Next Project: Pepper Garden

garden plot idea, though it may need to only be two rows

So I got my seeds ordered and they should be here, if I'm lucky, by tomorrow. Woot. I'm only a week late this year /but/ I sprung for the Hydrofarm CK64050 Germination Station with Heat Mat . The seed company I went with was Trade Winds Fruit Seeds; they have a great selection of rare and designer peppers.

germination/sprouting stationNuMex Twilight Chili

Last year I wanted to do a pepper garden. Ended up getting divorced instead. Well, I guess that how the caterpillar grumbles. Anyway, this year, I am going to get to Lowe's and buy some two by fours, or whatever, do a slightly raised bed. Actually, this weekend I have a ton of shite to get taken care of. In general, my yard could use quite a bit of TLC.

the Peter Pepper

Specifically; 

• The back fence is overgrown with these vines that I know my neighbor hates looking at. 
• I would like to build a compost bin out of some scraps. I think this will go a good way to getting me to use it more often and I can knock it off as the first notch in the build your own furniture resolution for the new year
• Would love to get a frame built for the sprouts, but I think money may prove a problem in marshalling materials. It will also require soil of some kind, which I likely don't have money for. And it will require poop.
• Clean out the small frame of dead stuff, leaves, etc.
• Clean out the mulch bin.
• I will need an Owl sculpture. to skerrrr the little things away.

I don't much care for my lawn, as in, I don't often put much care into it. I would like it to look better. I can make it look better. But my landlord is like this distant vassal. It took a month all told to get my oven fixed. And now the thermometer and heating is uneven. How do I retaliate? By letting the lawn go to shit.

I know; it's immature and passive-aggressive. Whereas I used to be proud of letting my yard go to shit, citing the SMDS mantra "it doesn't make any sense to kiss an ass that is shitting on you", now I would like to redevelop my attention to my yard. Having a garden, tending it, helps with that immensely.

This is the Congo Trinidad Pepper. It is pleased to hurt you.

I've got the plot plotted. Seeds are on their way. I'm excited because I have some peppers for selling at the market, I have some peppers for hot sauce, there are some in there for frying and for stuffing and for canning. I will probably buy more in the end for preserving (i.e. some hungarian wax peppers, etc). The border of the plot is edged with chives (and I will probably add some marigolds as well) to keep the bunnies at bay. 

I have a second order in the cart. Mostly a ton of herbs. I want to do an herb garden in the smaller frame (five foot by five foot). It gets a nice light, decent rain. If I decide to planter or pot them, I may do some tomato plants instead. Haven't decided yet.

Huffman's Chili and the Upper Arlington Fall Fest

First, I recommend anyone interested participate next year; the organizers were not only organized and well-seasoned, but they were incredibly personable and relaxed and eased even my nerves.

So I didn't walk away with either the basket for People's Choice or Judge's Choice, but I got to see a good number of spoons (dba. votes; the crowd gets a spoon, tries all the chilis, then drops their spoon in the box in front of their fave chili) drop in my chilis' boxes, and I got a good chance to talk to the respective purveyors a good deal. A nice amount of shock and delight came out of both crock pots, so my personal takeaway was pretty good. (The only problem I had was with my crock pot for the vegan chili; it didn't wholly heat up and served tepid samples the first quarter of the way through.)

Let's get straight to the bones. Actually, I'm going to drop the carnivore rundown at the end; I don't want to scare of my vegan friends.

This represents the third attempt at refining and improving the Vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili, aka el Chilitoaxilitlo. So for a final refinement;

• add refried beans with 45 minutes to go
• add pinto beans with 25 minutes to go

Actually... that's it.

I will just refer you to the original post for the full recipe. As with any chili recipe, it's all about the time you can set aside for the chili. The longer the better. Also, remember to toast your curry / chili powder and use fresh ground everything that you can get your mitts on. As for toasting, I did it halfsies because (a) I like the smokiness of just-toasted spices in chili, and (b) I like the piquant sharpness of not toasted spices. You may prefer one over the other, or detest one. Either way, it's up to you.

