Bento!

Inspired by http://www.cookingcute.com/, I decided to buy a bento box for the lunches I take to work and school. I shopped around on eBay for a while and ended up with this one, which is a little non-traditional: it has plastic locking flaps on the sides instead of a cloth belly band that holds it together, and it came with a fork instead of chopsticks. I couldn't resist the cheery color,
and the saying on top.

Cute! (Apple sauce, an individual serving container, included for size comparison.)

The details:

I packed my first lunch yesterday since I knew I'd be studying away from home all day. It's not cute :) but that's OK. I haven't quite decided how much of my life I am willing to devote to making tiny car-shaped eggs and carrot tulips, but I'm sure my future bentos will at least involve more than two colors!

Top dish: spelt with tuna, olive oil, and salt/pepper/various Italian herbs.
Bottom dish: edamame, still frozen, but it thaws during the morning.


More to come!

The Banana Bread Experiment

Banana bread confuses me if I think about it too much. I start trying to think of other breads I've had with fruit in them. When I can't come up with any I start trying to figure out ways to invent one. Strawberry rye? Orange loaf? Sounds awful. But somehow banana bread has become an American staple.

Banana Bread

I grew up on banana bread and loved it my whole life. My mom still makes a loaf when I'm in town sometimes, served hot with butter, and it's pretty much perfect. I had a few rotting bananas on the shelf last week and decided to try an experiment: mom's banana bread vs. Mark Bittman's. I looked through my books and Bittman's version in How To Cook Everything looked like it had the best chance of beating my mother's hallowed recipe.

By the way, all of the books had recipes closer to Bittman's than my mom's. So you know this thing was fair.

Mom's ingredients:

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 medium sized bananas - total 1 cup mashed bananas
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup walnuts (optional)


Bittman's ingredients:

1 stick of butter
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup grated dried unsweetened coconut


The instructions for the two recipes are pretty much the same:


Mix dry ingredients. Cream liquid ingredients and gently stir into dry ingredients. Bake in a loaf pan at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes, until a knife inserted in the middle pulls out clean.


Now, my mom says she stuck with this recipe because it was the first banana bread she'd ever had that didn't taste like baking powder. Hers uses baking soda, while Bittman's uses powder, but I didn't notice any taste of it in his bread. He says this is his favorite because of the little something extra added by the coconut, another reason I chose this recipe over any of the others. Figured if they're all pretty much the same, I might as well go with the one that has something extra.

They were fantastic:

Once the breads were baked I started the experiment. Each person got a plate with four pieces of bread on it. One slice of my mom's was cut in half with one side going on the plate dry and the other piece buttered. One slice of Bittman's was cut in half, one piece dry, one piece toasted with peanut butter, the way he says he likes it best. And the test was on.

My feelings on the subject were obvious. My mom's recipe turned out much more moist and had excellent, really strong banana flavor. Bittman's was good, but it was dry and bland in comparison. The coconut certainly didn't hurt anything, but it didn't add enough to justify it's place. If I want coconut I'll make a cake. This is banana bread, and I'll take mine with butter.

Knowing it's always possible I'm eating with a trained tongue, I kept my opinion to myself until everyone else chimed in. I was sure not to give them any clues as to which bread belonged to who, also. Don't want anybody throwing the vote to my mom in hopes of getting seconds.

In the end it was agreed that the softer, stronger flavored recipe I grew up on was the best. The one dissenter was my friend Birbal, and he's a too-cool-for-school type who's prone to dissent for dissents sake. Turns out he doesn't really like bananas but loves coconut. On that criteria, fine.

In the picture above my mom's banana bread is leaning on Bittman's in victory. I always said her book would be the best.

Garlic Salad

Another of the definitive menu items at Kansas the Restaurant will be a free bowl of garlic salad for every customer. Garlic salad is basically cole slaw with a garlic dressing instead of sweet dressing. I don't know that anybody else relates it to Kansas the State, but it's damn good and goes well with anything barbecued or fried. Can you have a garlic flavored palate cleanser?

