There has never been anything false about chili

A few months back, the Web was afire with President Obama's chili recipe. Just to note, I never grow tired of saying President Obama. President Obama. President Obama. See?

I digress. Once the chili recipe hit the Web, it seemed to garner some extreme opinions that closely resemble the polarization of our political landscape. It seemed everyone was either professing undying gratitude for a chili recipe that didn't require copious amounts of water from which to quell the fires of spice or decrying Obama's chili as a fake that dare use beans in a dish so obviously owned by the state of Texas (can you sense a bit of sarcasm in there? I thought you might..).


I happened to love this chili, which is a little tamer than the chocolate infused version I so often make, but after growing up in the Midwest, I feel I have a little 'splainin to do. Being the nerd that I am, I did a little research at the Washington State University Library to determine where chili came from and how it has been adapted regionally throughout the United States. Chili con carne (literally "peppers with meat") is the official dish of Texas, where beans, tomatoes and any other added ingredients are strictly verboten. Of course as one can tell by the name, its origins are not in the United States, but rather Mexico, arguably either in the 1840s or 1880s. Basically, the dish consists of meat (most often beef), onion, garlic, cumin and chili peppers, and at its first inception was a way to stretch quantities of meat through leaner times. Often the dish was served by reusing leftovers and dished up at local cantinas.

The first documented mass tasting of chili by Americans (at least that I could find) was at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, held in my dear Chicago, but before this mass exposure, women called "chili queens" served it up in San Antonio during the 1880s. Emigrants from Texas to other states and other American folk who saw the potential of chili to feed the masses began opening chili shops around the States, and thus, a collective "YUM" was uttered round America.


The controversy over the inclusion of beans in chili stems from a fight between two men: H. Allen Smith and Wick Fowler. Both writers, Fowler a journalist and H. Allen Smith a writer of fiction and nonfiction works including The Great Chili Confrontation, embarked upon the first chili cookoff in October 1967 at Terlingua, Texas. From what I could gather, ol' Wick Fowler dubbed the famous line: "If you know beans about chili, you know chili ain't got no beans."


Years later, the controversy over beans rages on, and most people commenting on the Web would probably despise Cincinatti style and Louisville style chili. Cincinatti style includes both beans and cheese often over spaghetti while Louisville style has tomatoes and is plated over spaghetti.



Growing up, I have fond memories of the chili my mother made, which included pretty much all of the above: meat, kidney beans, tomatoes, cheese, saltine or oyster crackers crushed over the finished product and served over a steaming heap of macaroni pasta. It was cheap, it was hearty enough to fill up three very tall and energetic children and my father, who ate chili like some people drink water. To this day when I make the dish, I can remember my mother's kitchen. She made it when we were under the weather physically, on Halloween after traipsing around for hours in rain or snow soaked costumes, and basically any time the seasons shifted gears to fall or winter. My dad also turned me on to one of the best chili joints in Chicago, Bishop's Chili. Give it a try the next time you're in my Windy City, and don't forget to hug Lake Michigan and give a fist bump to the Art Institute for me. Just be aware: it has beans.


I don't know beans about chili and I don't purport to be an expert, but beans are cheap and I'm a grad student. Considering that the dish itself came about because poor folks needed a way to stretch out their meat supply, this is no time to be advocating purist snobbery. So screw the purists, I'm adding beans! Obama's chili recipe is pretty close to my mom's, but it is definitely a milder version than most might be used to, given that there aren't actual chili peppers included in the recipe. Now for your viewing and cooking pleasure, I give you....Obama Chili.

**Note: All chili history information gleaned from H. Allen Smith's The Great Chili Confrontation and this site, which also provides the history of the dish even before the latter half of the nineteenth century.


Obama's Chili (with beans suckers--from this site)
Obama family chili recipe

1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
Several cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground turkey or beef
1/4 teaspoon (each) of ground cumin, ground oregano, ground turmeric, and ground basil
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Several tomatoes, depending on size, chopped
1 can red kidney beans

Sauté onions, green pepper and garlic in olive oil until soft. Add ground meat and brown. Combine spices together into a mixture, then add to ground meat. Add red wine vinegar. Add tomatoes and let simmer, until tomatoes cook down. Add kidney beans and cook for a few more minutes. Serve over white or brown rice. Garnish with grated cheddar cheese, onions and sour cream.

