And I Was Doing So Well

So, I'm back after a gap.  I had wanted to get back to daily, but oh well.

And so I'm cooking dinner tonight.  I'm trying to do more.  Jennifer is eating meat less, and I'm okay with less, but I still like some.  And then as most who know me know that I'm a bit of a picky eater.  So it's nicer that I cook and do what I like.

I'm not going to go so far as make a separate pot of chili with beans (not technically chili if it has beans right?).  But I will add things.

But what I'm really enjoying is my cherry red dutch oven.  We got it at Marshall's one day and actually walked it home.  For those that don't know, a dutch oven is a cast iron cooking pot with a lid that are enameled.  The inside of mine is white, and the outside is a gorgeous red.  The really cool thing about the dutch oven is that there are these bumps on the lid that acts a condensation points for the moisture inside and so it can self-baste.

But I've been playing around with sauces and such.  I've made the basic chili that I like, and a pasta bolognese sauce.  I recently did a chili mac with rotini that turned out amazing.  And today I am making the deconstructed recipe for Cincinnati chili.

I can remember the Christmas that Mom bought the cookbook for Dad.  She had marked the recipe with a bookmark so that he would see it.  And when he unwrapped the book he was so excited he almost pulled the bookmark out before Mom could stop him.

It's not that hard of a recipe.  It's just getting the ingredients together.  And I don't use the onions or beans it calls for, so yay!

Can I say that the most dangerous thing about the dutch oven is that the handles are of a piece with the pot?  Get you some silicone gloves, or holy cow, that gets hot.

I'll be sure to add pictures later.

Cooking

So a couple weeks ago, Jennifer got some pork shoulder.  The butcher suggested she make it into carnitas.  She found a citrus recipe to slow cook it, and we had some amazing tacos.  But then we still had half of the pork shoulder leftover.  So I went looking for a new recipe for carnitas chili.

I found this one, and made some modifications:

Carnitas Chili

Ingredients

---

·         2 tablespoons chili powder (heaping)

·         1 tablespoon ground cumin

·         1 teaspoon paprika

·         1 tablespoon celery seed (ground)

·         2 tablespoons ground cilantro

·         1 tablespoon garlic powder

·         1 tablespoon onion powder

·         2 teaspoons kosher salt

·         3 tablespoons vegetable oil

·         1 cup beef broth

·         2 carrots, cut into 1/4-inch discs

·         1 28-ounce can tomato

·         1 bay leaf

How to make it

·         In a small bowl combine the cumin, paprika, salt, chili powder, cilantro and garlic.

·         In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium high heat.  Add seasonings to bring out oils.

·         Add the beef broth and the bay leaf and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low, add tomato sauce and cover.

·         Chop carrots and add to sauce.  Cook sauce for 1 hour.

·         Warm pork after an hour.  Separate meat from grease.  Save grease for noodles.

·         Remove and discard the bay leaf.

·         Boil noodles

·         Plate noodles, then pork, then sauce, then grated cheese.

·         [Jennifer suggested that next time we try ¼ teaspoon cinnamon or cinnamon stick, and 1 clove]

Party Like It's My Birthday

This evening I discovered a new blog. But first the back story (oooh, channeling Paul Harvey).



I got a new grill about two weeks ago. Jennifer and I decided it would be my birthday present

It's a side-by-side combination of propane and charcoal, plus it has a side burner. I did a lot of research beforehand with Home Depot and Lowe's comment section. The one I had wanted turned out to to be very stainless in its steel, so I started looking elsewhere.

This one was one of the highest rated on Lowes' web page, and was very affordable. So we have retired the grill that was my Dad's first gas grill and had been given to us when he got his new one. I don't even want to think how old it is. it was wonderful to have for the time we had it, but I love my new one.



What I really like about it was the cover. Jennifer said that if it was going to be as big as it is that we needed to cover it to protect it. And the cover even has extensions for the smokestacks



Now I can grill quickly on the propane side, or use charcoal on the other side. Or even smoke on the other side if I want. Or a variety of other combinations.

But on to the new blog.

Today being my birthday, I was going to grill. Jennifer and I had visions of a seared ahi tuna on a bed of lettuce and then a filet and mashed potatoes.

But then I started re-reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Not too far into the book the main character, Shadow, is eating his first meal after being in prison. It is pitched to him as the best chili in the state. As he's eating it, he knows it's not the best because his wife, Laura, makes the best chili around. Neil then goes on to give hints of the ingredients in the chili.

