Jane Butel's Southwestern Cooking: Bowl of Red

The "original cowboy stew," Jane Butel's bowl of red chili sounds like a tasty treat that will make you sit up straight but won't necessarily have you chugging from a fire hydrant. Butel, along with her assistant Sidney and her husband Gordon, prepare beans and blue corn bread (using--cholesterol-watchers skip over this next part--a whole stick of butter), and suggest fixins' and mixins' to spread over the chili. Overall, the instruction is very good (Butel's cooking school was praised in the March 1996 issue of Bon Appetit), but the occasional shortness between Gordon and Jane seemed to be more appropriate for a Sally Jesse Raphael show than a cooking video, and the devotion of an entire video to one basic meal seems a little skimpy, cost-to-content ratio-wise. Eleven other programs are also available in the series, including: The Whole Enchilada!, Tamale Roll Party, and Fiesta--How to Stage Your Own Fiesta. Larger culinary collections will want to consider. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)