Chili

I'm not taking that class in regional American cooking. It's expensive - more than buying some cookbooks and learning on my own. Then, there's that part about certain regional American cuisines that I'd either never make or transform into something healthier and above all tastier. Chili, however, is not one of these things.

A great bowl of chili is a meal in itself. There's enough heat to wake things up without going so far as to inflict pain - but chili heat is an individual thing. One person's wonderbowl could be another's gut burning instrument of torture.

People really get passionate about the stuff, like they generally don't about, say, meatloaf. Here in California and the West, chili cookoffs are big events. People argue over which peppers to use, beans vs no beans, how herbal, should coffee and chocolate be ingredients, should the meat be ground or chopped... luckily there's no one definitive chili recipe.

I made white chili a few months ago, using fresh Hatch peppers from New Mexico. Now, in the midst of winter, it's time for the more traditional red version. I like meat and beans, several kinds of chili and quite a bit of herbs. Tomatoes, onions, garlic, a bit of celery and stop. Nothing else is necessary.

The peppers bring so much flavor and complexity that adding all kinds of secret ingredients would just be overkill. Sweet-hot, smoky, fruity... it's all there ready to be coaxed out.

So, here it is: my entry into the chili Hall of Fame. Or just a good bowl of red. The Hall of Fame can go elsewhere, since this started as simple cowboy food and all that highfalootin' nonsense just gets between a man and his food.


Ingredients

• Chili cascabel, dried (Not too many. Substitute ancho if you want things sweeter)
• Chili morita, dried (You could use chipotles, but these are better. Careful! Hot!)
• Chili Hatch, dried - New Mexico, hot.
• Chili Hatch, dried - New Mexico, mild

• Pinto beans

• Garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

• Salt
• Black pepper

• Roast cumin, roast coriander seeds
• Sage (fresh or dried)
• Oregano, dried (or Mexican oregano)
• Bay leaf, if you feel like it

• Onion, dice
• Celery, diced
• A strip or two of bacon, roasted in the broiler

• Flame-roasted tomato (canned).
• Beef chuck roast, diced and browned in the broiler. If you're going more cowboy and have a bigger budget, use buffalo meat and add a bit more sage.

Process

1. Soak the beans for a few hours. Some people soak overnight, but I can't really tell a difference.
2. Get the broiler hot in the oven.
3. Place the diced vegetables on a parchment-lined sheet pan and broil them until they start to brown a bit, even burn a bit on the edges. Reserve.
4. Place the meat on the sheet pan and broil until brown, turning to get lots of caramelization. Reserve.
5. Do the same with the bacon. Reserve.
6. Slice the chili pods so they don't hold air and place them in boiling water. After about 10 minutes of boiling, they should be soft. Take them out to cool - and don't throw away that chili water!
7. When everything is browned, place it in a pot and add cold water.
8. Drain off the water from the beans and add them to the pot.
9. Remove the veins and seeds from the chilis, place them in a blender and add some strained chili water - just enough so you can blend everything together. Save any excess chili water. This also works with an immersion blender and it's easier to clean up.
10. Add the puréed chilis to the pot.
11. Put the garlic in the blender, add some strained chili water and purée it. You can't have too much garlic - even a whole bulb is not too much.
12. Add the herbs and pepper, but not the salt.
13. Start with high heat to get the water hot, then reduce to a mere simmer.
14. Taste to see if you need more herbs. If it's too hot, well... oops. Too late now.  Chilis are supposed to be good for you, so enjoy the burn. The only thing you can do is rinse more beans and add them along with more water. You could also add meat - but at some point you'll have a huge amount of chili and if you're a wimp it might still be too hot. Next time, make meatloaf instead - or add the chilis a little at a time, tasting for heat in between. All chilis are different so this is the only safe method. You can also eliminate the hot New Mexico peppers in favor of milder varieties.
15. When the beans are just about cooked, add the salt. This supposedly gives you tenderer beans, but there's really no consensus on this at all.
16. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface of the water.
17. Keep simmering until the beans and meat are tender - probably about three hours. The goal is to use low heat to gently melt all that connective tissue in the meat, and get those proteins into the liquid where they'll do interesting things. 
18. Once everything is tender, adjust the salt to your taste and eat. 