Also, I had added too much bragg's/tamari it seemed, but once I added the refried beans it happened to be about right. Since you don't need to keep either bragg's or tamari in the chili to marry their flavors, I would recommend waiting until after adding (esp. the refried) beans to figure out what your measured dose of savory will be.

On to the omnivore's event (a.k.a. "here contains the meat of this post"), what I am calling the Youngstown Brown Brisket, Bitches;

• take seven pounds briskett
• 2 cups stock, pan drippings (4 - 6 cups, should fix to be something akin to french onion soup) from brisket
• standard base for chili, skewed toward jalapeno and roasty-toasty
• simmer down

You may recall the post about the Youngstown Brown Chili. Suffice it to say I didn't feel like making stock, so I hacked a shank and made a kind of bastard brown sauce/stock. I'm sure I'm slaughtering the nomenclature, feel free to mock me in the comments. Basically, I picked up where that chili left off; instead of fried up pork chops and ham shank stock, I roasted a brisket and made stock with cow femur.

Per usual, I turned to my shelf reference, that fantastic Homesick Texan for how to do brisket right, but without needing to hassle with smoking it (c'mon, I was doing two chilis).

Before I get into the specific resources I drew from, I must point out that a blog saved my life. Yes. Homesick Texan's speaking directly to the 'what' and 'why' of Texas Red as a distinct style of chili has changed how I make chili. Apparently, due to the extent of reduction to the finished product, I had one person say that it scarcely qualified as chili (under his breath, to lady with him). I politely (actually I'm sure I seemed like a smug fuck, but whatever; I did not miss him spooning me) explained the distinction between Texas Red and the Midwestern Red he was used to, principally the reliance on beans and broth, and that this was of a different style.

Now according to her Chopped brisket sandwiches are in some sense a Texas thing; cool, I'm sure they do it different. But when I saw the pic of that biddie I knew it was time for me to knock brisket off of my omnivore's bucket list. My beginning point was HT's explanation of how to do an oven-baked brisket; I then spun off and increased the amount of liquid and used a significantly larger than necessary roasting pan (it was one of those massive catering pans, and took up my whole oven). I also added carrots and two packs of mushrooms (note: you are going to have mushrooms simmer in beef juices and soy and whatnot, they don't need to be expensive, but don't use canned, that's just gross).

The end result was a catering pan with 7 pounds of amazing meat, baked over the course of 13 hours to that smooth succulent moist bubble. So what did I do with that half day? Well, I had already made lunch for my friends visiting from Akron. And I was in cooking overdrive mode. So first off I made and then got the pumpkin chili under pot. While doing that, I roasted the cow femurs (sliced to around 1" height) until the were nice and crispy ooey-gooey. I then made a stock with them. The mistake I made was over-stirring and under-skimming; so basically I did everything wrong but keep the heat on. Still, i got a cloudy broth, and this was going in chili so it wasn't some big deal.

So standard chili build, cayenne/jalapeno/thai hot pepper base. Incorporated what was basically a jalapeno / french onion soup stock into the chili for body, a few diced tomatoes, a had a minimal simmer. Good stuff.

 (pictures to follow)

Youngstown Brown Chili

Yesterday I began my attempt to hone in on refining my texas red style chili, trying to better my signature chili. i made two primary changes. right out of the door I changed from using standard pre-cut pork chops to the whole cut pork chops; where they are longer and have more fat on them. instead of going for some convoluted rub, i just marinaded them in worcestshire sauce and brown mustard after rubbing them with salt (to lacerate the surface area). these were more difficult to fry up correctly, but they worked better in the long run.