Garlic Salad

When I was a kid you couldn't just walk into any bar in Kansas and order a drink. You had to be a member of that bar's 'club', which involved paying a small fee every year. I never understood the concept, but what it meant was that my family ate at a place called Doc's fairly often. Dad had a membership to the Doc's 'club', which meant he could drink on the dues he'd already paid.

Doc's started everybody off with a bowl of garlic salad. Apparently Doc's had cheap membership dues, because I found out years later that a lot of my friends had the same experience. But the thing most of us who were kids remembered was the garlic salad.

One of the Former Doc's Patrons, Jordan, became obsessed with recreating the garlic salad and spent months digging for recipes and experimenting. The salad I make is basically her version, as adapted from a couple of cookbooks and a big reservoir of nostalgia for the Doc's dish.

Ingredients:

Slaw fixin's
1 1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 cloves garlic - mashed
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Pinch of garlic salt
2 tablespoons garlic juice
1 squeeze lemon juice

Two things:

One adaptation from the original here is using a broccoli or cabbage slaw mix instead of lettuce. They used mostly iceberg lettuce at Doc's, but they were going through it so quickly the salad didn't have time to wilt. Jordan ended up using packaged broccoli slaw. I put a few carrots, a cabbage and a few broccoli stalks through the shredder on the food processor and mix them together. Tastes better than lettuce and holds up in the fridge a lot longer.

The other problem is finding 'garlic juice'. I usually keep a bottle of chopped garlic in the fridge. It comes diced in some sort of liquid that has obviously taken on the flavor by the time it hits the shelves at the store. If that doesn't count as 'garlic juice', I can't imagine what would.

In a bowl, mix together everything for the dressing. You can alter the flavor in any number of ways, the garlic juice being the fastest way to add spice. Be careful though, there's only a tablespoon or two between Garlic Salad and Never Getting Kissed Again. I usually start with one tablespoon of juice and add to taste.

When the dressing is right, pour it on your slaw stuff and mix. Sometimes it doesn't look coated enough, but after an hour in the fridge the vegetables have released enough liquid to even it out with one more good mix.

Grab a bowl. Your ribs will be out in a minute.

Chicken Fried Steak

Someday I'm going to have a restaurant called Kansas. It will seem exotic wherever it ends up. People who've never been to the Midwest relate it to The Wizard of Oz and bad education policies, but I grew up there. I think of it as a place where nice people fry things and give you as much as you can take. Nobody I know voted for Brownback, and besides, even being Republican doesn't mean you can't cook.

Chicken Fried Steak

To start with, casual is an assumption at Kansas the restaurant. The best breakfast place I've encountered was filled every morning with men in overalls, drinking coffee and eating huge plates of pork and eggs with fresh biscuits. They also had a chicken fried steak and eggs plate and that was where I decided it needed to be added to my personal menu. Eating gravy for breakfast always seemed a little over the top, but they were closed by the time I was ready for lunch. I make them for dinner. Usually.

Ingredients:

2-3 pounds round steak
1 cup flour
1 cup whole or butter milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Shortening or oil for frying

Gravy is a must -

2 cups milk
2 tablespoons flour

Sides:

Mashed potatoes
Corn
Fried onions
Garlic Salad

Set a skillet over medium-high heat and put in about 1/4 cup of the shortening. Vegetable oil will work also, but shortening can take more heat, so your crust with crisp up better.

Round steak is tough by nature, so you're going to want to tenderize it before you do anything else. There are spice rub style tenderizers or you can have the butcher run the steaks through a cuber if you want. I have a meat mallet with a flat side and a spiked side, so I beat them without mercy until the neighbors complain about the noise.

Add salt and pepper to your cup of flour. Dip the steak in the milk and then pat it down in the flour bowl. Do this 2 or 3 times for each piece of meat, until they are completely covered in flour. You have to do them one at a time though, because they go right from the flour to the pan. My pan fits three at a time so I never do more than that. The crust will start getting soggy before you even cook them if they sit on a plate after they've been floured.

