happy new year!

icf will be back in 2010. make sure you have some bubbly for me!

cheers!

dump-and-guess veggie chili

who doesn’t love chili? no one, that’s who. so i decided it was the perfect thing to have in a big pot when our families came over to help decorate the tree.

infinitely variable, this was truly a joint dump-and-guess endeavor, which means while there’s no actual recipe to share with you (why would i have a recipe?? this is only a food blog…!), i want you to see how not-scary chili is and how hard it is to go wrong.

we started with dried beans, which we pressure-cooked for about 40 minutes in vegetable broth and some basic chili spices – pepper, oregano, cumin. (but no salt! salt apparently slows bean-cooking in a pressure cooker.)

if you don’t have a pressure cooker or don’t want to start with dried beans, canned beans can be substituted. i like a mix of light and dark kidneys and black beans in my chili.

while that was happening, i sauteed half a yellow onion, a few small cloves of garlic and a whole bunch of baby carrots in a little olive oil in a frying pan.

(i would rather not have used baby carrots, but the blizzard of ‘09 cleared out the grocery shelves. and i mean, i get it, right? carrots would be such a horrible thing to without during a snow storm…)

if you aren’t starting this chili in a pressure cooker, sautee the onions and carrots (and the evil vegetable-that-shall-not-be-named, if you must) directly in your soup pot, adding the beans when they’re done.

sautee until the onions are translucent and the carrots are starting to get tender.

next i added a couple spoonfuls of drained, crushed tomatoes.

why crushed tomatoes, you ask? because i was dumb and bought the wrong thing at the grocery store. i should have bought chopped tomatoes.

why drained? because i didn’t want to make the chili too soupy, but i ended up adding it in later so if you didn’t skip this ingredient all together, you can skip the draining.

however, i am thinking that the delicious deep, sweet tomato flavor this chili ended up with may have come from the crushed tomatoes, so in the future, i might actually make that “mistake” again.

but i do like chunks of tomatoes in my chili, too, and lucky for me, i had a small can of chopped tomatoes in the cupboard, which i added with the juice.

at this point, you want to start seasoning. i used a small spoonful of molasses for a deep, sweet flavor; chili powder, of course; more cumin; salt and pepper; a few shakes of worchestershire; and a small dash of red wine vinegar.

how much of each, you ask?

i have no idea. we both just kept tasting and adjusting until we liked what we had. i think it would be pretty hard to mess this up.

you can also adjust the liquid, bringing it to a boil to cook some off if there is too much, or adding a little tomato juice, vegetable broth, or even water, if you need more.

i served with brown rice, and it was even better the day after.

homemade hot sauce

i wanted to include a homemade element in my christmas gift to him, and if you know him, you know that one of his most ubiquitous side kicks at mealtime is a bottle of hot sauce. or a jar of hot peppers. or a bowl of jalepenos. or a shaker of cayenne. and even so, he rarely runs into a dish that is hot enough for his taste.

this in mind, i decided to take on the challenge of homemade hot sauce. i say “challenge” because not only did i know i wasn’t going to be able to taste my product at any point throughout the process (i’m that much of a wimp), i also know very little about different peppers and their flavors.

so i started by shopping for peppers at a korean grocery store. the clerk assured me these were the hottest peppers around, but maybe she meant for a white girl…

and there they are: a pound of fingerhot peppers.

i took extra precaution when i cut them, because hot peppers are known to sting your skin and eyes, even after you’ve washed your hands.

i cut off the tops and added them to a food processor with some salt. they actually smelled hot at this point. i took that as a good sign.

blend until smooth.

transfer to a jar…

and WAIT TWO DAYS?! shit. this is why you should read recipes all the way through before you start them.

i had planned on making this hot sauce at my mom’s house since it’s hard to do anything secret in a studio apartment that you share. but i hadn’t read the recipe. whoops.

so i bagged up the jar of toxic material – i mean, crushed peppers – threw it in my suitcase, and headed home.

two days later

(actually three days because i couldn’t get him out of the house on the evening of day two. hopefully it didn’t ruin everything.)

remove jar from secret hiding spot (the recipe doesn’t call for refrigeration at this point) and add two cups white vinegar.

rewrap and restash in secret hiding spot.

five days later

(thank goodness he decided to go to the gym.)

strain peppers out of liquid and bottle it. it’s definitely smelling hot.

i don’t have a funnel so i used a plastic bag with a hole cut in the corner to catch drips.

now i had to refrigerate, so i wrapped up the bottle again and taped a nasty note to it.

review: while the sauce wasn’t the least bit “too hot” for him, he said the flavor was great. his other standard hot sauces are made with red chilies, so apparently the change was nice, since green peppers have a distinctive flavor.

makes a great homemade gift for a hot sauce lover (buy a pretty, professional-looking bottle at pier 1 and design your own cute label!), and it’s really easy enough to make it a standard part of your repertoire.

i’m sure we’ll make it again… when he can pick his own peppers!