Chili

I got together with a friend for coffee last Saturday morning.  Thank goodness for steamy warm coffee shops on frigid winter days.  What a relief to peel off a few dozen layers of warm clothes, and scarf, and gloves, and wrap my hands around a hot mug, and just thaw a bit.  And what fun to chat with a fellow food lover and blogger, toss ideas around, and discuss all-important subjects such as the relative merits of a good sharp knife vs. a food processor.

And to my delight, V. had brought me a little something special.  A sandwich sized ziploc; contents wrapped snuggly in waxed paper.  She told a funny little story about how she had set out to make blue corn tortillas and changed course midstream, ending up with cornbread.  There were two wedges of that blue corn cornbread in the bag.

I love the spontaneous generosity of my fellow foodies.  I love the community created by cooking and sharing.  And the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous, as Michael had just taken the remains of our Superbowl Sunday chili out of the freezer to thaw.

Sunday afternoon, after returning from another bone-chilling trip back outside to attend the opera, we heated up the chili and put the cornbread in the toaster oven to warm.  Ah, comfort food.  The chili had a definite kick, and the mild cornbread, slathered in butter, provided a delicious contrast.

I know there is no shortage of debate about what constitutes authentic chili.  I don’t pretend to have anything meaningful to add to that discussion.  I just know what I like, and that is a version of chili con carne made in the crock pot—simple, hot, thick, filling, and spicy.  This recipe freezes well, so don’t hesitate to make a big pot of it.

It is fine eaten plain, or you can dress it up with corn chips, cheese, even sour cream.  We like to eat it over rice, with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese.

Chili Con Carne

• 1 cup dry kidney beans
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes in juice
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 poblano peppers, roasted, charred, skin removed, and diced (optional, but delicious)
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cumin
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
• ½ tsp minced garlic
• ½ cup masa

Soak beans overnight.  Drain, rinse, and put beans in crock pot.  Brown ground beef in a skillet over medium-high heat.  When ground beef is almost cooked through, add onions and peppers and continue cooking until beef is browned.  Drain and add to crock pot.  Add tomatoes, spices, and enough water to fill pot.  Stir, then cover and set to low.  Cook for 8 hours, or until beans are tender.  Blend masa with a small amount of water, and stir into chili to thicken.

Mushroom and Spinach Quiche

Is real life like reality TV?  Sometimes it is.

The new season of  The Amazing Race started on Sunday, and with it came the resumption of our biweekly viewing and dinner parties.  I had planned a simple menu—two quiches and this green bean and fennel salad.  I had all of my ingredients, and plenty of time to cook.  Until I realized that I didn’t have plenty of time anymore, and then realized at a critical juncture that we were completely out of olive oil.  “I’m totally in the weeds, here!” I muttered, as Michael hustled off to the store for olive oil and I ratcheted up the pace in the kitchen.

I went from ahead of the game to suddenly behind, with unexpected reversals of fortune in the form of an empty olive oil bottle, then put on a burst of speed and crossed the finish line in good time, sliding the quiches into the oven at just the right time to allow them to bake as everyone gathered and chattered.

There wasn’t a million dollar prize at stake as I cooked, it’s true–just dinner for friends.

The quiches came out puffed and burnished a toasty golden brown, just in time for everyone to fill a plate and settle themselves in front of the TV.

There was a classic Quiche Lorraine, with bacon.  And it was good.  But my favorite was the second one, the Mushroom and Spinach Quiche, with layers of mellow sautéed onions, finely diced mushrooms, spinach, and gruyere cheese, all bound together by a tender custard of eggs and cream.  The flavors melded into a seamless, savory whole.  Every warm, satisfying forkful was a pleasure.

The green bean and fennel salad provided a cool, crunchy, tangy counterpoint.

This quiche is not difficult to make–especially if you use a premade crust as I did, of the sort that you just unroll into a pie pan.  If you have a good hand with pastry, you can certainly make your own.  But do give yourself a good 30 minutes or so for the chopping, steaming, grating, etc before the assembled quiche goes in the oven.

Mushroom and Spinach Quiche

• 1 9-inch pie crust, partially baked (use your preferred recipe or a premade pie crust)
• 1 small onion, finely diced (about 1 cup)
• 1-2 tbsp olive oil, divided
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup grated Gruyere cheese
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 large eggs
• 10 oz bag baby spinach (or 1 bunch, cleaned and trimmed)
• ½ lb mushrooms, cleaned and finely diced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Prebake the pie shell for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, over medium heat, sauté onions in 1 tbsp olive oil for about 10 minutes, or until soft but not browned.  Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Put the mushrooms in the skillet with another glug of olive oil.  Sauté over medium high heat until liquid is released and cooked off.

