...And Cornbread, and (SEPARATELY) Beans.
Okay.
Frank X. Tolbert’s Bowl of Red is wonderful stuff — if you like Tabasco. My fix for that is to sub Cholula Chilpotle. Suet’s not so readily available, so I have a fix for that too. And now we’re talking about how I use chili recipes — they’re, like, loose guides, not sacramental texts.
Because if you’re into chili like the Terlingua cook-off chiliheads are, what I wrote above is almost as sacrilegious as putting in canned beans.
If you put beans in your chili, don’t let me know about it, okay? If you put sugar in your cornbread, that’s not cornbread. That’s cake. It’s fine, but just know it’s dessert. (Regular cornbread, split and buttered while it’s hot, makes a marvelous dessert if you pour on maple syrup or your choice of melted preserves, just so you know. )
For the chili:
¾ pound crosscut beef shank — choose pieces with generous amounts of marrow and fat
3 ½ to 5 lb beef, cubed (about ¾’’ pieces. Use a roast, buy stew meat, whatever you need to do. If you want, you can even mix the meats — a little lamb or mutton, a little beef, a little buffalo or venison…
if you’re going with all beef try to use some brisket — get a little flat-cut point and a chuck roast)
2 big onions, diced fine (use white ones or yellow, but NOT red or “sweet”) — at least 2 cups
3 big cloves garlic, smashed
2 ½ cups boiling water
½ lb dried ancho chiles
½ lb dried guajillo chiles
1 small can (I mean really small, the 2.5 oz jobs that are half the size of a can of tomato paste)
chilpotle chilis in adobo sauce)
1 tbsp comino powder (powdered cumin)
1 tsp regular dry oregano
2 tsp Mexican oregano
28 ounces fire-roasted tomatoes
1 tbsp coarse-ground black pepper
2/3 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 ½ tbsp Cholula Chilpotle hot sauce
Remove stems and seeds, then soak the guajillos and anchos (and 2 or 3 New Mexico red pods if you can find ‘em) in the boiling water for about 10 minutes. Remove the pods, save the liquid.
Meanwhile brown the shank slices in a heavy skillet. Remove and save; immediately add the onions to the skillet, along with the garlic, comino, and both varieties of oregano. Cook over medium heat until the onions just start to brown; remove and reserve. Brown the cubed meat well; return the onions to the pan.
Toss the chilpotles in adobo sauce, the chiles you’ve rehydrated, and the cayenne, paprika and Cholula along with the tomatoes — undrained ---- into a blender and puree until smooth; add in reserved liquid. Pour over the meat, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook 3 to 4 hours, until very thick and well-browned. Serve hot over cornbread (or hot dogs, or split baked potatoes, or split
biscuits).
For the cornbread:
2 cups stoneground cornmeal
1 1/3 tbsp baking powder
2 fresh eggs
½ tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
¼ cup melted butter, or oil (NOT OLIVE)
9’’ cast-iron skillet, buttered
Preheat oven to 400 F. Butter skillet and heat in oven. Mix remaining ingredients in large bowl to make a smooth batter. Remove skillet and pour in batter; return to oven and bake 25 minutes or until brown and a toothpick comes back clean from the center.
Serve hot with butter.
For the beans:
(Gringo version)
1 lb beans
1 fist-size onion, finely diced
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 Hatch chile pepper, stemmed, seeded & blistered over an open flame
4 oz diced bacon
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cayenne
½ tsp coarse ground black pepper
2 tbsp tomato paste
14 oz can fire-roasted tomatoes, undrained
Water
Soak a pound of your choice of pintos or black beans or kidney beans overnight. Drain and rinse well.
In a heavy pot, cook bacon until crisp. Remove, reserving grease in pan. Add onion and garlic and cook until clear and soft; wipe char off pepper and chop into skillet. Add beans; pour over tomatoes, plus water to cover to depth of one inch. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cook until beans are tender. Garnish with chopped onion, cilantro, jalapeno.
If you want to make the beans borracho, replace the water with beer. If you want to make them spicier, add additional Hatch chiles or some serranos, similarly prepared.
This will make a filling dinner for eight working cowhands, or a dozen regular people.
The chili and beans will improve by being set up overnight and reheated. The cornbread won’t.
The chili will freeze well, and so will the beans. The cornbread will not.