motley food

by Trish

Does knowing the difference between a large dice, medium dice, and small dice cause you to lose sleep? Do you agonize over if you cubed vegetables are actually 1/2 inch? 

Me neither. 

But if you’ve got a friend who’s more food-engineer than cook, the Obsessive Chopping Disorder Cutting Board would be a great and probably really useful gift. And given that’s it’s only $28, I’m tempted to pick one up and actually start caring about how big I dice things. Or at least pretend to care.

Available from The Spoon Sisters via The Food Section. 

by Trish

These last two weeks I have been on a streak of cooking failures. New recipes turned out mediocre at best. A batch of potato leek soup is still lurking in the back of my fridge, untouched. It was a tough week for my kitchen.

Maybe I should have then fallen back on a tried-and-true recipe, but instead I decided to block off my entire Saturday afternoon to attempt to make a chili recipe like I had never seen before. This was not your grandmother’s ground beef and bean stew. (Unless you’re from Texas, mind you.) No, this recipe gets its red color from 7 different types of chiles rather than tomatoes. It uses chopped chuck beef rather than ground round. It gets its body from a cup of coffee and a can of beer, and then it simmers for a full 5 hours. It was overly-involved, time-consuming, and unfamiliar. But then again, after a couple of strike outs all you can do is keep swinging for the fences. 

After all, I had long been disappointed with the chili recipes I had tried in the past. They were always decent, but generally nondescript. I tried various ways to pump them up: angus ground sirloin, san marzano tomatoes, jalapenos, chipotle chili powder, cinnamon, even a tablespoon of maple syrup. Always good, but never terribly interesting. 

This latest recipe comes from The Homesick Texan. I’ve followed their blog for quite awhile but had yet to try anything. Usually because I felt intimidated by strange types of peppers I had no background with, and no idea where to buy. But writer Lisa Fain has been getting a lot of press lately for her recently published Homesick Texan Cookbook, which was welcomed with rave reviews. (I hope to get my copy soon.) Then Adam Roberts over at the Amateur Gourmet tried his hand at Lisa’s Texan chili and wrote that “this was one of the best I’ve ever made; it had that complex, developed flavor that you can only get from thoughtful, patient cooking.” It was settled then. No kidney beans, no tomatoes, no mercy!

The seven different types of chiles called for in the recipe can be hard to find. If you happen to have a Mexican grocer in your neighborhood, that would be a good start. I found 6 of the 7 chiles at the House of Spice in Kensington Market. But any good specialty spice store would probably carry a decent variety.

7 Chile Chili

If you can’t find all the chiles called for, you can use a combination of chipotle and ancho chiles instead. In Canada, chuck roasts are often called blade roasts, but any stewing-type beef is fine. I also did not have any masa harina, but the chili was plenty thick on it’s own.

• 6 dried ancho chiles 
• 2 dried pasilla chiles 
• 2 dried guajillo chiles 
• 2 dried chipotle chiles 
• 4 dried chiles de arbol 
• 4 pieces of bacon 
• 4 pounds chuck roast, cut into 1/4-inch cubes 
• 1 large onion, diced 
• 6 cloves garlic, minced 
• 1 cup brewed coffee 
• 1 bottle of beer 
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin 
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground clove 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice 
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne 
• 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste 
• 2 chipotles in adobo sauce (canned)
• 2 tablespoons masa harina 
• Grated cheddar, chopped onions, and corn chips for serving

1. Remove the stems and seeds from the dried chiles. 
2. In a pan over high heat, toast the ancho, pastilla, guajillo, chipotle, and arbol chiles until they begin to puff slightly and are fragrant. Add enough water to cover the chiles and bring to a boil, then turn off heat and let the chiles soak until re-hydrated and pliable, about 30 minutes. 
3. Meanwhile, in large dutch over fry bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon but leave the fat in the pan. 
4. Brown the beef over medium-high heat in the bacon fat. Do this in batches if necessary, adding more oil if the pan becomes too dry. 
5. Remove the beef from the pan and fry the onions until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, cook for 30 seconds more.  
6. Add the beef back in the pot with the onions, crumble in the bacon, and add the coffee, beer, cumin, oregano, cinnamon, clove, allspice, cayenne, cocoa, 3 cups of water, and salt. Turn the heat to high and bring to a boil.
7. While waiting for the pot to boil, make the chile puree. Drain and rinse the chiles, discarding the soaking water (it will be bitter). Put the chiles in a blender or food processor with 1 cup fresh water and the two canned chipotle chiles. Puree very well until smooth, then add to the pot. 
8. Simmer for 5 hours uncovered. Every hour or so check for seasoning, adding more water if needed. 
9. After 5 hours, scoop out 1/4 cup of broth out of the pot and combine with the masa harina. Pour the masa harina mixture back into the pot and stir until incorporated. Let the chili simmer for another 30 minutes or so.
10.  Serve with cheddar, onions, and corn chips.

by Trish

It must have been one extreme case of the midnight munchies to cause 19-year-old Hachem Gomez to stop and fix himself a snack after he broke into a Illinois fast food restaurant. 