So I suddenly had a craving for chili. But not just any chili, Laura Moon's chili.

So I went to my trusty Internets, and entered the search terms "American Gods chili" and what I came up with was The Geeky Chef.

Now for me when I am scrolling down for a Neil Gaiman recipe and on the way cross a Star Trek soup recipe, and then an Earthling's attempt at a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. I figure I'm in good hands.

Unfortunately I was hungry, and started cooking without checking all of the ingredients. So what I have made is not Laura Moon's chili, but it is very inspired by it.

And now I'm following a new blog. YAY! And all this without a plug for True Value... oops. Damn!

Sunday, Chili Sunday

Jennifer is back on winning with her fantasy football. She is now 6-3, and very happy. I'm happy too because it makes her mood lighter.

We're also both happy because we got a grocery run to Smart & Final in before the games started today, and we got some new chili powder: New Mexican picante. Just opening the bag smelled like a Mexican restaurant. I still used cayenne, but the majority was the picante. And the chili was excellent. I've even got a cottage cheese carton of the sauce left over.

That's a family tradition by the way to store leftovers in cottage cheese cartons. It started with my Papaw Jack who used to work for a dairy company. Somehow it became the thing to store things in the freezer that way, so my parents always had a case of cottage cheese cartons and lids. Now, that was back in the thin and hard plastic days, nowhere near as durable as the current PET 5 containers we get at Trader Joe's.

We used to wash them out and reuse them as much as possible. The part that would usually go bad first was the lid, usually from the flexing when we would open them up fresh from the freezer. It pretty much became a unit of measurement for me growing up because of the things my parents would store in them. They would make ice cream, and store it in the cartons. they would preserve fruit (plums, peaches, apricots, tomatoes) in the cartons. And of course the leftovers from huge batches of spaghetti sauce, chili, or even barbecue sauce.

So I come by it naturally. Jennifer and I began using Baskin Robbins ice cream containers (PET 2), but they've stopped using plastic and have gone to waxed paper containers. You just can't reuse those. So, now we've built up a stack of the containers from TJ's. Maybe next Sunday I'll make me some meat sauce for pasta...

Anyway, for a very simple chili today, I used:

1.5 pounds of ground beef
2 cans of tomato sauce
New Mexican picante chili powder
Cayenne chili powder
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Sage
Thyme
Ground black pepper
Spaghetti noodles
Cheddar cheese
Saltine crackers
Peanut butter

Brown the ground beef until it's nearly cooked, very little red left. then take it out and rinse it in a large strainer. Rinse it with hot water to wash it out the drain, and this will get rid of a lot of excess fat in the sauce.

Then in another pot put in the two cans of tomato sauce, and then fill each can with water and put that in. This will make the sauce thinner, and more like a soup. Also it gets the last of the tomato sauce out of the can. Turn the heat up to medium, and let it heat up. Then add the meat, and start seasoning. I put in about two tablespoons of each of the chili powders, and then added the rest of the seasonings to taste. You don't really taste much of them, but they add some depth beyond just the chili. I essentially stir the chili powder in, and then just cover the top of the sauce with each of the other seasonings. If you like the texture of cooked onions or garlic (or even diced tomatoes) you can use that, but I like a nice smooth sauce with little meaty bits.

As the sauce begins to boil, turn it down to medium-low, and then lower until it simmer, but is not boiling. This should keep it from burning or bubbling which causes a big mess of splattering tomato sauce. As it simmers keep it covered to prevent it getting too thick. Once it is simmering, you should do multiple tastes to ensure the chili is the right level of spicy hot for you.

Once the chili is the right taste, it's time to boil the spaghetti noodles. You can use what ever size you like, I used spaghettini today because I like thin noodles, but pretty much anything long noodle will work. break it into thirds before boiling it. I did halves today, because I had forgotten that the shorter noodles don't flip and splatter sauce.

Once the noodles are done, drain them and place them in a bowl, filling about half of the bowl. if you like beans or onions in your chili place a layer of them on top of the noodles in the bowl. Then ladle the sauce on top. as a finally topping you can add a layer of grated cheddar cheese on top of the chili.

My finally addition is saltine and peanut butter sandwiches. These are nice to spoon a little chili onto and eat that way. I'd say that's just me and my family, but Jennifer likes it too.