Now that I've cracked the spine of my new Joy of Cooking, I feel like an archivist starting in the basement and wending my way around the stacks of a 70-storey reference library blinded by the desire to rapaciously pull everything off the shelves. It's musty down here but it's also strangely romantic. It's about fingering the worn pages of history, and in a single book like this one, there are about 1200 of them. And that's just one book. The stories it tells are tragic and hopeful: Families reconciled over swedish meatballs (p. 513) and lovers torn apart over a breakfast of homemade jelly doughnuts (p. 655). Someone brought pickled watermelon rind (p. 949) in a jar to your uncle's funeral and when your sister lost the baby that wet, cold fall, you brought over Fruit Fool (p. 210) made with macaroons and lady fingers and fresh blackberries and you both drank sloe gin in the backyard by the apple tree in the hovering silence of heartbreak. Flipping through a recipe book is like the morning hours of vivid dream - it's all just flashes of memory, bold and rivetting, but not real. It's about memories, and then about taking a recipe and recreating it, and thus spinning the wheel of life anew, making food, making peace, or not, cooking for hunger, or for pain, or for resolve, and leaving a floured fingerprint behind like a scar.
Chili is a dish I make around this time of year. I hate the month of November. It's a month of shadows and frozen pavement. It's a time of somber dreams and dark circles. It's chili month in my world, if for no other reason than the faultless desire for inspiration, for spice, for heat.
Now I've made this dish a hundred times and it's always sightly different, with variations included to adjust for ingredients on hand. I like to use a mix of black beans and red kidney beans. I also sometimes add kernal corn. I tend to use ground beef, not beef chuck or round steak. And the level of spice depends on where I've bought my dried chilies from, and how much of the blend I use. Here is the original recipe for Chili Con Carne from The Joy Of Cooking. I'll share my additions, or alterations, just below.
Chili Con Carne, adapted from the Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary*
6 to 8 servings
Pat dry: 3 lbs boneless beef chuck, trimmed, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Season with: 1 to 2 tsp salt
Heat in a large skillet over medium-high heat: 2 Tbsp olive oil
Add: 2 cups chopped onions
10 garlic cloves chopped
2 to 6 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
1/2 tsp salt
Cook, stirring often, until the vegetables are softened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the meat and brown, pouring off excess fat, if desired. Stir in: 1/2 cup chili powder
Cook for 2 minutes. Add: One 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, with their juice
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
4 cups water
breaking the tomatoes with the back of a spoon. Season to taste with: Salt.
Simmer, incovered, stirring occasionally, until the meat is tender and the sauce is reduced by half, about 1 1/2 hours.
My Alterations and Additions to Chili Con Carne
1-lb ground lean beef instead of beef chuck
I heated in a large sauce pan the olive oil, and added one large chopped onion, about 7 cloves of garlic minced, 1/2 cup of chopped celery, and 1 sweet/hot yellow pepper. I cooked until the vegetables softened and then I added the ground beef and stirred until browned through. I added 2 Tbsp of ground chili powder and tossed to coat. I then added one 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, a dash of red wine vinegar, and 1 cup water. I let it simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes on medium-low heat, until the sauce had slightly reduced and thickened. I added 1 can of red kidney beans and 1 can of black beans, and continued to simmer the chili until the beans had heated through.
I topped the chili with: juice of 1/2 lime, salt to taste, 1/2 avocado cut into small cubes, and a mix of chopped cilantro/parsley.
I served the chili with potato scallion bread and oka cheese.
This is also good served overtop of rice, or rigatoni pasta (in the latter case, top with grated parmesan).
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