A little mea culpa for Moscow's Red Door

Yesterday I went on and on about the lack of good food in this area (homesickness takes its toll) but it would be unfair of me to not acknowledge a couple of decent meals I've had in Pullman/Moscow restaurants. For our one year wedding anniversary, Ian and I went to the Red Door, an establishment that offers a pretty decent menu. Why is called the Red Door? Quite simple, really: the front door is red. The interior is very dim and I love the booth seating with high backs so I don't have to watch other people eat, but it does get extremely noisy with the acoustics. It probably didn't help that we were seated right next to their sound system and it sometimes felt like we were at a rock concert....

Please pardon my horrible pictures, but the lighting in Red Door is not exactly conducive to good quality photos. Oh yeah, and I'm not technologically capable. Needless to say, I won't be winning any awards for these anytime soon.











Our appetizer was a trio of seared scallops, collard greens and crispy pork belly, which has potential to be a great dish. The tenderness of the scallop, the slightly chewy texture of the collard greens and (my favorite) the crispety-crunchety but still buttery taste of pork belly (anyone catch that Maya Angelou SNL skit reference?) is comforting to me. What arrived at our table were decent and fresh scallops, a tiny amount of pork belly and a big heaping slop of very vinegary, salty greens. Already I was disappointed, and luckily the salad made up for the horrible mess of this appetizer.





















Being not exactly famished, we decided to split the blackened tuna salad that came with a honey-dijon dressing. The greens were very fresh and the tuna was cooked absolutely perfectly, but my one complaint here was the dressing. It seemed a little too sweet for the tuna and I would have preferred it to be a bit more tangy. One triumph here though: IAN ATE TUNA AND SCALLOPS. He's not exactly a fish man, but shortly after eating at Red Door, he began asking me about seafood, and I'm proud to say he's been eating it a couple of times a week now. Yay!!!



















My main course was described as "Half Young Chicken. Tandoori-style Spices. Creamed lentils, green basmati rice cake, yoghurt-mint sauce, house-made peach chutney."
I should have remembered that ordering chicken in a restaurant is always hit or miss, but I figured I was safe in not ordering simply breast meat, which always comes out dry and tasting like a hockey puck. The chicken wasn't so much a half chicken as it was a couple of limbs from what I can only imagine was an anorexic farm animal. I picked and picked but wasn't able to cull much meat out of this poor guy. The meat was tender and falling off the bone, however, and I didn't taste any hockey puck, so I *guess* that's a tiny victory. Kind of.

The basmati cake wasn't so much a cake as it was rice mashed together with a bread crumb glue, while the creamed lentils were fantastic. This is not surprising given our dubious honor of hosting The National Lentil Festival. The yoghurt sauce was my favorite part of this dish, which happened to pair very nicely with my dry rice cake, and the chutney was....not very memorable.
















Ian's main course was a slow-roasted wild boar shoulder ragu over fresh tagliatelle. The boar ragu was awesome, the meat tender and really full of flavor, but it was just too darn salty for both of us. The pasta was WAYYYYYYY overdone (is anyone around here familiar with the concept of 'al dente'?), but we ate it anyway. It was definitely disappointing given that it's a truly beautiful plate o' pasta.







We did order dessert but it wasn't anything to write home about. Chocolate. Whipped. In a martini glass. Woo hoo.








I've been to Red Door a few times with friends before, and I've always thought their food had great potential, but it often writes a check its food can't cash. My favorite part has nothing to do with the food at all, and that's it's location (above--a little blurry after a bottle of Cote de Rhone). Moscow, Idaho is this sleepy little town with a lot of earthy type folk and down to earth mentality, and there's a sense of community and friendliness that just doesn't exist in Pullman. Oh yeah, and there are less anorexic bottle blondes wearing giant sunglasses driving BMWs with their popped collar wearing frat boyfriends in the passenger seat.

We'll always have Chicago....

I miss real food. There I said it. After living here in Pullman for almost five years while going to school, I have had recurring dreams about food. The food never attacks me and I'm never actually eating, but the setting of my dreams has almost always been in a pizza parlor, Greek restaurant or a chicken shack that feels eerily familiar to the joints I frequented back home. I have come to realize that my body and mind are still very intimately yearning for a taste of home...a taste of my dear Windy City.