Fry them until they're crispy on both sides. It's best to use a spatula to turn them, just in case you have to scrape some crust to keep it complete. If it's sticking, let it cook a little longer on that side before turning the meat.

It's obvious when they're ready to come out:

Set the oven to warm and lay them on the rack while the others cook. Put some foil or something under them so they don't drip grease inside your oven.

Cook the steaks like this, in succession until they're all done. In the meantime you can boil and mash potatoes, cook some corn, whatever you want to do for a side.

When the steaks are done set the fire to low and scrape all of your crusty bits off of the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the flour for the gravy in slowly, stirring it in with about 2 tablespoons of the leftover frying oil. When all of the flour is in the pan, add the milk a little bit at a time, stirring until you have a good gravy consistency. You may need more or less milk, depending on a number of things, including how you like your gravy and how much oil is left in the pan when you're done frying.

Either way, gravy is all about timing, which is all about practice. In the beginning you want to just pour half the milk in at once and stir, but patience is important. You've got to work the milk into the paste a little bit at a time to get the gravy started, otherwise you'll end up with lumps of greasy flour in hot milk. Yuck.

Once you've got it down you'll never forget, so don't get discouraged on the first couple of tries.

That's it. Serve it up with a big bowl of garlic salad and you've got another satisfied customer.

Yumm Hummus

I always buy pre-made hummus, but I wanted to take some to a party this weekend and I felt cheesy showing up with the tub that has a camel on it. I whipped this up in the food processor. I didn't have any tahini, but it wasn't missed.

2 cans garbanzo beans (drained, with liquid reserved)
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

Process until mostly smooth. Continue processing while gradually adding the reserved bean liquid until it is the consistency you want. Move to a bowl and refrigerate until party time. Just before serving, make a shallow depression in the top with the back of a spoon; fill with olive oil and sprinkle with fresh or dried parsley for a hint of color.

I served with brown rice crackers (terrible on their own, but the best with dips), blanched brocollini, celery, cucumber, and carrot sticks. I was going to take a picture, but . . . it pretty much just looked like hummus.

[P.S.: Resist, resist, resist the temptation to throw a third clove of garlic in. Proceed with caution unless you hail from Gilroy. Very strong.]

Special restaurant report: Law school food

A round-up of places to eat near my school:

Au Bon Pain: ABP is the place I've eaten at the most since I started going to school. I ate there almost every day as a 1L, and got the same thing every day: the smaller bowl of soup (lots of pumpkin in the fall) and the baguette piece. As a 2L & 3L I have cut back drastically on lunches out, and usually eat out just once a week (except during finals, when I eat out every day), but I'm sure some other 1L who couldn't deal with packing a lunch on top of everything else swept in and took my place.

La Prima: Right next to ABP, and also a sandwich/soup/coffee place. It's a mini-chain in the DC area. Their sandwiches are delicious, but I hardly ever buy a sandwich for lunch so I've only had a few of the varieties. My main reason for going to La Prima is that the salads (also very good) are half-price after 5:00. If I have a night class and didn't bring dinner, I'll usually pop over and get a big house salad and a smaller specialty salad and the total still comes to $4 or so.

The Burro: OK Mexican place, quite cheap. I've only eaten there a few times.

Bertucci's: YUM, I love Bertucci's :) Bertucci's is many things: the nearest bar, a place to get a sit-down meal with friends to calm nerves before an exam, the place I had my first Irish Car Bomb, and the place school clubs order pizza from at the end of the year when we have organization money to blow and are sick of Domino's.

Cone-E-Island: An ice cream place - supposed to be fantastic, but for reasons I can't recall I have never actually ordered anything when going there with friends.

Kinkead's: Super-fancy restaurant, allegedly one the best in Washington according to all the critics. I ate there once with two friends during the first or second week of our 1L year. I didn't know anything about it at the time and although it was good, I don't remember it being anything super-special, and haven't been there since.

