White Chili (Sort Of)

I have a perfectly good recipe for white chili that I have been meaning to make for awhile.  I like white chili.  No.  I love white chili.  And when the fit is on me, chili from a can will not do.

I didn't know the fit was on me, until I went to the grocery store for brownie supplies.  I came back with chicken, chilis, and a sweet potato.*  A sweet potato?  Huh?  Yes, the Vast Orange Vegetable Conspiracy has struck again.  Sweet potatoes appear nowhere in my white chili recipe.  Possibly they do now.  I'll know for sure in a couple of hours.

M's White Chili, Now with Sweet Potato

1-2 Tbsp veg. oil
1 cup chopped onion
2 boneless skinless chicken thighs, likewise chopped
1 large sweet potato chopped (If you're not a victim of sinister orange vegetables throw in a couple more chicken thighs.  Or several, the original recipe I have calls for 2 pounds of chicken, I use considerably less.)
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 chopped up Anaheim chili

2 cans white kidney beans
1 can green chilis
1 cup apple cider
3 cup chicken stock (or four cups chicken stock and skip the cider)
1 1/2 tsp cumin
3/4 tsp coriander
1 tsp oregano (if you're not a nitwit and forgot to buy it)
salt and pepper to taste

Pour the oil in the bottom of a heavy bottomed soup kettle.  Heat to medium high and toss in the onions and the chicken.  Cook until the onions are translucent.  Add the garlic and the fresh chili.  Cook, stirring often, a bit longer.  Add everything but the salt and pepper.  Cook over low heat for a couple of hours at least.  Really, the best way to do this is in a crock pot.  I do not currently own a crock pot.  This is sometimes a problem.

Before you serve, check the seasonings and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with grated jack or cheddar, lime wedges, and sour cream. 


*Notably forgetting the sour cream and the oregano.  Savory cooking of any sort without oregano is outrageously difficult.  I may have to make another trip to the grocery store to fix that one.

Anyone Caught Moving Faster Than a Turnip Will Be Shot

I intended to write this post about my domestic short comings which are legion.  Except that I realized that I was using self-excoriation as an excuse not to fold laundry.  Yes, folks, this is how much I hate house work, I would rather embarrass myself in public than do it.

I went and folded laundry instead, and turned on iTunes.  I was doing really well, singing along to the Decemberists and Bob Marley, until Jason Webley's apocalyptic ode to gardening "Back to the Garden" came on.  I thought "aha! an excuse to stop" for there are several people reading this that would appreciate the lyrics, if not necessarily the drunken pirate delivery.  However the drunken pirate delivery, which is a hoot, is on an album that is out of print, and not running free on youtube (the version on youtube is uninspiring but it is there if you want it), so you will have to take my word for it.

Anyway, enough dilly dallying, I've got clothes to fold (and floors to take out and recycling to vacuum*).


*Silliest looking word in the English language.

Design-y Miscellany

So I'm sitting here locked in battle with my nemesis Final Cut Pro, if locked in battle is the right cliche for sitting and waiting for video to render for years.  I am going to have floor length snow white hair by the time this is done.

Time for five more random things while I contemplate the vast yawning chasm of suckitude that is my lack of aptitude for anything to do with editing video.  No really, I'm not good enough to be incompetent.  However, I keep getting paired with people who are scared of their own ignorance. I on the other hand am willing to look like an idiot in public, so I keep editing.  Maybe the next time I get handed the baby, I'll get someone to teach me how to edit audio.  If this keeps up, I may end up being mediocre.  Good seems a bit too much to hope for, as my respect for my friends and family members who really are good at this stuff rises. 

Anyway five things of interest, for loosely defined values of interest.

1)  Even in the midst of editing film, big band still makes me outrageously happy.  The film soundtrack ended up being Glen Miller's In the Mood.  It makes me wish that I were a better dancer. Maybe like this:

2)  Instructions for cocktail making AND any of the creative disciplines at the very same time.  A Twist of Lemon.

3) My color theory teacher discussing the particulars of an assignment:

If you interpret tranquility as lots of reds, blacks, and yellows, I can't really disagree, but I will send you to the school nurse.

I have considered devoting a section of the blog to this particular instructor's gnomic utterances, but type just does not capture the delivery. 

4)  "I'm sort of a god in the Twin Peaks community."  Later the statement was amended to an unequivocal assertion of TP godhood.  However, I think equivocation is funnier. 

5) Lapsang souchong is the best black tea for editing film. 