The second change, which I just did after some consultation on brown sauces and marrow stocks with my friend paul, was a bit of a leap. i had bought a ham shank. for those of you whho dont know, its the drum looking thing from pigs. it is a very interesting cut and has a good meat, it was also hickory smoked. basically i roasted it for about two hours in  the oven at 325'F. pulled it, then separated the meat, threw the meat (with skin) into a pot  and started steaming it. once the skin was able to be peeled off, i threw the meat in the chili.  i also too the bones, and other weird things you would expect from a joint cut, and popped them in a frying pan with a lid, mostly covered them with water, added some chopped green onions, and boiled the crap out of them. i added the peeled skin to this too.

after a while boiling, i was able to take a misused old boning knife and split one bone from the other (yeah, dont try with a knife you care about). so basically, it all roasted for 2 hours, then boiled about 3 and a half; as it would reduce i just added more water and kept reducing it. i tasted the reduction a few times. on the one hand, i was makingg ham stock and thats what it tasted like. on the other hand, i was creating this savory oil to add to my chili. it made me think of mint or vanilla oils in cupcakes, but of pork in chili. so now that i have explained the outlying elements, here was the setup, very akin to the forked tongue chili. browned beef with peppers, onions, garlic. fried up and cubed pork chops. started garlic, onion, some rehydrated chopped sun dried tomatoes, and pepper base for the chili in stock pot. 

meat done; time for chili.

the peppers on hand were 1 habanero, 3 serrano, 2 jalapeno, 1 can of anchos in adobo, 1 anaheims, 7-8 bird's eye hots (they were introduced variously throughout the process). if i were to take what i made and make it hotter i would get another jalapeno, 2 more serranos, 2 cayenne (dried), and some dried anchos. my first reduction was done with a big old cup of coffee to get some liquid in there. it bubbled down pretty good and got a bunch of vapors rolling. the spices up front (before the coffee) were coriander, clove, sage, paprika, ground mustard. as the process wore on, i added cinnamon, bay leaves, fennel seeds, brown sugar, two pureed oranges, honey, oregano, marjoram, and 3-4 vine tomatoes -chopped. they all added their bits and pieces.

heres what i mean by 'base'alright lets get all chronological now. ive been free streaming this up to now. It's about 2p, (1) the ham shank weent into the oven at 1p, (2) the beef has been browned (mine was pretty lean and didnt need drained; draining is optional, i guess, but i have trouble with oily chili and this one is particularly problematic), (3) the pork chops should be finishing soon, they are 2/3 cut up; (4) the coffee reduction has just happened, its finally gurgling down, the chops are almost all cut up. Once the coffee and onions starts looking a bit gloopier go ahead and drop the beef in the chili. finish the chops,  cut em up, drop em too.

Basically once you get to this point your kind of in the home stretch in terms of handiwork. Anyway, get a nice and tall Baltika #9 Extra Lager. Now you should probably take a swig and check out how good it tastes; mmmm. Then you need to pour out half into the chili. Its a shame in its way. (You could always buy two while you're at the store.) Let this reduce; right about now is when all the ham shank prep was happening. So the chili began happening at 2p, and was under lid by 2:30ish (my pork chops stretched out my timing).

There will be a pretty good lid of liquid on top of the chili. its going to take a while to reduce it all. and then youre going to pour the rest of the beer and another cup of coffee to on it to reduce that too. also, we're going to be adding the fun stuff from the boiling process next door.  so anything else you might want to throw in there, feel free. the chopped tomatoes i wasn't sure about but did anyway. i also added black beans. after those two additions it steers itself away from being a texas red, or whatever; yet where one road ends another begins as this is how it came to be the Yongstown Brown. its still going to be awhile, and you want the lid off at this point, and youre going to be stirring a whole bunch. heres hoping you went and bought yourself that Baltika #9. Cheers!

"It is very sweet for a lager, with an aftertaste similar to corn syrup and a great overall flavor." Its meant to make for a nice accompaniment to the Brown's sugars and citrus notes

after the mini (read: abbreviated) extraction process, and me running out of time after it had boiled about 3 1/2 hours, i had to see what id gotten. the ham stock was potent. obviously not that potent considering i'd only used two bones, and a limited time range, but now ive got a target. i tried filtering the remainder of what was in the pan through a coffee filter. WRONG. oils, obviously soak up in the paper. dumb. it was too  heavy or i poured  to fast and it broke through any way. next time i will just strain it and call it a day. nonetheless i ended up with about 8 ounces of liquid. if i had more time i might have reduced it more. actually, if i had had corn starch and more ground mustard on hand i would have done what i did while it was in the crock pot.