Vaccaro's Italian Pastry: Just as the name implies. It is important to know where one can get a mini cannoli on short notice, and this is the place.

Undergrad library Starbucks: My most frequently visited Starbucks. Very crowded most of the time, but conveniently located between the subway and the law school. They have it down to a science - they have a dedicated drink-caller that takes your order while you're still pretty far back in the line, so when you get to the cashier all you have to say is "medium latte" (instead of "skim sugar free grande vanilla latte"), and your drink is done and waiting right after you pay.

Potbelly: I don't know if they have Potbelly where y'all live, but mmmm. Toasty, CHEAP, appropriately-sized, delicious little sandwiches.

Student center food court: It features Wendy's, Chik-Fil-A, overpriced pizza, an Einstein Bros. bagel place, a decent coffee place, a Jamba Juice, and this place called the Cafe that is, I think, the closest thing the university has to an actual cafeteria. (They don't have cafeterias in the dorms. The kids are expected to eat from this random fast food assortment for every meal. It is bizarre, and when I think of how much bonding I did with my roommates and friends in my college cafeteria, it makes me kind of sad for them. But then again, I ate at one of the smaller cafeterias, which had yummy food, so maybe that helped. Mmm, now I want a bowl of soft-serve vanilla with Fruity Pebbles. And that clam chowder we had every single Friday.) At any rate, we don't go to the student center often, even though it's just a half-block from school. It's loud and overpriced and undergraddy.

Breadline: My favorite place to get lunch. Mmmmmm I love Breadline. They have these crazy good salads - I always get the lentil and feta salad on a bed of greens, and sometimes I go halvesies and get feta and lentil on one side and curried chicken or green beans and potatoes or something different on the other side. And it comes with a crispy, chewy sourdough roll. Mmm.

"Washington Deli": The generic name we've given to the nearby office building/shopping center that contains Baja Fresh (like Chipotle, but wider menu and a salsa bar, my favorite), a cheap sushi place that only accepts cash, the actual Washington Deli (great pizza), and this strange, enormous cafeteria-type restaurant that seems to serve every kind of food imaginable. "Washington Deli" is frequently chosen because of both its variety and the fact that it has shared indoor and outdoor seating, meaning that friends who brought their lunches can eat there with people who are buying. I almost always go to Baja Fresh and get a salad when it is the chosen destination and I haven't brought my lunch.

"Let's get Thai": This Thai place that one of my friends absolutely loves and always wants to eat at. The pad thai is orange and greasy, but I am the only one who does not approve of it, apparently. I've learned to order the black bean sauce dish, which is quite edible.

Off-campus Starbucks: It's probably even closer to the law school than the undergrad library Starbucks, but you have to cross wide, busy Pennsylvania Ave. and walk by the World Bank security guards, so it doesn't really feel closer. We go there on the way back from Washington Deli or when the undergrad library one is closed.

Caribou Coffee: It's right across the street from the White House, and in my opinion it's a very good place to study. But one day when we studied there one of my friends thought it smelled funny, and when she got in the car her husband said "What is that SMELL? You smell." and she has refused to go there with me ever since. Sad.

T.G.I. Friday's: I'm going to stick with "no comment" on this one.

Lindy's Red Lion: Lindy's has 10 kinds of beer on tap and 26 different kinds of hamburgers, each of which can be made with your choice of a beef, turkey, or veggie patty. It is dirt cheap. I think you can guess how often we end up here. Before I started law school, I couldn't really imagine going to class after having two beers. Or skipping class to have a beer. But as my favorite dean says, "You must vigorously defend your emotional well-being at all times."

Dinner party report

All three recipes were a hit. The cauliflower soup really is amazing - the cauliflower-hater loved it, the vegetable-hater loved it. It's fast, easy, cheap, and very cozy. I forgot to buy the sharp cheddar and used the fat-free cheddar I had on hand, and it tasted great both before and after adding the cheese. I won't repeat the recipe here - I didn't modify it, with the exception of using fat-free cheese.