Don't eat too much. Chili is never at its best the day it's cooked. If your intestinal system permits, have another bowl tomorrow. And the next day. By then, you'll start to know just how the cowboys felt.

White hot chili

Every time I've had white chili, it's been boring. Not much depth, no heat, not a lot of campfire. It's not something I see people making in the Wild West. Still, when I looked in my cupboard, there were some Cannellini beans. Normally the things are for cassoulet, haricot de mouton, fool... but this time for some reason white chili just popped into my head, and stayed.

This recipe does indeed have heat. My lips are burning (happily) as I type this. There are several ways to reduce the burn. You can buy medium or mild Hatch chilis instead of hot, or mix them with some other, less picante type of fresh pepper. Remember that the green chilis are what gives this soup its flavor, and leaving them out would leave it undeserving of its chili title.You could also remove all the seeds and white pithy stuff in the middle of the peppers - although that's difficult when the peppers are frozen.

Ingredients

• Smoked ham hocks
• Mesquite smoked Hatch peppers from last summer, kept in the freezer for just this moment. I left most of the seeds in for more heat.
• Toasted cumin, toasted coriander seeds, ground
• Garlic, lots of it.
• Fresh thyme
• Fresh oregano
• Mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot)
• Cannellini beans, soaked overnight
• Garnish: strips of Mexican string cheese or Mozzarella, or queso seco. Fried tortilla strips would work well, too - especially if they were blue corn and tomato, mixed.

Method

1. Sweat the mirepoix, then add a bit of chopped garlic.
2. Purée a lot of garlic (I used a bulb) in some water with some of the fresh herbs and pour it in the pot. Scrape the bottom to get any fond that might be sticking there. 
3. Add the ham hocks.
4. Add the pre-soaked beans and enough water to cover them plus a bit more. Keep checking the water level, and add hot water if needed. The goal is not to add too much water and dilute the flavor.
5. Add the cumin and coriander. I want these ingredients in early so that their flavor mellows a bit and helps season the beans. I was pretty generous with these guys, but things mellowed out once the pot cooked a while.
6. Add salt and Black pepper (White pepper if you're a French chef, but I like the taste of black better). Green pepper should work too. Some people say that if you add the salt before the beans are done, they'll be tough. Others say different. So, I added a bit of salt at the beginning, and adjust for taste before serving.
7. Simmer at low heat for 90 minutes. They may need another 30 minutes or so - keep checking the beans.
8. When everything is ready, take out some of the beans and water, add more fresh herbs and purée them all together. Add this back to the beans. If the broth is thin, you can purée more beans or just let it reduce at low heat, without boiling.

I'm just serving this with sourdough bread, heated to get it crispy. Simple enough.

It doesn't have the toasty, deep, earthy flavor of red chili - but the green chili does come through, along with the smoke and herbs. It's also lighter and shouldn't stain your tablecloth. It's not vegetarian, but if the bacon or ham hocks were omitted and more smoked chilis, herbs and garlic added, it could be.

American food! Fried chicken mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuit

I don't know what came over me, since I don't normally do mainstream American food, but somehow I started with some chicken. Then threw in some potatoes. Hmm. Some biscuits would work well here. If there's potatoes and biscuits, might as well have gravy, too.

Part of this is because we did chicken in class, then we talked about roux. So I suppose this could be a form of studying. If I want to twist things that far. Or is it twisting? This could be on a test!

Buttermilk fried chicken
Ingredients

• The marinade
• Buttermilk
• Minced garlic
• Chicken, dark meat pieces, skin on
• Salt
• Puréed onions (you can throw the garlic and onions in a blender with the buttermilk for this)

The dredging flour

• A bit of salt 
• Nutmeg to taste
• More minced garlic
• Black pepper

Process

1. The day before, marinate the dark meat pieces of a chicken, skin on, in a mixture of buttermilk, puréed onions and garlic, salt, fresh thyme and black pepper.
2. The day of the feast, preheat the oven to 375° F.
3. Heat some oil in a pan, about enough to come half way up the chicken pieces.
4. Put some flour in a more or less deep, wide bowl. Add a bit of salt, a dash of nutmeg, some more minced fresh garlic, and some black pepper.
5. Dredge the buttermilk-covered chicken through the flour, making sure it's well coated, then slowly lower it into the hot oil.
6. Cook the pieces until browned, turn over, then take out and place on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. 
7. When all the pieces have been fried and are waiting on the baking sheet, place the sheet in the oven for about 20 minutes. This will finish the cooking, and also allow some of the cooking fat to drain off.
8. The chicken is now ready to eat.

