Projo Football Food & Spirits

November 25, 2007 - December 1, 2007 Archives

Monday Night Football with the Patriots at the Ravens, don't you just get a chill thinking about it?

How about cooking up some chili on Sunday to serve for dinner before or during the game. These recipes come from Stephanie Anderson, author of Killer Chili: Savory Recipes from North America's Favorite Restaurants (Chronicle Books, $17.95).

The Award Winning Chili recipe comes from Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret, Conn.
The Cape Cod Seafood Chili comes froms the Atlanta Fish Market in Georgia.

AWARD-WINNING CHILI

2 pounds lean ground beef

2 teaspoons plus 1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon plus 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste

2 drops Tabasco sauce

2 links fresh smoked Mexican chorizo sausage

1 tablespoon minced jalapeno chile

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 onion, chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

1/2 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 16-ounce can tomato sauce

1 28-ounce can tomato purée

1 16-ounce can kidney beans, drained

In a large, heavy skillet, combine the ground beef with the 2 teaspoons chili powder, the 1/2 teaspoon cumin, the black pepper, cayenne pepper, and Tabasco sauce. Cook over medium heat until the meat is browned. Drain, reserving 3 tablespoons of the fat.

Slice the chorizo in half lengthwise and cut into bite-size pieces. In a large, heavy pot, cook the chorizo over medium-high heat for 4 to 5 minutes. Add the 1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder, the 1/2 tablespoon cumin, the jalapeno, garlic, onion, celery, bell peppers, and reserved fat. Cook until the vegetables are tender. Add the tomato products, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the cooked beef and kidney beans and simmer for 2 hours. Serve in crocks with tortilla chips, shredded Cheddar cheese, and scallions if desired.

Serves 10 to 12.

CAPE COD SEAFOOD CHILI

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion diced

2 jalapeno chiles, seeded and diced

2 red bell peppers, seeded and diced

1 green bell pepper, seedfed and diced

1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and diced

6 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons salt

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3 bay leaves

1 teaspoon ground allspice

6 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup (8 ounces) bottled clam juice

3 1/2 cups crushed tomatoes

1 15-ounce can kidney beans

4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 1/2 pounds bay scallops

1 1/2 pounds bay (cocktail) shrimp

1 6- to 8-ounce cod fillet, cut into chunks

In a large, heavy pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, chiles, peppers, and garlic and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the salt, chili powder, black pepper, red pepper, bay leaves, and allspice and stir well. Add the tomato paste and stir for 2 minutes. Add the clam juice and crushed tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Add the beans, chocolate, cilantro, and parsley.

Taste for seasoning and add more if necessary. Add the scallops, shrimp, and cod and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, or just until the scallops and cod are opaque throughout.

Serves 6 to 8.

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Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

Sunset magazine in 1995 supplied the formulas for making your version of The perfect chocolate chip cookie.

A collaboration of three writers -- Linda Lau Anusasananan, Andrew Baker, Christine Weber Hale -- produced the recipes, the thorough explanations of properties and technique, and the very readable Q&A about what makes chocolate chip cookies turn out so differently:

The burning issue is how to make the cookie turn out the way you want, every time. Curiously, most cooks who asked for help use the same recipe--the one on the back of the Nestlé chocolate chip bag. It's a reliable recipe, but subtle changes produce surprising differences. To determine which factors influence the final cookie, we used the wrapper recipe and baked more than 25 variations. Each batch was slightly different, and changes in proportions, mixing methods, and baking were carefully controlled. The goal: to learn how to make the cookie that matches your favorite adjectives....

The flavor of the news to use here:

What makes a cookie crisp or crunchy?

Reducing the amount of ingredients that hold moisture--flour, egg, and brown sugar--makes it easy for liquid to evaporate, producing crisp cookies. The fat, which goes up proportionately when other ingredients are cut back, gets hotter than the water in the dough and drives out the moisture. Fat also makes the dough softer and melts when hot, making the cookies spread. For crispness, bake cookies longer at a lower temperature to give them more time to spread before they firm. Then bake long enough to dry and brown them evenly to develop the maximum toasty flavor and crisp texture throughout.

There are recipes for Thick, Soft, and Chewy (most notably, it has an egg in it) and Thin, Crisp; Thin, Crisp, and Chewy, as well as Thick, Crunchy, vary the amounts of the ingredients in Thin, Crisp.

Here's that one:

Thin, Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cooking time: About 20 minutes per pan

Prep time: About 10 minutes

Makes: About 32 cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1/4 lb.) melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 package (6 oz.) or 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

1. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.

2. With a mixer on medium speed, beat butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, 3 tablespoons water, and vanilla until blended. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture, then beat until blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

3. Drop batter in 1-tablespoon portions about 2 inches apart on baking sheets.

4. Bake in a 300° oven until an even golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes. If using 2 pans in 1 oven, switch places at half-time.

5. Let cookies cool on pan about 3 minutes, then transfer to racks with a spatula. Serve warm or cool. Store airtight up to 1 day, or freeze for longer storage.

