Chili

Chili is hardly a "nueva" recipe in our house -- I have made chili in essentially the same way since I first started cooking, though I have gotten increasingly adventurous in the seasonings. I notice, for example, that in my 2014 post entitled "Heritage Chili" I spend several paragraphs telling the story of one ingredient -- and hinting that "some day" I should reveal the overall approach. So here it is, albeit in the process of describing a significant departure.

The first consideration is time. As I wrote in our Celebrating Silver post, chili should be started 24 hours ahead of time. I exaggerated -- usually I will start chili around 9 pm for use at 5 or 6 the next evening. In a pinch, I'll make it right after breakfast of the day we're to eat it, and such was the pinch for yesterday's chili.

Herewith, my "recipe" for chili. It starts with the beans; if I do not plan ahead, I use a couple of cans of kidney beans. This week, I did plan ahead. The night before making the chili, I rinsed one pound of dry kidney beans in a colander. I think put them in boiling water in a large stock pot, boiling, covered, for a full two minutes. I then turned off the burner and left them on the stove overnight to soak and expand. In the morning, I rinsed them again in a colander and set them aside. I also set aside the stock pot -- I do not use it for chili.

The next step is almost always to brown -- in our heavy, indispensable cast-iron skillet -- about a pound of ground turkey, ground beef or sausage. In recent years this has often been sweet and/or hot Italian sausage, casings removed. In this case, however, the chili was Pam's recommendation for doing something a bit different with the steak leftover from what I had grilled on Sunday. In this case, I had given it a good rub of coffee and chili powder before grilling it to medium rare, using some very delicious bottled sauce. I grilled that to medium rare, and we had a delicious linner on Sunday, but with far more steak than we needed.

Hence, a departure from the usual ground meats -- I cut the steak into small cubes, heated up a bit of olive oil in the skillet, and browned it while chopping the veg -- onion, red and green bell peppers, a jalapeño (should have used two), and a few cloves of garlic. These I sauteed until just slightly softened, adding a bunch of seasonings -- black pepper, cayenne, cumin, basil, oregano, and a bit of cinnamon. This last was just a pinch (and actually, there had been some in the original steak rub); for measuring the other spices, the question is only whether to pour it on with an overhand or underhand shake.

My chili is another one of those dishes that is more photogenic at some stage
 in the middle of the process than it is as a final product.

I spooned all of this into our 1987 wedding-gift crockpot and then added the beans, a few cans of crushed,whole, and diced tomatoes, and a couple of bay leaves. I stirred thoroughly, cutting the larger tomatoes with the side of the spoon, and simmered -- covered -- on high. I restirred every hour or so and declared this chili ready after only 6-7 hours.

Near the end, Pam made simply splendid biscuits on our baking stone and we enjoyed this with some  -- as one might guess -- Malbec from Mendoza. We agreed that the chili was tasty, though with a notably different texture. It was a very good use of the steak, but I'm still partial to the sausage version.

Lagniappe

Leftovers from our leftovers: After having chili for a couple of days, Pam suggested an easy lunch: nachos. I preheated the oven to 350F and spooned chili over a layer of chips. After it heated for about 10 minutes, I added a freshly-shredded mix of cheddar and pepper-jack. At the table, we added salsa and sour cream.

It was a good excuse to use one of our cool talavera plates. We store them on the kitchen walls for easy access and decorative value between uses.