Dunno how I feel about White Chili, but here we go.

Hey, I like creamy, saturated-befatted foods as much as the next, but for chili... it seems odd. Which is hilarious, since I've been known to spoon copious amounts of sour cream atop a bowl of steaming red.

But since I cook for the lovely ladies of Huntersville, and someone had a craving, I did the deed - White Chili with Tofu and Pinto Beans, and it was pretty interesting.

Since this was such a brothy, creamy bowl, I'd thrown together some faux-Pusas to balance it out a bit - kind of like a South of the Border Biscuits n Gravy plate. It was much improved - the soft corn and bite of tomato balanced the jack-cheese-creaminess. Were I to do this chili again, I'd totally try a Mex-themed spoonbread, perhaps, as well.

White Chili with Tofu and Pintos

1 large onion, chopped
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, diced
1 calabaza squash, cut to triangles
1 carrot, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
Handful of mushrooms
1/2 stick unsalted butter
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/2 pound Pepper Jack cheese, grated
6 cups water mixed
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon scallion, chopped
1 small handful cilantro, chopped
2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 block firm tofu, torn to bite sized pieces
1 cup TVP
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup half n half
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash cumin
1 tsp habanero powder or cayenne (for ze spice!), more to taste
Dash sugar
1 small can hatch chilis (TJ's has this covered - look in the spice section)
1 small container sour cream

Melt the butter in a stock pot and add onion, garlic, pepper, carrot and celery. Saute until onion is translucent, 4 minutes. Add zucchini and mushrooms, toss, and cook another 3 minutes.

Add water, nutritional yeast, beans, cumin and habanero, herbs, chilis, TVP, salt, and sugar - stir well and simmer 20 minutes, until all veggies have softened. At this point, add your tofu - I fried mine in a little vegetable oil and drained it before tossing it in the pot for texture, but either way works just fine.

Remove the pot from the heat. Add the frozen corn. Toss your cheese with the cornstarch. Add in handfuls at a time and stir to melt. Ladle a small bit of broth into a measuring cup and mix your sour cream into it until well-blended, then pour into the pot. Add half and half a little at a time until the chili is the right consistency and taste for salt and heat.

Garnish with cilantro and chopped jalapeno, or with fresh salsa. Serve with papusas or corn bread, if you'd like.

Chilicrown - better than a trophy.

Dunno if I've told you guys some key things about me:

I like to Yelp stuff. Fits into my whole "small businesses rule" paradigm.
I went to art school. Thus, I make a lot of odd things.
I get a little competitive about cookoffs.

So when a Yelpbud decided to have a Chili Cookoff a couple months back, wheels started turning. Not about what I was going to cook, mind you, but about what I could make, for cheap, to award to the winners. Cuz yeah, I claimed that responsibility early and gleefully.

Since our Latino markets are SO AWESOME here, I knew I could get dried chilis for cheeeeeeap. And a certain sister o' mine brought me some kickass gold spray paint, so some lucky peppers were going to get goldfingered. And the others would get varnished, so no one would fry their eyeballs out after putting on their Chilimedal.

So we ended up with several ridiculous chili wearables:

Obviously a crown was essential. Ah, hot glue and cheap christmas tinsel, I love yee.

"Medals" for 2nd and 3rd place. These I like alright, but wasn't super happy with. They were fragile, as well. Must have been Italian.

My fav had to be the honorable mention boutonnieres - they were rad. So cute, in fact, I took multiple shots of them.

I'd recently made a TON of boutonnieres for our wedding, so I had all kinds of floral tape, millenary flowers, etc, with which to craft these babies. Add some tinsel and chilis, and ya, they were awesome.

Less than 15 bucks, the whole shebang. And to be honest, I spent more time on the "trophies" than I did my chili. But onto the important part of this post:

This is one of my classic recipes. I've been making chili this way for a long time (although I did experiment a little bit this time, see below), and have tweaked the flavors 'till it sings (to us, that is). One difference - I really wanted to try some different beans this chili go-round, so I bought Canarys and Central American Reds to go with the ubiquitous Blacks. They were gorgeous dried.

I also used fresh tomatoes, which, I'm pretty sure, I'd never done before. Honestly, I don't think it was worth it in the end - there tends to be soooo much else going on in a good bowl of chili that the fresh, tart, green taste of fresh tomatoes gets lost. But in case you want to give it a whirl, I'm including them in the recipe below.