That seems like a lot of steps. I suppose I could have followed the sneaky practice I've seen in some cookbooks to combine several steps in one paragraph, thus lowering the count. Well, seeming to lower it. You still have to do all that stuff if you want to make the chicken this way. If you'd wanted simpler, you could have just sautéed the pieces and finished them in the oven, right? 

Garlicky mashed potatoes
ingredients

• Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into medium dice
• Duck fat. Yes, you could use vegetable oil. Or lard. I happen to like the flavor duck fat gives to potatoes that no mere vegetable oil could ever hope to match without a lot of chemical additives that would probably be worse than the duck fat.
• Salt
• Minced fresh garlic (paste)
• Chicken stock
• Buttermilk, cold.

 Process

1. Heat a deep frying pan.
2. Put in a bit of duck fat. Add some more. Hmm. That might be a bit dry. A smidgen more won't hurt. 
3. Throw in some fresh garlic paste, just enough for it to sizzle a bit and release its aroma. Burning it would be a faux pas here, making it bitter. A bit of light browning is fine, though.
4. Throw in the potatoes. Add some salt. This will lower the pan temperature and stop the garlic from burning.
5. Let them sizzle a bit, then add some chicken stock. Turn the heat way down, cover and let things simmer gently until the potatoes are cooked and just starting to get a bit mushy. 
6. Scrape all the potatoes off the bottom of the pan, stir them around a bit.
7. Mash the spuds with a fork, then slowly add some buttermilk. Don't panic, it's only 1% milk fat, so it's actually leaner than whole milk. Add bit by bit until you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Cover and reserve.

The gravy

Ingredients

• Flour and butter (equal amounts by weight) for the roux
• Salt
• Chicken stock
• Nutmeg
• Garlic, minced fresh

Process

1. Make the roux with the flour and butter (I use butter, but who would object to duck fat?). Mix them together and put them in a pan on low heat. Stir frequently so nothing burns or sticks. You want to cook the flour to eliminate any raw taste, but beyond that how dark you cook it is up to you. I went for a light tan, a bit beyond white. I want some color in my gravy so it doesn't just look like Bechamel sauce.
2. When the roux is your favorite shade of tan, get a whisk and add the cold chicken stock and the nutmeg. Whisk frantically and pour moderately so everything blends together happily.
3. Put the pan on low heat until it thickens. Remember to keep stirring. If you made thick gravy stir more often. If it's thin and watery you can relax a bit since convection currents will do some of the stirring for you.

Fire-roasted pepper biscuits

Ingredients

• All-purpose flour
• Salt
• Baking powder
• Butter
• Bell peppers, seared 
• Buttermilk

Process

1. I wanted something a bit more fun than normal biscuits, so I added a brunoise of flamed bell peppers. 
2. First, burn the peppers over a gas burner, on a grill or blast them with a chef's torch. You could also use another type of pepper, but would get more heat in the biscuits.
3. The peppers have a lot of moisture content, so I reduced the liquid in the recipe to compensate. I weighed the peppers and subtracted a bit less than this amount from the liquid. If you forget, you may need to increase cooking time to compensate and dry things out.
4. The biscuits go together the usual way: mix the sifty stuff together dry with a whisk: flour, baking powder, salt. These are savory biscuits, so no sugar. Then add the butter and mix it in well. Then the pepper brunoise. Finally, the liquid - in this case, buttermilk. Knead lightly until the dough firms up, roll or smash it down (if it's too wet, smashing works better). Cut into whatever size you think is appropriate, place on parchment paper lined baking sheet and pop them into a 425° F oven for about 15 minutes. 

You can do the biscuits in advance. If you want, pop them in the oven to heat them up - or just smother them in gravy.

When the chicken comes out of the oven, it's showtime. Spoon some mashed potatoes into a plate, arrange the chicken on top, pour a bit of gravy around the potatoes, and garnish with a biscuit and whatever other garnish you have around. I only had flat leaf parsley. Not too original, but a bit of green is better than none.

