d'oh!mestic

My mother is from the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where they take perfectly good hot dogs, smother them in delicious chili and then top that with coleslaw. It is some of the best eating to be had, period.

I know, I know, you’re stumbling over the “topped with coleslaw.” To the uninitiated, it’s like slathering chocolate cake with ketchup — stomach-churningly gross. But life is an adventure, nobody likes a picky eater and my mother always taught me to respect the regional cuisine, so put some damn coleslaw on your chili dogs already.

Or not, because this post really isn’t about having a come-to-Jesus moment with you over the slaw.

This post is about the most fantastic hot dog chili, which is especially timely, given tomorrow’s high holy holiday of Super Bowl Sunday.

All week I had planned on a Friday night where I would come home, open a cold Guinness and make up a mess of chili dogs before settling down on the couch to watch the new X-Files movie.

There were some problems, of course, like where I managed to leave the grocery store without hot dogs or buns, and, um, barbecue sauce for the chili.

And yeah, I remembered that last item just a few minutes before Adam returned from the emergency store run for the hot dogs and buns.

It was a stressful week.

But I am resourceful, sort of, and I have the Gourmet Big Yellow Book of Answers, so I consulted the Big Yellow Book of Answers and came up with their recipe for barbecue sauce and then realized that hell, a little modification would make a fine, straight up chili, which I present to you now.

3 dried red chiles
1 red onion diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (drained)
1 2″ length of ginger, minced
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbs dried mustard
2 tps cumin
Olive oil
1 pound ground beef
Salt and pepper to taste

In a cast iron skillet, toast the red chiles, turning them when the get hot and the skin color has darkened somewhat. (I did it more off the smell — when it starts smelling like autumn in Albuquerque, turn those suckers). Once toasted, place the chiles in a bowl and cover with hot water just off the boil and allow to soak for five minutes.

In a large pot, throw in the diced tomatoes and about two tablespoons of olive oil and a couple of pinches of salt and let simmer on medium heat.

Meanwhile, slice up the onions and throw into the cast iron skillet with another couple of tablespoons of olive oil and cook until the onion is soft and nearly translucent. Add in the garlic and the ginger and cook on medium low for another couple of minutes, and then add to the pot with the tomatoes.

Dice up the chiles and add them to the tomato mixture.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients, give a good stir and allow to simmer.

Going back to the cast iron skillet, throw in the ground beef and brown, seasoning with garlic powder, onion powder and red chile powder. Once the beef is browned through, add to the tomato mixture and allow to simmer on low heat. At this point, taste the chili. If it doesn’t have quite enough heat, throw in a little red pepper, just to kick up the capsaicin content to reasonable levels.

Add in the hot dogs, pushing them to the bottom of the pot and covering with chili. Allow to cook for five to seven minutes longer. Serve with mustard and coleslaw.

Growing up, chicken pie was a regular Sunday night dinner. It was one of my very favorites, but rather labor-intensive, which is probably why Mum saved it for the weekends and special occasions like my birthday or the fall of communism.

Later, when I was living on my own, I asked her for the recipe, but because it involved canned mushrooms (and for some reason, I had it in my head that canned mushrooms was where Botox was formed) and began with the string of words, “first, make a roux,” I never attempted it.

But the Capt’n, even with his gouty toe, is a big fan of chicken pie and had been asking for it, and his pleas had doubled after an episode of Nigella Express which featured a chicken pot pie, so I figured, what the fuck.

Chicken Pie

Simple puff pastry recipe from the yellow book
1 lb chicken breasts
1 thing of mushrooms
1/2 pound pearl onions
Chicken stock
Thyme
Rosemary
Flour
Butter

First, make a roux. Seriously. I took two pats of butter and two tablespoons of flour and did the thing in the pan. Once it was all roux-like, I added in cut up pieces of chicken and set it to brown, giving it a tablespoon of olive oil, just to mix it up.

In a separate pan, I cooked the onions and mushrooms (and some garlic) in olive oil, adding fresh rosemary and thyme and letting everything cook down some. When the onions were giving up their juices and the mushrooms had whithered, I added in about two cups of chicken stock and let it simmer away.