3 Bean and Vegetable Chili
serves 10

For the chili:
8 pounds fresh roma tomatoes (or 3 28oz cans chopped tomatoes)
2 tablespoons sundried tomatoes in oil
6 chipotle chilis in adobo, deseeded
2 tablespoons adobo from chipotles 
4 dried ancho chilis, deseeded
2 stalks celery, diced
2 green peppers, diced
20 cloves garlic, minced
1 large red onion, diced
1 bottle dark beer or stout
2 ozs dark chocolate
3 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons rich vegetable stock concentrate
1 small can tomato paste
2 tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano, rubbed

For the beans:
1/2 cup each dried Central American Red, Black, and Canary Beans, rinsed
1/2 onion, sliced
3 bay leaves
6 cloves garlic, whole
6 cups water
2 tablespoons rich vegetable stock concentrate

Additional ingredients:
 4 tablespoons strong-tasting olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
3 medium calabaza squash, quartered and chopped
1 pound mushrooms, destemmed and quartered
1 cup TVP (optional)

Let's do this, shall we?

This recipe happens both on the stove and in the Crock Pot. To begin, rinse your beans well and put them and all of the other "bean" ingredients in your pot and stew, on high, for 2 hours. They'll soften a bit, but will still be crumbly when you break their skin. this is what we want. Remove bay leaves and whole garlic cloves. Keep them warm in the Crock.

Boil 3 cups of water in a small sauce pot. Add your Anchos and let steep 20 minutes.

Peel and seed your tomatoes, but when seeding, do it in a strainer over a bowl so you don't miss out on any of the nummy tomato juice. Roughly chop and set aside.

In a blender, puree your garlic with 1 tablespoon of your olive oil.

In a large stew pot, melt your butter over medium-high heat and add the additional olive oil. Add your garlic, pepper, onion, and saute over medium heat 8-10 minutes. Add your mushrooms and calabaza and cook 8 minutes more.

Meanwhile, without cleaning the blender, put your soaked Anchos, your deseeded Chipotles, the 6 stewed  garlic cloves, and your sun dried tomatoes - puree until they're a thick paste.

In a dry skillet, toast your cumin over low heat until it browns slightly and is aromatic as all hell.

Pour the beer into the peppers/garlic/onion and turn heat to high - simmer 2 minutes to mellow. Add tomatoes, cumin, chili paste, vegetable stock, chocolate, reserved tomato juice, molasses and oregano. Simmer 20 minutes, until calabaza is softish and tomatoes start to break down.

Move the operation to your Crock Pot with the beans at this point - just empty the contents of your pot into the Crock. If it looks like it won't all fit, ladle some beans out and fill to about 1 cm beneath the ridge.

Add your TVP and mix well. Cook 4-6 hours on low heat until beans are soft but still have a slight bite. Adjust heat by adding more adobo (from the chipotles) if necessary, and adjust salt by stirring in a small amount of stock concentrate, if needed. I also like to add a last tablespoon of pureed garlic during the last hour to punch it up a bit.

Robust, smokey, sweet but salty. And spicy. Perfect topped by sharp cheddar and a little sour cream.

Other delish chilis were sampled with relish and abandon:

There were only 3 us veggies could munch there, but I dispatched multiple bowls with dexterity and determination.

Thanks to poprock photography for this nerdy shot.

And hey, guess what? I got to take home the crown. Hehe.

So what if I just discovered homemade 7 layer dip?

Don't look at me like that. I've always just grabbed the least browned-avocado-looking plastic carton of Dip on the way to a cookout, thinking, you know, it'd be expensive to make it from scratch, wouldn't really be worth it, people get more excited by the burgers anyway, who cares.

But. Seriously. I couldn't quit this last night. It's dangerous - you're just chillin' on the couch, watching an episode of ST:TOS or something, and a garlicky, whispery voice is up in your ear, telling you to just have a couple scoops. Before you can say Fascinating, it's half gone.

If your house is anything like mine, there are crazy people in it that hate awesome things like cilantro and olives. While you can probably sneak some cilantro into the guac and salsa, olives are a garnish-topping, and will be noticed. If you like spice, try mincing some escabeche (tiny!) for a pickly topping instead. Also, be picky about your chips - try for rounds rather than the strips pictured here. Structural integrity is key when scooping this heavy, delicious dip.

7 layer dip, part by part

So the classic layering goes thusly, bottom to top:

Black refried beans
Sour cream
Salsa
Guacamole
Shredded Cheddar
Minced olives/ peppers
Green onions

Obviously, the easiest way to go about gettin' 'er done is grabbing premade stuffs. Anyone out there who's a lover of salsas and guacs will tell you that homemade is the only way to go, but it's tempting when throwing them in a dip this complex to lazy out and just buy them from Hairy Peter or TJ's or wherevs. Trust me when I say it was totally worth the chopping and mushing. Surprisingly, flavors stayed distinct, all the way down to the refrieds. Delicious.

So, for the beans:

1 can black beans, undrained
1/2 carrot and 1/2 celery stalk, minced fine
1 clove garlic
Dash salt
Dash hickory smoke seasoning (like dees)
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a skillet, heat your oil over medium-high heat. Add your garlic, celery, carrot, and cover. Get some brown on 'em (about 3 minutes) then stir. Add beans and liquid and hickory seasoning, and grab a potato masher. Working in a circular motion, mash your beans until about half of them have dissolved. Let the beans simmer a bit more to thicken, then remove from heat. Taste and adjust salt. Set aside.

