For the most part I'm not going to do things that overlap with similar experiences in my life. However, there are certain things within their... let's call it genre... that are absolute must do's. Arena concerts and Ethiopian food both fall into that category. I'd been to concerts and eaten food before - but those particular forms of concert and food are unique enough that they bore trying.
The same goes for making chili. I've cooked before. I cook quite a bit, actually, but chili is the kind of recipe everyone should know. I'm not just saying that because of chili cook-offs and the breathtaking allure of cowboy culture. I'm saying it because chili, like a good red pasta sauce and homemade pie, has so many variations that learning to make it just scratches the surface. I know the basics now, but perfecting my own personal chili is going to be more of a journey than a destination.
Pictured: Journey of a thousand miles.
I have to say, the thing that surprised me the most was how finicky chili can be if you want to ensure a good flavor. It was not just a matter of putting the spices in the pot, stirring and going. Instead, there were a lot of subtle changes that needed to be made to ensure the flavor I wanted. I decided to go for a sweet Cincinnati chili. I believe I've already mentioned that I'm a super taster. Yes its a real thing. Shut up. I wanted to avoid a firehouse chili or a super spicy recipe.
The enemy.
I got a lot of help from my dad. He's been working with chili recipes for a long time and experimenting with a lot of the possible variations. We went for a mild spice regimen, beef base, no beans and elbow noodles to add bulk and texture. Here you can see him calmly explain the proper procedure for grinding spices.
As you can see, proper posture is essential for spice grinding.
The thing that's great about chili is that the basic ingredient list is fairly simple. Tomato sauce, onions, spices. Honestly, other than that it is at your discretion. If you want vegetarian chili, add beans instead of meat. If you want meaty, manly, sexy chili like I do - add meat. For bulk, its best to add either pasta or beans. A lot of times people will add a combination of both. As part of the spice mix, there are some really unusual options. Worcestershire sauce, unsweetened cocoa and Coca-Cola are three of the things we added to the recipe. What's the first step in any cooking/baking/building project? Lay out all your materials.
Bananas not included.
Much of the cooking itself was very straightforward, but as I mentioned before, getting the taste right is a surprisingly painstaking process. My quest to avoid learning fire-breathing the hard way led me to make the chili way too sweet at first. It took many, many, many rounds of additions to cut the sweetness back out of it. It is still a sweet chili, but not absurdly so. It was kind of a chili-flavored dessert for a little while. If that doesn't sound appetizing to you, don't worry. It didn't sound good to me either. That's why we fixed it.
I must say, I do like the recipe quite a bit. I hope other people will like it too since I'm debuting it tomorrow at a poker party. Poker parties are the natural habitat of the wild chili monster. I don't know if you knew that. When I write about tomorrow, I promise to let everybody know how the chili went over. Even if I got bad reviews. Right now all I have to go on was my mom's first impression: "its very pretty". I don't know if chili wants to be pretty. But mine is.
No comments :
Post a Comment