In a very little while (for, as I expected, I got my fellowship) the boy became the favourite of the whole College—where, all orders and regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, he was continually in and out—a sort of chartered libertine, in whose favour all rules were relaxed. The offerings made at his shrine were simply without number, and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident Fellow, now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man in the University, and to abhor the sight of a child. And yet I discovered … that this unprincipled old man was in the habit of enticing the boy to his rooms and there feeding him upon unlimited quantities of brandy-balls, and making him promise to say nothing about it. Job told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, “at his age, too, when he might have been a grandfather if he had done what was right,” by which Job understood had got married, and thence arose the row.

But I have no space to dwell upon those delightful years, around which memory still fondly hovers.

An old man entices a boy to his domicile with promises of candy? Sounds more like the next episode of Law and Order: SVU than a moment on which memory fondly hovers.

Ingredients:

1/8 lb of beef suet
3 lbs beef chuck roast, cut into quarter inch cubes, dredged in 2 tbsp masa harena and 1 tbsp of salt
12 ancho peppers
2 small cooking onions 4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tbsp brown sugar (or more)
a splash of cider vinegar

Preparing the Peppers:

1. Toast the anchos on a baking sheet at 350°F, about 90 seconds per side
2. Soak them in hot tap water for about two minutes a side; discard water
3. Let the peppers cool; remove the stems and seeds.
4. This can be a pain, but I find that the flavor is much better if you remove as much of the peppers’ skin as possible.
5. Combine the peppers, onion and garlic in a food processor. Blend into a paste.

Recipe Proper:

1. Render suet, discard (or eat, if so inclined) the crispy remains.
2. Brown the meat in the suet grease. The pot should develop a relatively thick gravy from this process.
3. Stir in the pepper paste. Add a little water, if necessary, to prevent burning. Cook thirty minutes.
4. Add cumin, oregano, and cayenne. Also add brown sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook 45 more minutes.
5. Taste, if too bitter, add more sugar and/or vinegar.

But Tolbert’s chief antagonist in the chili wars came from outside the Society. Humorist H. Allen Smith and his recipe with tomatoes and beans represent everything that Tolbert despises.: “A chili-flavored, low-torque, beef and vegetable soup.” Smith represented the non-Texan style of chili in the first cookoff at Terlingua. That contest ended in a draw, but Tolbert is convinced that Smith bribed one of the three judges and that his terrible chili rendered another unable to perform his duties.

Tolbert’s history of the cookoffs contains many such amusing anecdotes, as do his forays into other areas of Texan cooking: the chapter on son-of-a-bitch stew is a personal favorite, and the recipe for jalapeño cornbread is one of the best in the book. Most cooks will find many of the recipes impractical: prison chili, for instance, requires 25 pounds of ground beef, and measures its seasonings by the quarter pound. If you’re like me, you’re only willing to do so much math to make a pot of chili. But the fundamental recipe for Texas-Style chili serves as an excellent guide, even if you wish to make a less traditional bowl of red. I use many of the proportions learned from this book in my own dishes.

The kindle versions of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires highlight several problems with the way that the electronic texts of the classics are assembled and sold. Take a look at the first page of search results for Mysterious Island in the kindle store. You won’t find any sign of who translated the novel, and most of the time that information isn’t even on the merchandising page for a specific version. Adding to the confusion, Amazon sometimes borrows the product description and reviews from other editions of the same novel. You’ve got to download a sample to be sure of which version you’re reading, and that might involve comparing what’s on your kindle with the various translations available at Project Gutenberg. Many readers won’t care whose translation they’ve got, and I’ll admit that often I don’t. But with Verne, what English version you read apparently matters a great deal: certain 19th century translations of 20,000 Leagues and Mysterious Island remove passages that their translators felt criticized the British Empire; even the best English version of Journey to the Center of the Earth adds allusions that are not present in the French.

But the product page in the kindle store won’t give you this information, nor will it always tell you for certain whether the version you’re about to download has been abridged. I probably seem ungrateful: after all, these books cost almost nothing. Kindle is a fantastic technology for people who love books, but right now Amazon isn’t doing everything it can to cater to that audience. The service could be improved by providing the same level of detail in the descriptions of their electronic books as they do for their physical ones, and guaranteeing that those descriptions fit the product to which they’ve been attached.

Updates every Monday.