For the salsa:

1 large, somewhat ripe tomato
2 tablespoons freshly minced cilantro
2 tablespoons freshly minced green onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1/2 lime
Salt, about a tsp
Couple grinds fresh black pepper
1 small jalapeno

Chop your 'mater, throw it in a medium bowl. Add herbs, juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, mix. In a blender, put about a handful of your salsa thus far. Chop your jalapeno and throw it in the blender - pulse until things are relatively obliterated. Return it all to the bowl and stir. Taste. Set aside.

For the Guacamole:

1 avocado
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon minced cilantro
1 tablespoon minced green onion
1/2 roma tomato, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
Optional (depending on avocado's ripeness): 1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tsp salt, or to taste

Pit the avocado, put the delicious flesh in a medium bowl. Add lime juice and garlic, and using your potato masher, mash it all up. I like mine a bit chunky, but if you want it really smooth, use a food processor. Add your herbs, salt, tomato, and stir. If you aren't getting a good, fatty taste when you same, add the olive oil and mix well.

A note on the other layers:

Chives or green onions would work equally well as the final topping, as would a mix of cilantro and green onion. For cheese, I used an aged white cheddar - but for color, most go with regular orange. I really enjoyed the nutty, salty quality of the cheese we used. But it was kinda pricey for going on top of a million other flavors.

You can either buy Mexican crema or thin yours a bit with salt and a little water to get it spreadable. If you've never tried Crema, now is the time!

Diced jalapenos are an awesome way to spice this up a bit, especially as a final topping. I used some homemade jalapeno pickles, since I wanted to tone it down just a bit. Oh ya and those huge slices of raw pepper on top were all me. MWAha!

50 mile meal - take 4

I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun with these uber-local meals, have ya noticed?

So it's corn season, the beans are rolling in, tomatoes are looking GOOD, and peppers are here! Obviously, chili needed to happen, but I wanted to do something more playful. And we have...

Baked Chili-stuffed Peppers with Mexican Rice Pilaf

Mmm-hmm. Made possible by discovering that Reid's stocks rice grown locally (that link isn't to their store but to an Anson Mill's page where you can buy the same product) and that awesome lady that sold me a pound of freshly hulled brown beans at last week's Farmer's Mkt. Hifive sista.

For the Chili, you'll need:

1 pound of fresh beans, any kind of medium bean will do, rinsed thoroughly
4 large tomatoes, seeded, peeled, chopped
4 scallions, chopped
1 medium vidalia onion, chopped
1 head garlic, heirloom if possible, minced
As much summer squash as you can stand (we have a ton, so a ton went into the pot - 1 large would be more normal) diced
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons butter or fat (I used butter to be uber-local)
3-4 small carrots, peeled and chopped
Salt and chili powder to taste (I used a chipotle hot sauce produced locally - a little heat, a little sweet)
1 tablespoon honey

Melt your butter or heat your oil in a large pot over medium high. Add your carrots, garlic, and onion and saute until the onions are translucent and the carrots are beginning to soften. Add your squash and continue cooking until the edges of the squash begin turning translucent. Add 3 cups water, your chopped 'maters, the fresh beans, chili powder and salt to taste, stir and lower heat to medium. Cover. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for an hour, or until your beans are soft-ish. If you prefer a firmer squash in your chili, don't saute them - add them about 20 minutes into the simmer process. When your beans have cooked, add the cilantro and scallions. Stir and cover, but remove from heat.

For the rice, you'll need:

2 cups long grain rice, local is best!
1 cup fresh corn kernels
1/2 cup cilantro
1 tsp salt
3 scallions, minced

Diced tomato (optional)

Boil 2 liters of water in a large stock pot, add rice, and continue to boil for 30 minutes, covered. Drain in a colander for 10 seconds, them return to the hot pot, adding corn, cilantro, salt and scallions (and tomato, if you so desire). Cover and let sit 15 minutes to steam.

To assemble, you'll need:

Fresh chopped cilantro, 2 tablespoons
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a hoop cheddar from Hillbilly Produce Mart - but any cheddar or jack cheese will do)

Preheat your oven to 375f. Oil a large baking dish. Place the pepper halves in the dish, close to one another is fine, interior up. Using a soup spoon or any smallish spoon, fill the cavities with as much chili as you can fit (mounding a bit is fine). Generously sprinkle each filled pepper with shredded cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until you see the peppers start to soften and absorb some of the chili's color. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro. Yum!

I had extra chili, so we ate some (with that tasty rice) for dinner, stew-style. I usually make more complicated chili's (ancho, chipotle, chocolate, beer, sometimes everything at once, hehe) but the freshness of the beans and 'maters really stood out here. Simple. Satisfying.