Veggies and broth simmering:
We don't have a blender and the immersion blender seems to be lost, so I ended up pureeing in the food processor. The whole batch fit. It worked fine, but I think it would turn out a little creamier with a blender.

I made basil and chicken stir-fry with brown rice for the main course, using a recipe I cut out of Food magazine a while ago. I found their method of cooking the chicken a little cumbersome, but I enjoyed the sauce and I'll probably make this again and mix up the veggies and meats.

Chicken and Basil Stir-Fry
1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
1 tablespoon corn starch (I used flour)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
6 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 small onion, halved and cut into 1/4 inch thick wedges
2 bell peppers, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 1/4 inch wide strips
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1.5 cups fresh Thai or other basil leaves, torn
Cooked white rice, for serving (I used brown)

1. Pat chicken pieces dry with paper towels; toss chicken with cornstarch until coated and season with salt and pepper
2. In large nonstick skillet, heat 2 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Cook half the chicken, turning once, until it is browned but not cooked through (2-3 minutes). Transfer to a plate and repeat with another 2 teaspoons of oil and the rest of the chicken. Set aside and wipe skillet with a paper towel.
3. Add remaining 2 teaspoons of oil, onion, and bell pepper; cook over medium-high heat, tossing often, until beginning to brown. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (about 1 minute).
4. Add 1/4 cup water, vinegar, soy sauce, and chicken. Cook, tossing until chicken is cooked through (about 1 minute). Remove from heat. Stir in basil leaves. Serve immediately.

Seasoned chicken, veggies, and sauce lined up for the pan.

The finished product.
For dessert, I bought a tiny pumpkin spice cake at Trader Joe's and made vanilla-cinnamon whipped cream to top it. Very easy: 1 1/4 cupes of whipping cream, 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, beaten to soft peaks. Stir in cinnamon to taste.

Whipped cream in a giant coffee mug:

And on the cake (it looks huge, but that's a dessert plate, not a dinner plate :))

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken pot pie kind of came out of nowhere for me. Not exactly a family heirloom and it never made a single appearance on the menu of any restaurant I worked at. But then my mom got me an apartment sized version of the ubiquitous 'crock pot' and I kept ending up with a bunch of leftover chicken and vegetables. Is there anything else worth doing with leftover chicken and vegetables?

Chicken Pot Pie

This dish starts by cooking everything the night before and eating half of it. You don't have to do it that way, but it works in my two person home. Plus, I don't know, there's something to be said for the immediacy of that plan. It's like you're enjoying the meal before it's even cooked.

Ingredients:

Day 1:

1 whole chicken
4 medium potatoes
4 large carrots
1 large onion
Salt and pepper
Your favorite savory herb

Day 2:

1 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen peas
2 pie crusts (top and bottom)
1/2 cup flour
Leftover chicken stock from night before

Wash and cube the potatoes and carrots. Put them in the crock pot first and season them with some of the salt and pepper, as well as your chosen herb. Cut the onion into large pieces and layer them in over the roots. Pour 1/2 cup of water into the bottom of the pot.

Wash your chicken and put him in on top of the vegetables. My pot isn't big enough to fit the chicken whole so I butcher him until it works. Then I cover him in whatever accent I'm using and put the lid on. Cook on high for 4-6 hours or low for 8-10. This makes a delicious meal right out of the pot, but make sure you don't eat more than half or you won't have enough for the pie the next day. And don't eat all of the breast meat right away either. You'll be sorry, I know.

A quick note on herbs:

I use whatever's handy and so far don't have any horror stories to tell. This time it was dried oregano, last time it was fresh rosemary. The dish cooks long enough that everything eventually takes on the taste, so pick one you like and throw in a lot of it.

When you clean up the kitchen that night, pour off the stock in the pot and refrigerate it in a separate container from the chicken.

