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Thalia's Lament
Feb. 7th, 2008 09:57 amSo, today at MIT is the Information Services and Technology Chili Cookoff. I've spent my evenings for the past couple of days boiling, sautéing, chopping, mincing, and simmering various agricultural products into some semblance of a meat-and-bean stew with traditional tex-mex seasonings. Now, the mass of brown stuff is upstairs slowly warming in a crockpot, waiting for it's time of judgment.
One of the projects I work on is called "Thalia" - named after the muse of comedic poetry. I'm thinking of dubbing the pot of stuff "Thalia's Lament". As a muse of poetry, she doesn't get to work with food, so she's all sad today. Or something. It is either that, or call it, "Bob".
Judging is later today. We'll see what happens...
Update: Judging is going on as I type. Six folks going around tasting chilis - a number of folks are standing around watching, but it isn't much of a spectator sport, to be honest.
The rules are simple enough - you bring in a crock-pot of chili. There are six judges who go around and taste the things, and each gives an overall score of 1 to 10 for each chili. Which cook produced which chili is kept secret from the judges, to avoid favoritism.
Update: I had to leave the competition room to go to a meeting, so I was not there for the announcement of winners. All I know is that in a field of 15 chilis, I was not in the top three. *sigh*.
I was around long enough to get to taste most of the competitors myself, and I have to say it would have been pretty tough to judge them. The quality (to my tongue, at least) was fairly even. I think it would have mostly come down to which chili had the style preferred by more of the judges.
An interesting note - not a single chili in the cook-off was what I would consider "hot". Every one, my own included, aimed for the mild side of things. One way to stand out in this competition would have been to add maybe a quarter teaspoon of cayenne...
One of the projects I work on is called "Thalia" - named after the muse of comedic poetry. I'm thinking of dubbing the pot of stuff "Thalia's Lament". As a muse of poetry, she doesn't get to work with food, so she's all sad today. Or something. It is either that, or call it, "Bob".
Judging is later today. We'll see what happens...
Update: Judging is going on as I type. Six folks going around tasting chilis - a number of folks are standing around watching, but it isn't much of a spectator sport, to be honest.
The rules are simple enough - you bring in a crock-pot of chili. There are six judges who go around and taste the things, and each gives an overall score of 1 to 10 for each chili. Which cook produced which chili is kept secret from the judges, to avoid favoritism.
Update: I had to leave the competition room to go to a meeting, so I was not there for the announcement of winners. All I know is that in a field of 15 chilis, I was not in the top three. *sigh*.
I was around long enough to get to taste most of the competitors myself, and I have to say it would have been pretty tough to judge them. The quality (to my tongue, at least) was fairly even. I think it would have mostly come down to which chili had the style preferred by more of the judges.
An interesting note - not a single chili in the cook-off was what I would consider "hot". Every one, my own included, aimed for the mild side of things. One way to stand out in this competition would have been to add maybe a quarter teaspoon of cayenne...