Police arrived at the Mr. Beef and Pizza restaurant around 3:30 am to find the suspect microwaving himself some chicken nuggets and fries. Surveillance videos showed Mr. Gomez breaking in through the drive-through window, damaging the cash register, and pouring himself some pop before fixing himself a bite to eat. 

Bail has been set at $5000.00, with a court date set later in the month.

Maybe Mr. Beef and Pizza’s nuggets are really something special, but I thought that microwaved chicken chunks were usually the type of thing you ate when you were too lazy to leave the house. And microwaved french fries?? Buddy, at least fire up the deep fryer. If you’re going to risk jail time for potatoes, let’s make sure they’re not soggy. 

Via the Huffington Post. 

Photo courtesy coolinsights via Flickr.

by Trish

There’s at least one in every office, the person who is blissfully unaware that their food related habits cause their coworkers to cringe. The Wall Street Journal rounds up most of the common office food offenses here. Read them; it could be you.

via The Food Section

by Trish

Pancakes can be polarizing things. Some like them thin and crispy. Others, including myself, opt to put the emphasis on ‘cake’ and prefer them light and fluffy. Fluffy pancakes mean better absorption of maple syrup, and really isn’t a pancake just a big syrup sponge anyways? 

While there are lots of great variations for pancakes (buttermilk, banana, blueberry, recipes for which will be coming in the near future) let’s nail down the perfect purist pancake before dabbling with other departures. So if the perfect pancake is fluffy, how do we achieve the fluff?

Some recipes will get fancy and have you separate eggs, beating whites, folding to combine etc. This does produce fluffy pancakes, but let’s not forget that this is breakfast. It’s Saturday morning and I’m in my jammies - there will be no whisking of egg whites. Thankfully it’s an unnecessary step and we’ll instead turn to our good friend baking powder for the leavening magic. 

But baking powder isn’t exactly the same as the rest of your dry pantry items, and it will lose its oomph over time. So if you want your pancakes to puff up a mile high, you’ll need baking powder that you bought within the last three months or so. (It will often have an expiry date stamped on the bottom.) If you don’t bake often, do yourself a favor and toss the old stuff in the garbage and buy a new container. And you can test to see if your baking powder is still good by dumping a teaspoon or two in boiling water. If it fizzes up, you’re in business. If it’s flat, then that’s exactly what your pancakes will be. 

Now that you know your baking powder works, let’s talk about how. Baking powder reacts in two different scenarios: once when it comes in contact with water and liquids and again when it’s heated. In order to capitalize on the chemical reaction, we’re going to want to minimize the time from when the powder hits the liquid to when it ends up in the hot pan. Preheat the pan while you prepare the recipe so your batter will be able to go directly into the hot pan with no delay.

Enough with the chemistry, then. My last word of advice is to add a little less milk than called for so the batter is only a bit thinner than muffin batter. This way it won’t spread out in the pan and be… wait for it, fluffier!

Pancakes

Time: 5 minutes to make, 15 minutes or so to cook
Yields 6 pancakes, perfect for 2 people.  

• 1 egg
• 1 cup flour
• scant 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or melted butter
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• sprinkle of salt
• butter or cooking spray for cooking

1. Preheat a nonstick pan over medium heat.
2. In a medium bowl, beat the egg with a fork or whisk until fluffy.
3. Add remaining ingredients except butter/cooking spray. Mix just until combined, the batter should be thick and lumpy. You may even start to see it puff up a bit as the baking powder reacts. 
4. You can test that the pan is hot by sprinkling a bit of water in. It should sizzle and skip. Add the butter or cooking spray. Pour batter into rounds in the pan. I usually go three at a time.
5. When the pancakes are golden brown on the bottom and bubbles are just starting to appear on the surface, flip. I like to flip before too many of the air bubbles have broken the surface, since this makes them rise higher.
6. When browned on the second side and cooked through, remove from pan. Repeat with remaining batter, serve with maple syrup. 

Once you have your pancake masterpieces, please do not even think of pouring Aunt Jemima’s on them. Buy the real stuff. Maple syrup. In particular the nice amber varieties from Quebec are my favorite.