Miscellany Again

1.  The End is Nigh...

No really.  The quarter is almost over, so I will go back to writing again.  I have a short film to edit, a printing bid to write, and a presentation to pull together. That's doable, right?

2.  Pearled barley makes a tasty substitute for rice in rice pudding.   Or at least I think so, possibly the reason I ended up with the leftovers is that my dinner companion did not agree.

3.  From the same meal:  toasted sunflower seeds, garlic, and olive oil make a wonderful topping for baked cod and/or catfish.  Especially if garnished with fresh cilantro.  (Some of my esteemed relatives will disagree, but I'm not one of those unfortunates who can't do cilantro.)

4.


Probable sound track for the short film referred to above.

5.  Strangest search term of the week?  Shrubbery shirt cake

Inventing things again

I used to say that I did NOT bake.  Baking was too fussy for a tomboy like me.  I liked the rough alchemy of a sauté coming together, or a soup long simmered, until cheap meat, and slightly dodgy vegetables became a dish to astound my friends.   And then there were the notable failures, but about those best to keep quiet. 

Baking, by contrast, was predictable, lacking in adventure.  All those finicking chemical reactions to bake a cake that worked.  No room for experimentation.

But eventually my love of the kitchen led me to learn, apprehensively at first, the rudiments of baking.  I'm by no means a master baker, whatever this blog might lead one to believe, but I do what I know well.  And eventually, I mastered enough of the basics to do what I did tonight -- open my faithful Joy of Cooking to a simple quick cake recipe (that is a cake that relies on a chemical reaction between an acid and a base for it to rise rather than a cake that relies, at least in part, on incorporating air into eggs for structure) -- realize that I don't have enough sour cream to make it, and improvise.

The improvisation is in the oven at the moment, but here is the recipe.  In general for baked goods I prefer not to rely on regular coffee to impart a coffee flavor -- coffee is bizarrely one of the more evanescent flavoring -- but a half cup seems like it ought to do something.  

This cake comes together fast, and can be mixed with a wooden spoon without undue laboriousness.  I also suppose that some people would call this a tea loaf rather than a cake and I will admit their point.

Hopeful Mocha Quick Cake

5 Tbsp Butter
2/3 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c strong coffee
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 c flour
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease and flour a 9"x 5" loaf pan

Melt the butter in a large microwave safe mixing bowl.

Stir in the rest of the ingredients in the order in which they are listed, stirring between each addition. Stir until the dry ingrediants are just combined, and the chips are well distributed.

Scrap into the loaf pan and bake for 40 - 45 minutes, or until a tooth pick or fork inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let cool in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes or so, and then run a fork around the cake to loosen it and turn it out. 

Edit to add: I baked this as described in a loaf pan, took forever.  I suggest a nine or ten inch cake pan and start checking around the 30 minute mark.

New Challeges

This evening I ate latkes for the first time.  They were imperfect, based on a hazy recall of a recipe, and made by three totally drained people.  They were delicious, and certainly they fed me body and soul.

Now I need to make them.  I have these wild ideas about sweet potato latkes with chile verde and lime cilantro sour cream.

More importantly I have leftovers.

It occurs to me that part of the essential character of the evening hinges on my interpretation of J telling me that I ought to bring a baking potato for each person and maybe one extra.  I asked what sort of potato to buy, and she said that she didn't know but probably a baking potato.

I showed up with five potatoes therefore.  Five large potatoes. Almost twice the amount of potato that J thought she was asking for.  There were a stupendous number of pancakes on the table tonight.  Only a stupendous number of pancakes could have ensured that there were leftovers.  Four hungry adults can eat a lot of latkes.

Confessions of a Busy Blogger

School has eaten my brain again.  I know I ought to write something.  I even planned out a long post about color and its emotional associationds.  I am afraid that after thinking out this very long post while walking too and from school, I instead went and spent a weekend with my aunt and uncle, and did not once look at my computer. The post has thus disappeared into the brain fog again.

I will tell you quite frankly that it was a marvelous weekend, and that if you ever find yourself in Everett, Wa. you should go to Scuttlebutt's and order the fish and chips and a pint of porter.  

Mystery of the Day

Why can I walk into almost any kitchen, be presented with a bunch of random ingredients, and throw together something delicious, and quick -- except my own?  In my own kitchen I stare into the refrigerator piteously and wonder why the idiot in charge of purchasing hasn't been sacked.

