recipes

INGREDIENTS

4-8 cups of cooked beans
some oil for sauteing
A large onion, chopped
Some garlic
A couple of carrots, chopped
Some chilies, fresh or ground
Cumin
Tomato juice, several cups
Optional ingredients
Other spices: Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cocoa, Carob?
Other vegetables: Olives, Mushrooms?
Toppings: Sour cream, Green onions, Cheddar Cheese, Saltines

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat skillet and add oil. Saute the onion and garlic in oil.  When tanslucent, add carrots.  Coof for a couple of minutes and then add fresh peppers.  Cook for a couple of minutes long and add dried spices.  Stir spiced into vegatable mix and let  cook for a couple of minutes.  Add tomato juice.  Bring to a simmer then combine beans and any optional vegetables.  Let simmer on stove for a couple of hours so the chili gets good and thick.  Serve with toppings of your choice.

The Art of Making Chili
Chili is a food that men have been able to make without feeling wimpy.  It rates up there with large slabs of meat cooked over a grill or open fire.  Maybe that explans why it isone of the traditions passed down through the male line of my family.  Like so many skills that I have inherited through this male descent, it has been a bit twisted by me.  Insted of the meaty chilis that I grew up with, I fix vegetarian chilis.  But I still think I do it with some flair.  So here is the art of chili making as I understand it.

The Beans

The heart of the vegetarian chili is the beans.  I start with either small red beans or kidney beans, somtimes black beans or pinot.  Be sure to rinse them well and pick out any stones or clumps of dirt that may be hiding in the beans.  I always presoak the beans, usualy overnight, in water.  Smetimes I quick soak by brining the beans to a boil, turning off the heat, and letting them sit for a couple of hours.

I usually put in some salt after I’m done soaking the beans.  I have been told salt makes beans harder, but I have never noticed this with my pressure cooker.  I usually put in a couple of tablesoons of oil as well.  Sometime I add half a strip of Kombu – a saeweed.  I think this adds some good nutrients, rounds out the flavour a bit, and in theory, it even helps with digestion.  Remove the Kombu from the bens after you are done cooking.

You will have to experiment with the amount of water you use. Ideally, water and beans are at about the same level in the pot when the beans are done cooking, and the water is gravy ile.  If you slow cook them, they may not get this same gravy consistenecy.  You may want to drain some of the juice before mixing the beans withthe chili.

The vegetables

I saute a large onion and some garlic in a skillet.  Garlic can be hard to taste in chili.  So soetimes I dont even bother, and other times I put it in by the foot (four little toes and one big toe.)  I haven’t tried it yet but I bet squeezing a roasted garlick into a mostly cooked chile would be good.

When the onions are are turning translucent I add some chopped carrots.  I like the aweetness carrots can add, and their colour goes well with the chili’s red.  You can also use some celery, but I am  not as excited about it.  It doesn’t look as nice and a crunch that I find distracting.

After the carrots have sauted a bit I ad any fresh chilles I am using.  I like small red chillies, serrano’s or even habeneros..  This usually determines the the spicyness of the chili.  Knowing your chilies is essential.  From year to year and crop to crop your chilies will change.  What was merely a warm chili  one year can be a killer the next.  Pay attention to your audience and spice it appropriately..  A few of my friends I cokked for always asked for the habenero index of my food, which was basically the the number of habeneros I used.  I would sometimes go as high as three.  But for most people I would be reluctant to use a whole habenero.  If you realy need your food cooled down a bit, you can scrape out all the pepper’s seeds.

The spices

Now put in the dried spices.  The spices should cook for a couple of minutes and enhance it a bit too.  he really distributes the flavour of the spice and enhances it a bit too.  My simplest chilies have only two spices, cumin and cayenne (or other dried chili). If you are using fresh peppers you can omit the cayenne or reduce it.  A caynees powder compliments a habenero.  The heat of the habenero is usually felt at the back of the tongue and down the throat.  Cayenne hits you near the front of your tongue.  Usin both, balanced just right, will give you a full heat effect!  I like a lot of cumin.  I pour it  into my hand so it covers my palm and heaps a bit.  This hould be about half a tablesoon per cup of beans.

I have made more complex chilies which have used some bizarre spices, cinnamon, cocoa, nutmeg, … use these sparingly for a really twisted chile tatse.  I used to add other green spices, like oregano, but I haven’t done this for a while.  I never liked the tatse of it in the final product, so I stopped using it.

Cook these spices in with the vegtables so it soats everything evenly.  This will probebly soak up the oil you used in the saute.  Your veggies will be steaming, you may be coughing and crying because of all the steam comming off of the peppers.  Still, try to let this cook for at least a minute or two.

Putting it together

When it looks well distributed, or you just cant stand it any longer, pour in some tomato jiuce.  Open some windows while you wait for it to simmer, then add the beans, (or add this mixture to the beans.)  If you need more liquid, add some tomato juice.  I will use about half a large can of tomato juice.

If you want to add any miscellaneous vegetables to this, you can do it now.  Add some sliced black olives, or maybe some mushrooms.  Feel free to experiment, but I belive simpler is better.  You also don’t want to mess up the lovely red look the chili should have at this point.  Think about colour and texture at thi spoint, as well as flavour, before you add someting.

Let the chile simmer for an hour or two, then serve it up with some crackers, and maybe some hot sauce for those who dont think its hot enough already.  Try garnishing this with grated cheddar, sour cream green onios or someting else creative.  Always make pleny because the cili will tatse even better the next day.