In a saucepan, steam the spinach in a small amount of water until soft, approximately 5 minutes.  When sufficiently cooled, squeeze as much water as possible from spinach, then chop coarsely and set aside.

Whisk together eggs and cream, with a dash of salt and pepper.

Spread onions evenly across bottom of pie shell, then layers of spinach, mushrooms, and gruyere cheese.  Pour egg and cream mixture over all, and carefully slide into oven on center rack.

Bake 30-40 minutes or until evenly browned and puffed.  Knife inserted into center should come out basically clean.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Paella

Paella is a complicated dish.  Not difficult to make, but rather a dish full of multiple contrasting flavors that become so much more than the sum of their parts.  There are many variations on the basic theme of rice, meat, or some seafood, and each has its passionate advocates.

And it is also complicated by layers of associations and memories.

We have eaten paella at outdoor restaurants up and down La Rambla in Barcelona.  Wonderful paella, studded with lobster, mussels, and clams, served steaming hot in individual paella pans alongside giant glasses of sangria at tables under the night sky.  The noises of the city, the flow of Spanish conversation, the sights of the crowded pedestrian street, the soft warm air and the summer stars, all served as a backdrop to some truly memorable meals.

But the version of paella I love best, the one that I hold up as a standard by which to judge all others, is the paella that Michael makes.  His recipe varies just a little, depending on his mood and what is available.  The asparagus, bell peppers, or artichokes come and go, but the core elements are always there: the rice richly flavored with garlic and saffron, the chorizo, roasted chicken legs, and shrimp.  This is the paella that he makes for friends, and the one he also makes for intimate dinners for two.

And then, another layer of association: Michael’s paella recipe grew out of a memory of the long-ago summer he spent on Long Beach, of night after night at a restaurant with friends, eating paella bursting with chicken legs and fat shrimp.

As is always true, the pleasure, the real magic, is not just in the food itself.  It’s also in the warmth and comfort associated with it, the view of the city outside rain-streaked windows, the pleasure of sipping a glass of red wine and watching his assured movements as he puts the finishing touches on a special meal for just the two of us, as he did this Valentine’s Day.

If you don’t have a proper paella pan–the traditional shallow, double-handled pan–a large cast-iron skillet will do quite well.  You can vary almost any of the ingredients to suit your own tastes-use chicken breasts if you prefer, or leave the chicken out entirely or substitute lobster.  This will easily make enough paella for four to six people, but it is just right for two with leftovers, as well.

Paella

• ½ cup olive oil
• 6 chicken legs
• 1 large onion, chopped fine
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 link (about 6 oz) chorizo, thinly sliced
• 1 ½ cups rice
• 3 ¼ cups chicken broth
• ¼ tsp saffron threads
• ½ tsp pimenton
• 8 oz shrimp, peeled and deveined
• ½ cup finely grated manchego cheese
• red pepper flakes to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• ½ cup finely grated manchego cheese

And any or all of the following:

• 2 cups broccolini, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 bunch asparagus tips
• 2 cups red and green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 cup peas
• 1 cup baby corn

Heat the oil in the paella pan over medium heat.  Cook the chicken until well-browned all over, remove from pan and set aside.  Add the onions and garlic and cook for a few minutes.  Add the chorizo, rice, broth, saffron, pimenton, shrimp, and cooked chicken.  Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook for a further 20 minutes.  Mix in the vegetables, and salt and pepper to taste.  Cook for a further 5 minutes or until the chicken and rice are tender and the broth has been absorbed.  Remove the pan from the heat, sprinkle with the Manchego cheese and red pepper flakes, and serve.

Loud the Winds Howl

The wind has been blowing, really blowing.  Gusts up to fifty miles per hour, they say.  Windy days are not unusual in Seattle at this time of year, but they always get my attention.  There is a power in the wind that demands notice.  Leaves scud by, then a really powerful gust hits and all of the trees rock and sway like a line of hula dancers.  The house snaps and settles, and the cat raises his head and flicks his ears irritably before sinking back into sleep, snug in his chair.  Rain hits the roof in waves–gently, then pelting like bullets.  The air outside is pungent with the fresh green scent of cedar, and the streets are littered with just-snapped branches.

My little house has nestled here, safe and solid, for fifty-odd years, through storms much fiercer than this.  Still, when the wind really starts howling, I raise my head just like the cat, thinking briefly about the massive trees surrounding my snug home.  Stay put, I bless them, before turning my attention resolutely elsewhere.

I have more mundane concerns, like the bread that has been in the bread machine for three hours, with ninety minutes still on the clock, as another salvo of wind-driven rain lashes down and the lights flicker yet again.  “Just another hour and a half,” I mentally plead with the storm, as if I can bargain or wheedle to save my bread.

