Why I Like Football

It’s not because I’m actually a huge fan of a sport that is to blame for over 300,000 concussions each year (in fact, I have a prediction that 25 years from now, we will watch replays of football games with the same level of horror that is exhibited when viewing reenactments of gladiator combat)… or because I think it’s quaint that 90% of all Maryland residents wear purple the day before, the day of, and the day after a Ravens game (I find this odd)… it’s because the arrival of a big game occasionally inspires me to try a new chili recipe – and a football game gathering typically provides a few willing people to test it out.

Today was a good day for this.  The Ravens were playing some type of pre-playoff or playoff game (which they won) and we were heading over to our friends house for the afternoon… the makings of a great day for trying a new chili recipe.

The recipe for today’s chili came from the Rodale Whole Foods cookbook – a fantastic book given to me by my sister-in-law.  It’s a great cookbook with a wide range of recipes – all of which use purely natural ingredients. I have already marked at least 20 recipes I want to try from this book – it’s very likely there will be several recipes posted from that book in the coming months.

I have been looking for a good Chicken Chili recipe for a while… the last one I attempted received decent reviews from my local critics, but I thought it was entirely too sweet to be considered worthy of the title “chili”.  I’m much happier with this new one.

It’s a relatively straightforward recipe, though certainly more effort than your basic cook meat & onions/add beans/toss in seasoning packet approach.

I cooked it in two phases – partially cooking the chicken first (my phase one) and then coming back around to cook the vegetables/add all the rest of the ingredients as my phase two.  I guess you could say there was a phase three as well – being when Dan came home and cleaned up the rather large mess that I made in the kitchen.  🙂

The end result of the effort is a chicken chili that resembles more of a hearty stew than a traditional saucy chili… it would be easy enough to thicken the base if you wanted to… but I liked it as it was.  Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a try.

New “New Year Soup”

I get a lot of recipes from Heidi Swanson’s site, www.101cookbooks.com.  It’s my primary go-to site for new recipes… particularly when I want to experiment with a new ingredient that I haven’t cooked with before.   Most of her recipes are pretty basic, with ingredients that are relatively easy to find provided you find yourself at Whole Foods every now and then.

A couple of my favorites…

• Brown butter balsamic sauce (for pasta)
• Wheat Berry Salad (from her book, Super Natural Cooking)
• Caramelized Onion Dip (finally – an onion dip that omits the Lipton soup packet!)

Earlier this week, she posted a recipe for a New Year’s Noodle Soup that looked fantastic.   I guess it’s technically not her recipe (she adapted it from a recipe in  Saraban, by Greg & Lucy Malouf)… but I’ll give her credit for it since she’s the one who brought it to my attention.   I attempted to recreate this tonight while also cleaning out my refrigerator and avoiding a trip to the grocery store – what I ended up with was a pretty good soup that was loosely based on this recipe that I definitely want to make again.

Here’s the recipe.

(Mom – this one’s not for you… you’ll see why when you check out the ingredients.)

At the Crossroads of Yum and Healthy

I love this recipe.  My friend Kim brought this over one night and it was love at first sight.  In our house, it’s know both as “Ms. Kim’s Dip” and “Cowboy Caviar“.

… At the crossroads of yum and healthy…. that pretty much sums up my latest thinking on cooking – it’s about finding that recipe (or ideally, those few hundred recipes) which are so good that you actually want to eat them just because you really like them; the fact that it’s good for you is really just an added bonus.   This recipe is a perfect example of what I’m after here.

I made a batch of this Cowboy Caviar yesterday – well, I mostly made it yesterday, I finished it up today.  It’s sort of a bean based salsa with guacamole ingredients tossed in… flavored primarily with cumin and cilantro.  It’s usually served as an appetizer alongside tortilla chips, but I think it easily stands alone as a side dish for Mexican night – and I recall it making a great embellishment on top of turkey burgers too.

In addition to meeting the “yum + healthy” requirement… it’s also one of those recipes that is super forgiving.  It’s very accepting of adding a few new things, leaving out whatever you don’t have around… I think you would have to try really hard to screw it up.  Add to this the fact that it’s also a great “make ahead” dish, and really, what more could you ask for in a recipe?