Chili!

It seems appropriate to post a chili recipe in anticipation of Super Bowl weekend. I am aware that there are different styles of chili. My husband makes a red chili he learned in New Mexico. I've had Texas and Cincinnati style chili. I've had white chili. What I don't know is what style chili I make. It's the chili my mom makes. It's what I grew up knowing was chili. Maybe it's Eastern chili. I am open for names for this style chili!

First, brown 1 lb. ground meat. I usually use beef but turkey or venison work well too. I find it to be really useful to brown the meat in 2 or 3 batches so as to not crowd the pan. If you want to just use one pot brown 1 batch and then move it to a bowl while you brown the next batch. Then you can toss all the browned meat back in before, during, or after you saute the veggies.

Add more oil to the pan. Dice and saute 1 onion. Add 1/2 a green pepper, diced and 1 fresh jalapeno, also diced. After these are close to being done add 3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed. Also, add crushed red pepper to your taste. I crushed a whole dried cayenne pepper from our garden this past summer.

Next add the spices before any liquid so that the powders can all toast a bit on the hot mostly dry pan bottom. I used 3T chili powder. I prefer Penzey's regular chili powder. I also added 1T cumin, 1t black pepper, 1t onion powder, and 1/2t salt.

Now it's time for the liquid. Add a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. I rinsed the can with about 1/4C water and added that too. Add a 15.5 oz. can of red kidney beans or whatever kind of beans you like. Add a 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes. This time I used diced tomatoes with green chilis. Add 1/3C red wine, 1T dried oregano, and 1t dried basil.

I love this chili topped with cheese or sour cream. Or on top of a baked potato. Or served with cornbread. All the way around, it's just delicious chili of whatever style it is!

Pasta Puttanesca

This is a nice quick pasta dish for any time of year as the only fresh ingredients are garlic and parsley. As long as the prep work is complete, the sauce can be cooked in the time it takes to cook the pasta (as long as you aren't using super fresh quick cooking pasta!). And you can try and time the steamed broccoli and the garlic to be finished at the same time too, which I accomplished tonight! I made a green salad ahead of time with a beautiful watermelon radish from our farm share. Check out the picture!

This recipe is based on a Cooks Illustrated recipe from 2002.

While cooking 1 lb. spaghetti, heat 2T olive oil, 4 cloves of garlic minced, 1t hot pepper flakes, and 1 tin of anchovies minced over medium heat until fragrant but not browning. Drain 1 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes, but keep the liquid.

Add the tomatoes and simmer until thickened, about 8 minutes.

Drain the pasta and add about 1/2C of the tomato liquid and toss to fully coat the pasta.

Add 1/3C minced fresh parsley, 3/4C black olives (like Kalamata or oil cured) pitted and chopped, and 3T capers to the sauce. Pour this over the pasta and add more tomato liquid as necessary.

Serve with parmesan cheese.

Gazpacho

Last night I sat out on the porch with my husband mulling over whether or not to cook dinner. Guilt over the 1/2 loaf of stale bread from the farmer's market this past Saturday led me to trying my hand at a batch of gazpacho. I did some internet searching and couldn't find quite the recipe I had developing in my head. I called my mom and explained that I wasn't leaving the house for any additional ingredients and gave her the list of what I had. I mostly took her advice, except I added onion when she said not to. I'll probably regret that when I try the leftovers today and the onion will have become more potent!

First, I sliced about 4 or 5 thick slices from the middle of the stale 1/2 loaf. I roughly chopped those into large hunks and put them in a bowl with about 1/2C water, 1-2T olive oil, and 1 diced clove of garlic. I set that aside to let the bread soak up the liquid and thinking that maybe the liquid would also take the edge off the raw garlic.

Meanwhile, I peeled 3 tomatoes and quartered them. I peeled and roughly chopped 1 and 1/2 cucumbers. I added about 2T chopped red onion, counter to my mom's advice. My husband brought in 2 small jalapenos from the garden which I deseeded and chopped. I tossed those vegetables into the food processor with 1T sherry vinegar, 1T olive oil, and black pepper. (You could add more raw garlic at this point.)

Next, I added the bread to the vegetable mix in the food processor. I mixed until there were no longer large chunks of bread. The result was quite tasty and I didn't even have to adjust any seasonings. I let it sit in the refrigerator while the swiss chard and ricotta pie (recipe from July 10th) finished baking. The two were a good dinner combination!