Start the next day by cutting your remaining chicken and vegetables into bite sized chunks. Some recipes call for mashing the leftovers into a paste, but I like chunks. Put the chunks into a skillet with the peas and corn. Add a bit of the left over stock and bring to a simmer. Continue to add the stock and bring to a simmer until you've added it all back. Let this mix sit for 10-15 minutes, until most of the liquid has boiled down.

While the meat is working you have time to get the pie crusts ready. Lay one into the bottom of your pie pan and push it to the walls so there's no air between the crust and the pan. As the chicken and veggie mix finishes up, add your flour a bit at a time and mix until you get a thick consistency. You shouldn't have any liquid leftover to ruin the crust.

That's it. Put the filling in the pan, lay the other crust over the top, pinch the sides and bake according to the pie crust directions. Everything in the pie is fully cooked by now, so the pie is done when the crust is done.

Slice and eat. Two fine meals out of one five-dollar chicken.

New favorite fruit & dinner parties

I went to Trader Joe's tonight and spent a large amount of money on interesting produce, frozen fish, and tea, my three favorite TJ purchases. I bought a four-pack of Meyer lemons, having read that they are sweet enough to "eat like an orange." Since I eat lemons and limes like oranges anyway, I didn't expect the Meyer lemon to change my life or anything. I cut one up after dinner and the first bite sent it right to the top of my favorite fruit list. I wish they sold these at my neighborhood grocery store. and I wish I'd bought three four-packs instead of one.

We're having a small dinner party on Saturday, and there will be new things attempted and pictures posted. Inspired by the Girl Reporter, I'm making cauliflower soup as a first choice. This is a leap of faith because I just detest cauliflower. Ew. I'm hoping for a conversion, and like I said, the dinner party is small so my reputation won't suffer too much if I blow the recipe. I bought a small pumpkin spice cake for dessert, and I'm going to try my hand at making some sort of vanilla-cinnamon whipped topping (somewhere between whipped cream and frosting) to go on top. No ideas about the main course as of yet.

Chili

There are only two things I like about winter, and neither of them are the weather. In fact, the two things I do like are tools people have developed to combat the ridiculous cold our bodies clearly weren't designed to tolerate: hot tea and chili.

The Great Bean Debate

You can hardly find a chili recipe that doesn't start off by reminding you that there are people in the world who consider beans in chili a sacrilege, but then immediately go into their favorite bean to toss in the pot. These supposed 'no bean' people are like the Flat Earthers to me, everybody's heard of them but who's ever met one? I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find a website earnestly dedicated to beanless chili, but even the 'never landed on the moon' people have a website, what does that prove?

The one example of beanless chili I've actually seen is at the only good barbecue place I've been to in New York City, Daisy May's. They have what they call the 'Bowl O' Red' Texas Style Chili, big chunks of meat in some kind of red sauce. It's good, but it lacks enough variety to stand alone. If I want to eat big chunks of meat from Daisy May's, I'm getting the ribs.

Most likely with a side of beans.

So the great bean debate is dumb. Maybe it's alive and well in Texas, but so is the death penalty debate and I don't feel the need to reevaluate my opinion on that subject either.

Mike's Delicious Chili (with beans)

2-3 lbs stew beef
6 cups beans (when cooked)
1 large onion
2 large cans of whole stewed tomatoes
Diced green chilies to taste
1 tbl cooking oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Chili powder to taste
Crushed red pepper, garlic powder, paprika and/or cumin can be used to set it off in a different direction

Agreeable accompaniments include:

Corn bread
Sour cream
Shredded cheddar cheese
Diced scallions

This is a simple recipe for a dish that is better in direct relation to your patience with it. You can put everything together in a heated pot for two hours, stir and serve, but if you start early enough in the day you'll have chunks of meat that fall apart in your mouth as quickly as the beans.

I start by dicing the onion and chilies. I use more chilies than most people would want, but this dish is really tolerant of their heat so don't be scared. These go together in the hot oil, sitting on the stove in the big chili pot over a medium-high fire. Stir them occasionally while you prepare the meat.