left-overs that wouldnt fit in the crock pot; was shorted three hours' simmeringi transferred to the crock pot. went with amanda to jason and elisas to bottle beer with jason and john. periodically, i added more ground mustard (to help keep the components mixed together), and corn starch to thicken up the brew. the corn starch i should have added to the strained ham stock. that way i could have added it all at once and more evenly. but i didnt have any at home. next time.

at any rate. i think the first bowl was eaten around 9, so it did end up being a seven hour chili. no sour cream or fritos; just cheddar. it was a broad flavor. very hot. at times it was very sweet, and others more dark and smoky, and others yet it had a face rush of heat.it wasnt entirely a builder burner long-tail heat chili. it left you alone after a few minnutes of finishing a bowl, but i definitely wanted to get more. i left it on until about 11 before turning off the crock pot entirely. by that point all traces of liquid had vanished. it had been replaced by this dark meaty molten lava. and it was the Youngstown Brown. Basically the point is to take the formula of the texas red of the Forked Tongue Chili and apply a brown sauce to it. I will try to prepare the night prior for this endeavor now that i am more aware of what is involved. My friend Paul says it is best to use upwards of 10 bones at a time. jeez. and my wife was grossed out this time around.

its not a pretty pic, i know; but seriously its the size of a baseball and can hold its shape all day

ghost curry chicken salad

last night I made chicken salad. however, without my grill to first cook the chicken, I had to make some adaptations. also, i took frozen meat and defrosted it, so sad. anyway; i defrosted it in the microwave with some vinaigrette, lemon juice, gulden's, worcestershire, and salt.

instead of the usual bbq preparation of the chicken for the grill (which i guess i haven't done the recipe for zomg!), i went after a pan-sear approach. first i took the chicken out and wiped off the excess marinade, then applied a rub of CaJohn's orange chipotle, generic chili powder, ground red pepper, salt, pepper, ground ginger, ground mustard, turmeric, and sage. turned the heat on my stainless steel frying pan up to high, dropped in a tiny amount of blended oil, let it spread out and heat up, then dropped the chicken. let the chicken breasts rest for about 30 seconds, flipped, and flipped after 30 seconds; then put the cover on and let it cook (the cover kept down the spitting but i think it made the crust moist, also the sear didn't crust well on the first flip).

after the breasts were mostly done, I moved the chicken breasts away from their respective crusty leavings and poured in the marinade (along with 5 thai hots and 2 chopped red jalapenos) to de-glaze the pan and recapture the rub left behind. once that had bubbled awhile and the chicken was cooked I chopped an onion and added that and mixed it all up, let it simmer until the sauce had gotten nice and stiff and saucy. (baby wanted to know if it was going to be for pasta.)

basically this was done. i put the chicken (with as much sauce dripped off as possible) on the cutting board (then cut into small chunks) and poured the sauce in a 2.5q pyrex bowl. went to grab some mayo when I realized, oh noes, i only have 1/3-2/3 cup of mayo for 4 chicken breasts. eesh, that ain't about right for a chicken salad, now what? well i put that much in the bowl along with a modest squirt of ranch dressing. added thyme and some more sage. but now I am left with a crazy hot sauce, a modicum of fat suspension, and spicy rubbed chicken chunks.

i dont know if it would have been my first choice, but i added light red kidney beans to the mix (if i'd had black beans i probably would have used them). first i drained them, put them on the cutting board and chopped them to irregular shapes (in half lengthwise and widthwise, in thirds, whatever), and added them to the mix. the finished product was still too hot for its own good and could have used more mayo and another chicken breast. nonetheless, served on a bun with a smudge of cream cheese on the bottom it made for an awesome sandwich.

