The Kitschies: Inky Chili Sunday
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Today marks the first judging meeting for The Kitschies - Ed Warren, Lauren O'Farrell and Gary Northfield are all trekking to our Secret Headquarters to leer at 2012's cover art.
Neither Anne nor I are judges this year, so our role is solely to "faciliate their judgementalisms".
Obviously, this includes chili.
Today's batch:
- Lean beef mince
- Lean pork mince
- Onions
- A couple thingers of tomato goo
- Red kidney beans
- Bell peppers (red and orange, if it matters)
Various stuffs and accoutrement, including (but not limited to):
- Coffee
- The Kraken Rum (used to carmelise the onions - amazing)
- Beef stock
- Chili powder (from California! a present put to good use...)
- Chipotle powder (surprisingly, lip-burning hawt)
- Crushed chilis of unknown origin (they're helpfully labelled "Indian" and they make the chipotle look tame)
- Worcestershire sauce
- Brown sugar
- Olive oil
- Oregano
- Celery salt
- A fistful of some sort of mystery rub
- BBC Radio 3 ('cause when we make chili, we make it while rocking out to Tudor dance music) (Henry VIII FTW!)
No idea what this is going to taste like. If there are any lessons we've learned from chili alchemy (chilomancy?), it is:
- Mixing meats is all nice in theory, but the results generally default to bolognese, so I have to over compensate with everything else.
- Pork makes a really light chili, and since that lovely dark red color is all important, I generally cheat it with coffee and Worcestershire sauce.
- Seriously - carmelising onions in The Kraken Rum? Amazing. It is tough to waste the rum, but this isn't actually a waste - it makes the best squishy, sweet, tobaccoey onions ever. And the kitchen smells like brown sugar.
Meanwhile, Anne's multi-tasking; baking cornbread and whipping up goodie bags for the judges. The Man Booker ain't got nothing on us.
Have a spicy and tentacular Sunday!