Cooking beef in New York is complicated because it's all expensive and none of it's very good. The cows just don't live here, so by the time they've made the trip from inland the meat's kind of lost its nerve. It seems more dead, and while I can't decide why it makes a difference, it does. So after experimenting, now I buy the crappiest (cheapest) cuts of beef I can find and cook them for hours. Works every time.

If you buy the stew beef it should already be cut up into chunks. I usually halve those and toss them in a bowl with the spices until the meat is covered on all sides. Throw that in with the onions and peppers and give it a stir. Turn the heat down to medium and move it around occasionally until the meat chunks are browned on all sides.

You could mix this with almost anything and it would be good:

At this point I open up my cans of tomatoes and dump them into a bowl. Cut the tomatoes up into bite size chunks and set them aside. The tomatoes and juice will go in after the meat is ready, right before the beans.

While the meat is browning you have plenty of time to get the beans ready. I've always used canned beans, five or six cans comprising up to three kinds of beans. I like a kidney and a black for sure. Roman beans are a good number three. The first time I tried them my neighbor Brenda said "For some reason it just tastes more chili-y", a comment that deserved further study. We decided that the Roman beans had a good generic bean flavor that was just what the very specific kidney and black needed for rounding out. I've been using them ever since.

My uncle Tom got me a book for xmas, Serious Pig by John Thorne. One of the chapters is all about the bean obsession in Maine and he spends a great deal of time talking about growing, picking, buying, storing, soaking and cooking beans. He doesn't even entertain the notion of eating canned beans, outside of a couple of small canneries that still do things 'the old fashioned' way. Plus I've always known you're getting 10 servings to the dollar instead of one, so it was obviously time to give them a try.

I soaked 3 cups of dried beans for 20 hours using the Thorne method, which calls for bringing them to a boil for 3 minutes and letting them soak in that water overnight. I drained the beans before I used them, but I kept the water to use later.

By the time the meat is browned on all sides it has released some liquid, so you've got a little something to work with. Add the tomatoes and let this mix heat to a simmer before you add the beans.

With canned beans, there is enough 'sauce' in the can to get you started, but you're still going to want to add water when everything's mixed. With the dried beans I used the soaking water, per Thorne's advice.

He mentions the debate in Maine over whether cooking with the soaking water has any benefits. He decides to go with the water, but I don't like it. Too much bean. I want to taste the beans when I bite them, but cooking the whole dish in bean water overdid it, for me.

At this point you're pretty much done. Add water until the whole mess is a bit thinner than you'd like it to end up, put a lid on it and let it sit at a low simmer for 4-6 hours. Check it every hour or so, give it a stir, add a little more water if it needs it. But other than that, leave it alone. It's just getting better by the minute.

This recipe will make a big batch of chili, so unless you're going to a pot-luck or something, you'll have leftovers. It will get better in the fridge everyday for three days, plateau for one and then start going downhill. If it makes it that far.

A Confession

I used to have a girlfriend who was allergic to all things legume: soy products, nuts and especially beans. A spoonful of kidneys would have made her throat swell until it closed, death at the hands of a delicious little plant.

So on chili night in our house I made a smaller portion of beanless chili, in lieu of a trip to the emergency room. Same thing only I stopped before the beans went in. It was good, but never thick enough and always a little plain. She liked it, but it was eating my beanless that I decided the style didn't offer enough variety, with the Daisy May's version seconding the motion.

Christmas dinner

Christmas dinner was a little different this year with the family's primary meat man temporarily stuck in Portland, thanks to the Denver blizzard. Mike took over the meat smoking duties while Kirsten, JosiKs and myself did our best to split up Mike's usual side duties.

My best contribution: A hilarious, gigantic, benippled turban of bread. It was supposed to be a wreath with little ornaments on it, but clearly I am not familiar with the awesome power of yeast. Check him out:

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