This is exacerbated by the end of the quarter.  I have been putting in long days at school, and I come home at night wanting a lamb roast, new potatoes, a slice of pie, and half a bottle or so of something dry and red.  Needless to say none of those things are waiting for me. It's already eight o'clock, so no time to cook a lamb roast (if I had one).  So it's frozen ravioli, pasta sauce from a bottle, and a handful of frozen spinach in the sauce to keep me from biting the neighbors.  It's not bad...

 I think I'm going to interest a friend or two in the idea of roast lamb sometime soon.

Alternative Uses for Pancake Mix

Today I could not face my usual scrambled egg breakfast. I require a hot breakfast in the mornings, cereal is an excellent snack at any other time of day, but it is not breakfast food -- too cold and lumpy. I was going to be off doing things for most of the day (OPERA! With an Aunt! What Larks!), and I was uncertain about lunch, so it needed to be a substantial meal that might carry me through to dinner.

So I stared into my refrigerator pondering my choices. I contemplated pancakes but did not feel sufficiently something or other. I contemplated a quesadilla, but that did not sing to me either. I thought about a Dutch baby*, but a true Dutch baby required more eggs than I wanted to commit. I returned to contemplating the buckwheat pancake mix. It still did not appeal as pancakes, but what if used it in place of some of the flour in a Dutch baby, in the hopes that its leavening agents would compensate for the lack of an egg. 


Cap Hill Baby

1/2 c Archer Mills Organic Buckwheat pancake mix
1/2 c all purpose flour
1 c milk
2 eggs
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp veg. oil
2 Tbsp butter

Combine everything but the oil and butter in a blender. Beat until smooth. Stick in the fridge.
Preheat oven to 350.

In a ten inch cast iron skillet combine the butter and oil. Place the skillet in the oven for 10 -15 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the oven, and carefully (it might spatter) pour in the batter.

Bake for 15 -20 minutes, until puffed and solid. (To my surprise it was done at the fifteen minute mark not the 20. Although if I had let it go longer it might have gotten browner, but I was in a time crunch.)

Serve with your favorite pancake toppings. Today I ate it with canned peaches, in honor of my great grandmother, and yogurt.

This procedure resulted in a dense, chewy cake with good buckwheat and butter flavor. It was not quite what I was expecting, but it was a good hearty brunch on a morning when I walked to the Seattle Center. I could have taken the bus, but I would have had to leave the house at the same time. It was a very nice walk even on a day inclined to serious bluster.

*It's a baked puffy thing that exists in the borderlands between pancakes and soufflés. These are two things that at first glance do not have obvious borders.  Yorkshire puddings occupy similar culinary geography

For Science!

My excellent friend JVW recently sent me a care package.  Among other things it contained a jar of Double Apricot brand Preserved Cabbage.  Apparently it's Thai cabbage that is preserved.  The contents of the jar appeared oddly dry for something that I imagined belonged in the sauerkraut family. 

The jar might have sat in some out of the way place in the kitchen except that this week also saw me bringing home a bag of Safeway's house brand frozen pot stickers. (I speak the international language of dumplings.)  This evening I thought I'd have some for dinner.  The soup I'd been planning to eat had not thawed, so I cast about for another side dish.  At once, I thought of the Preserved Cabbage.  So after I whisked the pot stickers out of the skillet, I dumped what I thought was an appropriate Sarah size portion into the remaining water from the pot stickers.  I can be enthusiastic about cabbage and its relatives.  Very enthusiastic, so it was rather a lot of preserved cabbage.

Only then did I taste the cabbage.  It was salty.  No... it was SALTY.

This was not pickled cabbage in the kimchi tradition, this was salted cabbage in the salt pork tradition.  Only more so.  

Clearly it had been intended to be rinsed, blanched, and used as a condiment.  I had dumped almost half the tightly packed jar into my skillet.  I added more water.  I added vinegar.  In desperation, I added a pinch of sugar.  Anything to cut through the salt flavor. 

Dear readers, I did not succeed in appreciably diminishing the saltiness of the preserved cabbage, but because I was very hungry, I dumped it over my pot stickers and attempted to eat it anyway. I mostly succeeded, because I was very stubborn and very hungry (having spent the afternoon walking around Seattle in cold, wind, and snow hunting a particular book). 

If there is a lesson here, it's probably try the bizarre Asian canned goods sent to you by your friends, before you commit to eating half a jar.  I will be trying to figure out what to do with the remaining preserved cabbage in the weeks to come.  If you have ideas, drop me a line.  My ideas at the moment involve mashed turnips and potatoes.