With night time temperatures dipping down into the 50's it's looking like the brutal Austin winter is now upon us. Which means it's time to make a kettle of chili.

We actually make it year round as it is one of our favorite foods of all time.

With an extensive repertoire of chilis in our arsenal we often have to take the sofa for a spin while we meditate on which chili needs to be implemented on which particular day.

Today, as we put pad to pen, we have a big kettle of pinto beans simmering on the stove top and they are aromatizing the house to good effect. Yesterday at Fiesta Mart we gathered up some chile seca [arbol and guajillo] a pork shoulder, some giant green onions, a big can of ripe plum tomatoes and some pig feet for stock. Yesterday we smoked our shoulder and pig feet and let the stock simmer all night long. Woke up starving as the house was perfumed with the smell of smoky pig meat.

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Fideo has a thousand mothers, each claiming primacy. One mujere insists that tomatoes are the most crucial ingredient while another claims that the inclusion of them makes the soup "not fideo" but indeed, the dish must include tomatillas to be considered part of the canon..

We're late comers to the sopa de fideo tradition. It wasn't until the late 90's when a torrid affair found us in Brownsville Texas and at the table of a bona fide culinary genius that we were indoctrinated into the tradition.

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The Don Juan is on precarious ground. The once stately taco has been reduced to a wreck of recklessly scrambled eggs with unseasoned boiled potatoes and low grade bacon. To make matters worse it's all served on factory tortillas.

Below, we've re-written their recipe and provided the formula for you to create this dish at your house as the one that's currently being served is not tenable.

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Over in East Texas my friend Amanda's daddy is having trouble with a sounder of wild boar hogs on his farm.

It's nothing a Winchester 30.30 can't fix.

Which is how we came to have a pig brought into Austin for our latest effort on the big brick pit.

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Austin Texas is rife with restaurants serving huevos rancheros.

Our former favorite; La Mexicana, the 24 hour taqueria and panaderia on South First Street's downhill slide has been so steady and frightening that we've had to branch out around town.

We still daydream about their $3.25 rendition from a few years back. Extra cheese, extra bacon? No charge.

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During the research period for my piece on Charles Elmer Doolin, the man who brought the Frito into popular culture, I developed a powerful craving for a Frito Pie.

I can't think of a single restaurant in Austin where you can walk in and order one so I began crafting a recipe that would be worthy of the sobriquet "Ultimate Frito Pie Recipe."

The very concept of Frito Pie has a thousand mothers, each claiming primacy.

For every acolyte of Daisy Dean Doolin and her San Antonio creation someone else will firmly maintain the true mother of the pie to be Teresa Hernandez of Woolworth's in Santa Fe New Mexico.

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A friend of mine likes to play a game when we're all sitting around drinking and playing records called "What's your million dollar idea?"

On one particularly festive evening someone postulated that they'd like to open a Mexican restaurant that had side dishes that weren't rice and beans.

We volleyed that one around for awhile with folks talking about how good enchiladas would go with green beans, fried corn, mashed potatoes and myriad other non-Mexican options.

I'm always writing recipes so I really took this evening to heart once I got home and sobered up a bit.

Here's my recipe for Mexican Mashed Potatoes

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Getting a great bowl of guacamole in Austin Texas is not easy. With over two hundred Mexican restaurants in town, all of them serving a "version", you would be forgiven for thinking our city is rife with perfectly made, delicious guacamole.

You would be wrong.

The main problem most places in town suffer from is that they make a giant bowl of the stuff in the morning and just dip down in it over the course of the day.

Some less than savory restaurateurs actually introduce sour cream or mayonnaise into the guacamole as an extender. I dearly love both of these products but I don't want them profaning my avocados.

There's only one restaurant that I know of in Austin that makes it per order. El Zunzal over on Calle Street in East Austin. When you place your order an avocado is skinned, transformed and brought to table whereupon it is set upon by the ravenous eaters.

Although I love nothing more than a slow, difficult recipe it's simply not necessary in this instance.

Here's my simple, easy formula for making a delicious batch of scratch guacamole

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Real carnitas are abundant in Austin Texas. They're not fancy, no frippery is needed to construct the dish. All you need is pork, salt and maybe pepper if you're feeling particularly ambitious.

I used to use Chef Miguel Ravago's recipe from his cookbook "Cocina de la Familia" that uses Dr. Pepper in the roasting process.

His method makes some very fine carnitas but it is unnecessarily fancy.

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There are a few different stages in the life of a dry aged, smoked brisket.

1] The brisket must be allowed to rest for a bit when it's first pulled off the smoker. This is one of the hardest parts. I often go for a walk so I can remove myself from the vicinity of the brisket so I don't just tear into it like a jackal.

2] Feeding your friends. Since I can't [ or more properly worded, shouldn't ] eat a 15 lb brisket by myself, I like to deliver brisket packets to my hardworking friends about town.

3] Deciding what to do with the remaining couple pounds of beef.

That's when it's enchilada time.

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