    

Update on 1:37PM by mfg

tragedy: this camera really did a bad job. jeez

Bears Den Chili Redux: in time for a Stout Dinner

searing the venison in garlic paste and spicespepper base: 5 cayenne, 7 roasted jalapenos, 4 chiles en adobothe chili is under crock, cooking down, waiting to gookay, so im going to do the Bears Den Chili run down again, because its all new again. and its better.

start  by searing two venison steaks. prep the pan by making a garlic paste of 4-6 cloves by dicing them finely, spread some kosher salt on top and on the cutting board and drag your chefs knife across the top of the garlic  dragging the garlic through the salt. drop it in some olive oil heated on low on a skillet, roast, add some spices (paprika, adobo pepper, and sage). on everything roasts  and starts smoking up a little bit, drop the venison steaks. turn it up to high. flip and keep flipping until both sides are nice and seared. dont cut immediately but take off heat and put aside.

start standard minced garlic and onion base to sauteeing in oil. once garlic is soft, add onions, stir and stir; once onions are soft add pepper base (i used cayenne peppers, roasted jalapenos, and chilis en adobo). stir. once all of this is done, take your meat, cut it into smallish squares, add to chili. add sage, adobo pepper, chives, coriander, and whatever other spices (i would add cumin but baby doesnt like it much). and some salt. stir. your heat at this point should be up to medium, but no higher; stir. add 1/3-1/2 a bottle of old rasputin russian imperial stout beer. turn up the heat to medium high to get the liquid to start bubbling a bit.

now you need two fresh tomatoes and oone large can of peeled whole tomatoes. youre going to dice the two fresh ones and add them after the chilis been bubbling for about 5 minutes; stir. then drain the whole tomatoes and add them one after another. i do this by putting a thumb in the side, squeezing out the tomato juice and then breaking them up into smaller chunks.

add a tablespoon of brown sugar into the mix. stir. now grab some stalks of oregano and some parsley, both  fresh. trim. cut down about 5 tablespoons of both. add to the chili. add two or three bay leaves. 

add some more beer and cook the liquid down. add beans, i did one can of light red kidney beans and a half cup of black beans and about 2/3 a can of corn (forgot to dry spice roast, dammit!). by this point you will want your pot to be on very low heat, as low as possible probably. now you need to start tweaking for heat after the whole thing cooks together for about twenty more minutes. i used raw sugar to sweeten, unheat the whole thing; about 3-4 tablespoons. you can also tailor flavor with herbs and spices still. i also add about ten whole thai hot peppers with their stems taken off for garnish.

after youre all done fixing and fooling around (by this point i had finished off the rasputin; a few sips for me aside), transfer to crock pot to simmer on low for two hours minimum; i put mine on an hour ago, probably going to stay on another 3-4 hours.

vegan pumpkin bumpkin chili

i am looking at combining two very interesting (to me at least) soups into a chili. my initial approach was to take a butternut squash approach and blend it with the added heartiness and excitement of tomato basil soup. roasted autumn squash, nice chunks of tomato, some cranberry beans (for that slightly woody taste). then, considering i wanted to take the approach to the mats i brought up the question 'what savory flavors can i get out of pumpkin?' (ie sub squash for roasted pumpkin) on cooking.se and got a bunch of interesting responses. one pointed me to his delicata squash curry recipe, which is going to form the base for the soup (around which i build everything up). basically; i'll core then roast the pumpkin in half on a cookie sheet until a fork goes into/out of the skin easily, peel the skin, puree the flesh, drain, drain, & puree with curry.

basically i am going to start with my garlic/onion/spices/sauteed-in-olive-oil bottom, once its all soft and homogeneous, add the pepper trinity (tien tsins, thai hots, and adobos) and let it bloom up the oil, then about 2-3 cups (starting with halves based on the strength of the puree) of the base while breaking it down with some Guinness (remember the party is all about stouts). once i've got a nice molten simmering mixture i'll add a few fresh diced tomatoes, a big can of peeled tomatoes (that are halved and then crushed individually by hand before going in). lots of basil goes in at some point now, as well as some oregano. some other spices probably. 

anyway, we'll get those cranberry beans in later on. i have to make a decision regarding a meat sub still (ie to have one or not). (Tempeh prolly, maybe Tofu Croutons? Am i hallucinating?)

Update on 11:13AM by mfg

see the first run at a result: Vegan Pumpkin Curry Chili