The ninety minutes go by, and the power is still on.  The house is still warm and now full of the infinitely comforting scent of fresh bread.

A day like this is made for fresh bread and a scalding hot bowl of soup, this soup in particular– Butternut Squash, Kale, and Mushroom Soup.  It’s simple enough to put together, and only requires an hour or so on the stovetop—no time at all, really, as you go about your Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and let the soup simmer.  It will perfume your house with its rich and tempting aroma.  Your nose will tell you when it is done, leading you, at just the right time, to abandon whatever you are doing and settle down at the table with a big bowl of steaming soup and a chunk of buttery bread.  Everything you need for a satisfying meal is right there in the bowl, with a contrast of textures and flavors, from the yielding squash to the firm mushrooms, the smoothness of beans to the crunch of kale.

Whatever the climate outside your window, may you create a little warmth and peace in your own heart and at your hearth.

Butternut Squash, Kale, and Mushroom Soup

(adapted from Whole Living Magazine)

• 1 cup dried cannellini beans
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, pressed
• 12 ounces shiitake mushrooms, trimmed and thinly sliced
• 2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 bay leaf
• 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 bunch kale (8 oz.), stems removed and leaves thinly sliced (6 cups)
• salt

Soak beans overnight in water. Drain. Heat oil in a large pot over medium flame. Add onions and cook until tender, 6 to 8 minutes; transfer to a bowl. Turn heat to medium high. Add mushrooms; cook until golden brown. Return onions to pot and add garlic, squash, beans, bay leaf, and stock. Season with pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover partially. Cook until beans are just tender, about 50 to 60 minutes. Stir in kale and cook until tender, about 5 minutes more. Remove bay leaf.  Season with salt.

Serves 6-8

Cheesy Multigrain Bread

Remember those classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercials where the girl and the guy are both dancing their way down the street listening to their respective walkmans until they collide, mixing up his peanut butter and her chocolate?

Well, that’s sort of what happened here, when the two cookbooks with which I am currently in love collided.  “Hey!  You got multigrain on my cake salé!”

According to Dorie Greenspan, Cake salé is a French savory cake, or more accurately a quick bread.  I had marked her recipe for Savory Cheese and Chive Bread in my copy of Around My French Table (along with about twenty other recipes!) and meant to try it at the earliest opportunity.  And then, when I was assembling a crock pot full of chili for Superbowl Sunday, it occurred to me that cheesy, oniony bread would be the perfect accompaniment.  However, I generally prefer whole grain breads, and it just so happened that I had a jar of multigrain flour mix handy, the recipe for which came from Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain.  Hmm!

The offspring of this collision was all that I could have hoped for.

I had a chunk of gruyere in the fridge, so I used that.  Its delightful tasty stretchiness worked perfectly in this bread, although I’m sure cheddar or just about any hard, meltable cheese would also be a success.

I considered calculating the exact quantities of wheat, oat, barley, millet, and rye flours in the multigrain flour mix for this recipe, but frankly, why do the math?  I recommend that you simply stir up a batch of the multigrain flour mix, or a half batch if you prefer, and measure out the 1 ¾ cups needed for this recipe.  Save the dividend for pancakes, popovers, muffins, or whatever you bake next.

The use of the multigrain flour in this bread did not result in a heavy or dense loaf, but rather one that was somehow at once light and still substantial, with a bit of crunch in the top, a vein of chewy cheesiness, and the mildly nutty flavor allowed plenty of room for the bright notes of salt and green onion to shine through.

It was good straight out of the oven and barely cool enough to handle.  We ate slice after slice, with steaming bowls of chili.  It was really good alongside my scrambled egg on Monday morning, lightly toasted and slathered with butter.  And it was still excellent Monday evening as a pre-dinner nibble.  Then it was all gone.

This bread is best when you can share it, as is true of most homemade breads, and most food for that matter.  If you bake a loaf while you are all alone in the house, you may find that you can’t stop eating until it’s all gone.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Cheesy Multigrain Bread

(inspired by Around My French Table and Good to the Grain)

• 1 3/4 cups multigrain flour mix
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 3 large eggs
• ½ cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup coarsely gruyere cheese
• 2 ounces gruyere cheese, cut into very small cubes
• 1/2 cup minced green onions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Generously butter a loaf pan.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper together in a large bowl.

Whisk eggs in a medium bowl for about 1 minute, until foamy and blended.  Whisk in the milk and olive oil.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients, and gently mix just until the dough comes together.  Stir in the cheese and onions.  Turn the dough into the buttered pan and smooth the top with the back of your spoon.

Bake in center of oven for 35-45 minutes, or until the bread is golden and a slender knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Transfer the pan to a cooling rack.  After about 3 minutes, run a knife around the edges of the pan and turn out the loaf.  Invert and cool.