Tomato Pie

It doesn't quite seem right to post a tomato recipe in the midst of this blight affecting the Northeast (check out this article on Civil Eats for some more information). The three farms that produce our farmshare haven't been hit, which is wonderful! They only have greenhouse tomatoes so far this season and we've only gotten one tomato per week. The tomatoes I used were grown in Pennsylvania, which has been hit but not as hard as areas of NY and CT.

Tomato Pie! (And I don't mean the Sicilian style of pizza often called a tomato pie.) I am not sure where the tomato pie comes from. Is it British? Is it Southern? My first awareness of tomato pie can be traced to southwestern Massachusetts and northwestern CT. A few years ago when my parents were planning to build a house they briefly hired an architect who lived in CT. He mentioned the tomato pie at a tea shop in CT. My mom and I went to that tea shop and as memory serves we had some tasty tomato pie but it is overshadowed in my memory by a delicious rhubarb dessert. Following that tomato pie experience, my parents and I had lunch at the architect's house. We were served a tomato pie. I don't remember either of those pies well enough to know if what I made last night was similar or not. But what I concocted was so yummy we only have one little piece left (and we didn't have any guests for dinner)!

Recipe from Simply Recipes:

1 pie shell (I used the store brand refrigerated prepared shell.)

3 tomatoes

1/2 to a whole onion (I used a Vidalia)

1/4C basil leaves, chopped

1 1/2-2C grated cheese (I used sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack)

3/4C mayonnaise

1t hot sauce

pepper

I pre-baked my pie shell at 350 for 8 minutes. It didn't work out so well as it collapsed down the sides and I had to pull the edges back up to hold the filling. The recipe says if you make a homemade shell to freeze it before baking, maybe I should have done that even with the store bought shell. The recipe calls for 1/2 a raw onion but mentions that you could caramelize it. I can't pass up a caramelized onion so I sliced the whole onion up in half rings and put them in a pan at high heat with 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 butter.

Once the onions had browned I piled them up in the center of the pan, lowered the heat, and let them cook. Meanwhile, I halved the tomatoes and squeezed out some of the moisture. I then roughly chopped the tomatoes. I piled all the basil leaves up together, rolled them up, and sliced to make thin strips of basil. In a bowl, I combined the cheese, mayo, hot sauce (I used Louisiana), and pepper. The recipe says it should be the consistency of a gooey snow ball, which is a lovely description but I am not quite sure what it means. Mine looked like shredded cheese coated in mayo.

After reconstructing my pie shell, I spread the onions across the bottom, layered the tomatoes on top, and sprinkled the chopped basil on top. Then I spread the cheese mixture across the top. I baked this at 350 for about 35 minutes. The recipe says to bake for 25 to 45 minutes. At 25 minutes my pie looked almost done but at 35 minutes it was bubbling in many places around the edge and the topping was getting nicely browned. We let it cool and dove right in. Yum!

Chicken Tikka Masala

Often when I get up in the morning, my husband has already left for work and he’s left the TV on the Weather Channel. I grab a cup of coffee and my laptop and sit on the couch for a few minutes until I catch the Local on the 8’s. Then I usually flip the channel to BBC America and leave the news on in the background while I am getting ready to go to school. Well, leaving BBC America on in the morning has created a little Gordon Ramsay obsession for me. You see, Kitchen Nightmares comes on at 8 am and so I sometimes watch about half the show while I am eating breakfast before I catch the bus. In any case, I managed to watch a few episodes of the f word as well, though I think Kitchen Nightmares is my fave! This led me to visit Channel 4s food page and I found this Chicken Tikka recipe.

In 2T oil I cooked 1 onion halved and sliced thinly for about 3 minutes. Then I added 2 green serrano peppers (deseeded and chopped), 3 cloves of garlic (pressed), and slightly more than an inch piece of ginger (grated).

I cooked this for 2-3 minutes. I added the chili powder (1/2t), tumeric (1t), garam masala (2t) and brown sugar (1T). I stirred this and let it cook for another couple of minutes until it was quite fragrant.This step really helps the aromatics of the spices come out so the deep flavor of the sauce can develop.

I then added tomato paste (1T) and diced tomatoes (1 14 oz can). (I really like the Muir Glen Fire Roasted tomatoes!) I let this simmer for 3-5 minutes and turned off the heat. This is a good stopping point if you want to leave the sauce to sit before you cook the meat.

I used 2 chicken breasts (the recipe calls for 4) and it was a good ratio of meat to sauce but then again, I love sauce!

I diced the chicken and put it in the empty (but not clean) pan with 1T additional oil. I let it get color on all sides but I didn’t cook it all the way through. I added the sauce back and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Next, I put the sauce in the food processor and blended it until smooth. I served this over basmati rice, with yogurt and cilantro. Yum!