Here in Pullman (and gathering from many trips to Seattle, Portland and surrounding areas) it seems that most folks appreciate tasteless food. From horribly underseasoned french fries, steaks and seafood to really doughy pizza with what seems like a tablespoon of sauce, I have yet to find a restaurant that I could proudly call "eh" let alone good. The "fancy" restaurant in town boasts appetizers I sometimes buy as snacks from Costco, and one restaurant a town over even claims its overcooked, not very fresh pasta is the best in the area....I believe them.

My mother appreciates my sadness and longing for real Italian, mouthwatering pizza and delectable Italian beef, and for the second year in a row, she has sent Portillo's to my little neck of the Palouse for Ian's birthday. Mom, I know you read this blog, you are my hero. I shall construct a statue in your honor.

I grew up with Portillo's. Crinkle cut fries, Polish sausage, the greatest milkshakes in the world, Chicago style hot dogs (no ketchup people. please, no ketchup.)and dipped Italian beef sandwiches with sweet peppers and mozz are enough to make me at once weak in the knees and horribly nostalgic.


The package we received was insulated with dry ice, and they really crammed a lot into that box. Two 1-lb. packages of beef, two decent sized canisters of gravy, eight sandwich rolls, a decent amount of roasted sweet peppers and Marconi's famous hot giardiniera made for two very happy people in my household (and three very intrigued animals sniffing and licking the air around the stove).







This was a portion of my loot. I was a little skeptical about the meat being as great as the restaurant's, but my fears were quickly assuaged when I opened up that bad boy and saw tender, mouthwatering meat staring me in the face.











The gravy. Nope, you didn't read that wrong. 18g of fat in 2 tbsp. Heaven.










Meat swimming in a bath of luxury. Once the meat cooked all the way through, I placed some in the crusty roll along with the sweet peppers, mozzarella and hot giardiniera, and then I dipped the whole bastard in the au jus. I'm always dumbstruck when people don't order these beauties dipped...










My sandwich without its makeup on. Still beautiful in the morning, no?

Sushi Go Round

I've become addicted to a new game....Sushi Go Round. Highly addictive but it also makes me hungry.

How to clean out your fridge

I've posted about making quiche before as one method of cleaning out your fridge, but this time around I had a host of ingredients and only a few eggs. Husband loves to scramble eggs for tortilla soup, fried rice.....or anything that will accommodate eggs, which is pretty much everything. In an effort to keep his breakfast/lunch garbage pail the way he likes it, I decided to only use one of the eggs.


Here were my ingredients:
1 egg
2 sheets puff pastry
8 oz. broccoli slaw
1/2 fat free crumbled feta


After rounding up my favorite olive oil, a little melted butter and some fresh ground tellicherry pepper, I didn't write a recipe, but it sure was good!

Honey Mustard Sauced Pork Sirloin Roast

After purchasing a massive package of pork sirloin roast at the grocery store (3 roasts! 7 dollars! Bring on the pork!), I scoured Epicurious, MyRecipes, AllRecipes, and Recipezaar for a good recipe when I found this recipe that included a honey mustard-based sauce. While the roast turned out great, the sauce was a little tangy for my tastes. I think in hindsight I knew the honey it called for was a bit much.... I ended up using the sauce on turkey sandwiches for the rest of the week.

Red Velvet Cake

I've tried quite a few recipes for Red Velvet Cake in the past few years, and this is perhaps the best recipe I've tried so far. Having grown up with Italian cream cakes and mascarpone cheese in just about anything that called for cream cheese, I am love with the cream cheese frosting that also asks for mascarpone. The richest yet lightest cream flavored cheese around, mascarpone is a little expensive on this side of these United, making me long for Italian grocers (dear God, I miss Chicago), but it's for sure worth it for the beautiful touch it gives this cake.



I love only two cakes: red velvet with cream cheese frosting and those lame confetti cakes with rainbow chip icing. Yes, I'm lame. But you know what? Those are some tasty cakes. This cake I served for a New Year's Eve crab feed with my in-laws, and with a little less than a pint of frozen raspberries from my garden to either use or waste, I chose to decorate the cake with it. I also chopped a few pieces of chocolate that needed to be used and sprinkled some cocoa powder over the finished product. It turned out pretty damn fantastic, if I may say so myself... For a grad student budget, this was an extravagant yet well worth it splurge!



I am trying a new recipe for Red Velvet tomorrow, and will hopefully find something that compromises my taste for a less sweet cake from the myriad of overly sweet cake recipes out there!

