured his friends
their chili passed muster with most.
But Ethan and Asa could not rest until they knew
what others thought. So they flagged down taster at large Jenny Barnett
to ask who she voted for.
“I voted for Helen’s because she told
me to,” Jenna said of Helen Reed, as her classmates protested. “I
would have voted for you if you’d told me to.”
Right next to the student chili an unmanned pot
of molasses-colored shredded beef called “Drilling Mud” sat
abandoned and nearly full to the brim. Tasters’ reactions may have
explained why.
First of all, said YSHS senior May Cheow, the chili
did not have beans.
“Chili’s not chili without beans,”
she said.
Secondly, the chili had a “funny aftertaste,”
she said. Then May’s friend Matt Zaff tasted the chili and said the
same thing, adding that he liked the texture. Though the chef would not
lay claim to the muddy chili, villager Dave Stratton, found hanging around
the area, spoke suspiciously of his chocolate-and-beer laden chili that
didn’t quite turn out as he had hoped.
Stratton blamed his failed chili on a cookbook he
found during a layover in the Dallas airport. After 10 years as a chili
cook-off chef, he was looking for something different to offer, he said.
He now agrees he should have stuck with the one ounce of chocolate suggested
in the recipe.
“The four ounces killed it,” Stratton
said.
Further down the table, the culinary experimentation
in seventh-grader Michele Click’s kitchen produced a chili she was
happy to claim and promote. Michele said she got her interest in cooking
from her father and her Greek grandparents, who have a sheep farm outside
Yellow Springs.
Michele said she loves to cook and last year she
won second place at the Clark County Fair for her hors d’oeuvre biscuit
stuffed with ground lamb, feta cheese and Kalamata olives and drizzled with
lemon butter. She takes her cooking seriously and ordered her family out
of the kitchen as she called on her improvisation skills for the chili cook-off.
“I made everyone go away and told them to stay
out of my kitchen,” she said.
Using confidence and taste as her guides, Michele
added to the pot a mixture of “whatever was around the house”
and “whatever tasted good together,” she said. She resisted
giving away the family secret at first, fearing people might not eat it
if they knew what was in it. But she eventually admitted to a certain portion
of sausage to another part beer.
Other chilis such as Cajun and New Style Mexico
saved plenty of room for the hot peppers that give chili its name. When
the judges had tallied all the votes, there was no scarcity of firebreathers
assembled in the cafeteria to see who won.
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| The winners in the McKinney
School Chili Cook-off, clockwise, from bottom left: Nathaniel, Helen
and Sarah Reed, John Graham People’s Choice Award; Mahya and
Terry Graham, community category; and Maddy Welsh and Niquelle Orr,
student category. |
First place in the student category went to Niquelle
Orr and Maddy Welsh. Mahya and Terry Graham won first place in the community
category with a cinnamon and chocolate ancho red chili. And the lauded John
Graham People’s Choice Award went to the sibling team of Sarah, Helen
and Nathaniel Reed.
The Chili Cook-off is the McKinney School’s
biggest fundraising and social event of the year, organizers Pam Conine
and Kathy Adams said. Last year the event raised $800 for middle school
field trips, guest speakers and activity scholarships for students who need
financial assistance. The money comes from the fees paid by the chefs and
the tasters. Local businesses donate gift-basket prizes for the winners.
“It’s a lot of fun, you pay $5 for all
you can eat, and you get to spend an evening with your neighbors,”
said Conine, who is the lead teacher at McKinney.
This year’s cook-off attracted the largest
number of students to enter the contest. Two students and six community
members voted for the winners of the student and community categories, but
perhaps more prestigious was the approval that came with the People’s
Choice Award.
The Reed family won the People’s Choice for
the second year in a row but would not even hint at the genius behind the
superior chili. The secret ingredient?
“Undisclosed,” they said.
—Lauren Heaton |
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