Per cookie: 86 cal., 47% (40 cal.) from fat; 0.6 g protein; 4.4 g fat (2.6 g sat.); 12 g carbo.; 77 mg sodium; 7.8 mg chol.

Go see the rest of their fine piece.

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Tired of turkey? Every Patriots game, search engines deliver readers looking for this post on my Subterranean Homepage News blog from last February: Crockpot recipe: Frozen pot roast with Jack Daniel's. But when this search query showed up in my logs on Thanksgiving morning, I had to wonder who had forgotten to buy a turkey.

With the Pats game tonight against Philadelphia at 8:15 (on NBC), you still have time to pull a roast out of the freezer and have something besides turkey to serve your fans.

Here's the entire post, originally blogged Feb. 25, 2007:

It was cold yesterday morning, a perfect Saturday to stay home and read with the homey aromas of pot roast cooking.

Trouble was, the pot roast I'd bought on sale was a fat brick in the freezer, stashed for just such a day. I knew there had to be workarounds. In the tradition of engineers sharing basic cooking tips on the Web, here's how to modify a pot roast recipe.

I searched the Web for recipe frozen pot roast, and struck gold at American Grass Fed Beef, whose owner, Dr. Patricia Whisnant, a veterinarian and mother of six, offers Super Easy Crock Pot Beef Roast Recipe, writing,

...we just throw all the ingredients including the frozen grass fed beef chuck in a crock pot set on low and cook all day (about 8 hours or more). Either way . . . you will have beef so tender it will be falling apart.

That was good enough for me. I liked the two cups of water in this recipe -- there would be lots of good juice. Dr. Whisnant used 3/4 liter of burgundy wine in her pot -- 25.3 ounces, more than 3 cups -- but I don't care for purple pot roast, and the only red wine here is about a glassful of leftover Merlot. But I suspect some alcohol is needed for this alchemy.

I do have a bottle of Jack Daniel's. How much?

The Web makes it easy to improvise: Find a similar recipe, scan it for useful enhancements. Search terms: recipe bourbon pot roast.

Joyce's Crockpot Roast with Bourbon says 1/3 cup bourbon. It uses too little water for me -- just 1/4 cup -- and celery, which I don't like hot. I'd stick with Dr. Whisnant's recipe, add garlic and wing it.

I didn't have all the veggies I wanted, but knew I could add them later. They'd hold up better without cooking all day, and there were enough veggies in there at the start to flavor the broth.

10 a.m. I started with,

3 lb frozen beef chuck roast
1 large sliced sweet onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small carrot, sliced thinly
1 bouillon cube
1 bay leaf, whole
1 tsp dried basil
1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/3 cup Jack Daniel's bourbon whiskey
2 cups water

Put the vegetables, the beef, the spices and liquids into a slow cooker, in that order. Turn the crockpot on low and cover. Go away.

4:30 p.m. After grocery shopping, Joe cut and added,

3 thin-skinned 3-inch boiling potatoes, cut into roughly 1-inch cubes
2 parsnips
1 medium purple-top turnip
1/2 small butternut squash, peeled
1 tsp salt

6:30 p.m. Adjust the seasoning.

Tasty, but a little sweet (from the root vegetables).

In went, for a half-hour's cooking,

2 tsp basil
2 tsp oregano
a few shakes Scotch Bonnet pepper sauce
freshly ground black pepper (hand-ground for about 10 seconds)
1 tsp salt

At 7 p.m. we removed the meat, covered it with foil, turned off the crockpot and let everything sit for a little while longer.

The meat was fall-apart tender, not stringy as it would have been if it were overcooked. (I've had that happen to other all-day crockpot roasts.) We joked that it might still be frozen in the center, but although it looked a little red, like corned beef, it was definitely cooked. We inhaled it.

Leftovers today. And we'll have some hearty beef vegetable soup left over.

Sorry, no pictures. It was a day off from everything.

Notes:

--The roast was straight from the freezer; if your roast is thawed, this will be too much cooking time.

-- Use waxy "boiling" potatoes, not big bakers. Only use Yukon Golds if you're going to add them late; they tend to fall apart into a slurry if overcooked, and will disintegrate if cooked all day.

--Scotch Bonnet Sauce is the only hot sauce I really like. It's thick, adds flavor as well as heat, and spikes oversweetness. (This isn't gourmet stuff, it's Grace brand from Stop & Shop's Jamaican section.) eatjamaican.com says you can use a bit of skin, or a whole Scotch bonnet pepper, if you don't let it break open, to get the flavor without the heat.

-- Any bouillon cube will work to flavor the water. I only had chicken, but beef might have stood up to the vegetables better.

-- I think the sugar in carrots overwhelms stocks, so I use them sparingly. I like squash more, and the market sells small halves, peeled, washed and wrapped.

-- in these Web searches, I always begin with "recipe" -- it eliminates restaurant menus, retailers and nutritition charts.

-- If you have burgundy wine but no Jack Daniel's, you can reverse engineer this. I'd cut down on the wine, and maybe some of the water. You can always add more water later.

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