Laughing Buddha Ginger Pale Ale

Ian and I tried a new beer a couple weeks ago (yes, I'm obviously behind. my bad.) from the Laughing Buddha brewery. The Ginger Pale Ale was definitely not a winner with Ian, who puckered up at first taste and looked like Bill Cosby in those Jell-O Pudding Pop commercials, but I loved it. Usually spicy beer repels me (Red Stripe always makes me reach for the Tums) but I have to say, Laughing Buddha has a winner here. Just the right amount of ginger makes this a light but still very flavorful beer. I would recommend a food with it, but it's really something you could and perhaps should enjoy without accompaniment. Or with cheese....

Buffalo Flank Steak

I love roaming around the Moscow Co-Op, particularly around the frozen and fresh meats sections, as I almost always run into something I have always wanted to try. With the economy being the way it is, I haven't felt much of a crunch in my food budget since I already carefully plan meals and snacks out, but when I saw buffalo flank steak at $2 less a pound than beef flank steak, I rejoiced that I could cut a couple of dollars from my stringent budget and still be adventurous. This area isn't great for those who like to eat out (shudder--I STILL haven't found a decent restaurant out here), but the diversity of foods in supermarkets and smaller grocery stores is seriously improving.

Without further ado, I give you buffalo flank steak porn. It's a tad bit tougher than a beef flank steak, even with an overnight marinading session, but of course this could be the cut I bought. I served it in a stir fry after taste testing its texture. As far as I can tell, it's a little sweeter, a bit more tough and has a better rate of absorption than beef. The last observation seems odd since the cut is tougher than beef and therefore it seems as if I'm suggesting it is also dry, but oddly, it isn't. It's fantastic!

The longest and most restful hiatus known to humankind

Now that the "spring" semester is underway (spring semester seems to be quite the misnomer) I realized today that not only have I neglected this blog, but I have become a serious cold weather hermit. Almost directly after I finished teaching and collecting final papers, I lamented to my husband that we hadn't even had so much as a pristine dusting of snow in the Palouse since last winter (er, June actually--yes June) and it just didn't feel like winter. I spent my days in my office with some books and a few very warm fleece blankets, dreaming of sugar plums and finishing my dissertation....





Then the snow came. 30 inches in two weeks! You didn't read that incorrectly, I actually meant 30 inches. Suddenly my uphill gravel drive became a little less charming, and my insistence on owning a tiny rollerskate of a Ford Focus seemed downright insane. The dogs rolled around like fillets in flour and Johnny Cash meowed, probably thinking about his days as a wild feral cat, stalking bunnies and pheasant in the snow.

Hanukkah came and went, Christmas came and went, and still I was almost round the clock stuck in my little house with a bunch of rambunctious animals. Not that I'm complaining.








Sometime after the New Year, husband and I both came down with the kind of cold you fear--not the nose-blistering, throat-clearing kind, but the achy, fatigue-laden cold that leaves you absolutely exhausted after performing the day's most simple tasks.













Erin's "Feel Better and Go Back to Bed" Slow Cooker Chicken Soup
Note: Celery leaves aren't required, but they really are a wonderful addition to a soup that feels like home

4 Chicken thighs, cooked and shredded
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
5 baby carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 can low-sodium organic diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup orzo
Fresh ground black pepper
Celery leaves, optional

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients except orzo, chickpeas and black pepper. Cook on low for eight hours. Go back to bed.

2. One half hour before serving, add chickpeas and orzo. At serving time, ladle soup in bowl and season with black pepper. Chop optional celery leaves and add to soup.

























Erin's "Still Sick and I Don't Feel Like Moving" Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Chicken Stew

1 1/2 lbs. chicken thighs
Cooking spray
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp. ground cumin
Sprinkle of allspice
1 cup water
2 chicken bouillon cubes (or 1 cup chicken stock minus the water)
1/2 cup prepared or homemade tomato salsa (I used homemade)
Chopped cilantro to taste
Lime wedges to taste


Directions:
1. Coat a skillet with cooking spray and brown chicken thighs over medium high heat for three minutes each side.
2. Place chicken in slow cooker. Pile sweet potatoes and black beans on top. Add water and bouillon, and then spices and salsa. Cook over low heat for four hours.
3. Just before serving, add some fresh squeezed lime juice and chopped cilantro. Serve with tortillas.