The Chef's Table, Rocklin

I'm famous at the Chef's Table, a.k.a "TCT". OK, I confess. I'm not famous. Not a bit. My pig, however, is. He looks something like this but in black and white:

The famous pig: Pure Porkiness!

The pig reclines on the vent hood above the bar, in all his monochromatic glory (I didn't take a set of color drawing tools to the restaurant, alas). He was penned in the days were the tables were covered with butcher paper. Now they're bare granite - or faux granite - in any case they're shiny, black and slightly reflective so you can see the magnificence of your dining partner reflected under their plate of pesto fries.

I'm amazed at the trendiness of the other diners. Latest coiffures, clothes, jewelry. Real state of the art trendiness, so trendy that I don't even know the current hipness babacool lingo to describe their scintillating awesomeness. Luckily, I just go for the food. My trendiness index is probably somewhere around 0.3 Camrys, so it's amazing they even let me enter.

These guys were so trendy that I can't even draw them without the latest cartoon pen.

They serve interpretations of American food. Burgers. Fried chicken. Fries. Upscale, though. Burgers and fried chicken, but not as you know them. Upscale, with fancy descriptions and innovative, fresh ingredients.

Tonight's burger was smothered in hot wing sauce burning chili heat englobing bits of blue cheese, topped with a whole pickle stabbed through the heart with a dull knife. Sounds painful, so it's a good thing that pickles probably can't feel pain. The burger was not for the meek: sour, hot, umami and hot again.

The bathroom is painted with blackboard paint. They supply chalk, so you can write anything you want. Most people write something like "TCT is awesome". That doesn't strike me as the acme of trendiness. I expected something more like "Je t'aime. Moi non plus. Passe les brownies au bacon, cherie". But nowhere did these words appear, and I had no desire to add them. French is no longer trendy, apparently. The torch has passed to somewhere else with a language that I almost certainly can't pronounce, let alone spell.

Tonight we watched a large table of VIP-type people eat stuff that wasn't on the menu, at least not our menu. Maybe there's a secret menu, kind of like In-N-Out only much more sophisticated. The kitchen whisked plate after non-menu plate to their table, while everyone else watched.

The process of acquiring this level of über trendiness, style and sophistication remains a mystery, although it was more than clear that these dishes were coming directly from the chef's imagination, arriving at their table with a flourish and brief explanation of the key ingredients and an occasional joke about pepper fin (he didn't serve any). It was, however, crystal clear that there was none of this fanfare for anyone else in the room, not even a crumb. No, you're not worthy.

The plates accumulated on their table, like diner kaiseki. Grilled corn on the cob (some confusion as to how to eat this), chicken-fried Angus beef, a Caprese salad full of tomatoes, daikon sprouts and some kind of whitish cubes that could have been mozzarella, chicken breast, tofu or all three.

As their dishes accumulated, our service slowed. You can't be everywhere at once, can you?

Curious about some of the plates they were receiving, we asked a passing server. His answer was terse, leaving no doubt that he'd rather not be bothered. He was busy. Questions not encouraged from the riffraff. It's not for you. It's for them. You can watch but not participate.

I find it strange that a tiny restaurant would provide this level of service to some while denying it to others, even though all groups are seated elbow to elbow in the same room. If there were a private room for VIP's, it would be clear. It could have a bouncer on guard in front of an airlock. That would keep out the undesirable and untrendy!

If there's a brown nose special, where you open a line of credit, have the chef make whatever he feels like and give you the opportunity to rub elbows with a culinary genius, wouldn't it make economic sense to give everyone access? If the house can pay a month's expenses in one night with one group, just imagine what they could do if anyone with sufficient credit and the proper elan could enjoy the same benefits?

Their web site is mute on the subject: there is no Chef's Special Prix Fixe menu.  I suppose asking to be admitted to the VIP club would be nekulturny in the extreme, since one does not ask. One either is or is not.

But fear not! In-N-Out will welcome you with open arms, and their secret menu is available to all who ask. I'd rather be a welcome guest in a cheapo burger chain than tolerated as second-class seat-filler. And their burgers aren't bad, either.