Once the chicken was cooked through, I added it to the onions and mushrooms, gave it a couple of stirs, and then tossed the whole thing into a casserole pan and draped with the puff pastry dough. The pie was then shoved into a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes. It came out nice and golden, though I think it could have stayed inside for another 3 to 5 minutes, and really, it could have stood for some green chile, but over all, mmm.

No, kitty. That is my pot pie.

The idea that Thanksgiving is on Thursday still hasn’t taken hold, not even after spending a weekend fighting for the last bag of Las Cruces pecans, not after watching a chorus line of Butterballs go down grocery conveyor belts, not even after having the “what should I bring” with conversation with my mother. It was 75 degrees today. Really, it’s just not decent to be thinking about roasting a turkey when it’s still that gorgeous outside.

Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and I have been charged with making pies.

I can make a mean pumpkin pie, we all know that. But pecan pie can be a different story. I’ve made a few in my day; some have turned out, some have turned into boiled monstrosities. I decided to get a practice pie in before I have to make one for real. The Capt’n has no problem with this; it means he gets more pie. [More pie! -- Teh C. ]

So I made a pecan pie.

And now we know why I always put a cookie pan under the pecan pies.

So, note for Wednesday night, don’t fill it quite so much.

But hey, that wasn’t the only project in the kitchen. There’s a potluck scheduled for Tuesday, and even though I was late to the sign-up sheet, nobody had jotted down a pie-type dessert. So, I’m bringing pecan pie bars.

The recipe’s out of the yellow book, but instead of using honey, I substituted light corn syrup to make it conform to my notion of what pecan pie should taste like.

And I also have my very first attempt at puff pastry setting up in the fridge for tonight’s dinner (chicken pie!), but whether or not it will actually puff remains to be seen.

So, somewhere between the really good coffee, the delicious homemade bagels and the Stephen Colbert column, the Capt’n turned to me and said, “Wow. After the dog-and-pony show for the bread, cupcakes are going to seem like a snap, aren’t they?”

I think I rolled my eyes at him and mumbled something about “done baking for the weekend.”

And then the coffee kicked in.

(Sidebar: “…and then the coffee kicked in” is totally going to be the title of my autobiography and/or memoir.)

I ended up making devil’s food cuppycakes with cream cheese frosting, both from the yellow book. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sucker, but I was feeling bad for the yellow book by the end of the weekend. It just sat there on the shelf while the new, sexier bread book got to be out on the counter, all showy and used and covered in flour.

Poor yellow book.

So cuppy cakes. They turned out kind of ugly. Fortunately, we’re silly with the Ugly Dolls.

The cakes themselves were nice and moist, though not as sweet as the Capt’n likes them. “Call me savage, call me an ugly American,” he says (on a daily basis). “But I like a sweet cupcake.”

Actually, they got sweeter as they cooled. Really, I think the Capt’n needs to stop going “nomnomnomHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTcanttasteanythingszors!” the minute a treat comes out of the oven.

Yeah. It’s all fun and games until somebody drops one.

Hurray, cupcakes!

Okay, aside from Kate Hepburn’s crap brownies, the yellow book can do no wrong. Here, for example, is my first run at Irish Soda Bread, in honor of the Capt’n's tribute month.

Yeah, tribute month. For as long as I’ve known him, the Capt’n has demanded tribute — very similar to a Roman Emperor demanding a triumph — in honor of his birthday. I am more than happy to acquiesce; after all, if he hadn’t been born, where would I be? I’ll tell you where I’d be. I’d be in a concrete box somewhere in the scary part of town, alone and unloved, rounder than I was tall, because I’d be subsisting on a diet of Bisquick and mercury-laced tap water, and I wouldn’t think I’d deserve any better.

If the Capt’n wants bread because he was born, by golly, I’m going to make some for him.

So, getting back to the bread. This was a stupid easy recipe. Most bread is, but this was especially quick and painless — and I do mean that. A bum knee has me hobbling around on crutches, and this was my first big kitchen project in more than a week. In terms of time from mise en place to into the oven, it took from the opening strains of “Where the Streets Have No Name” to the end of “With or Without You,” because why measure time in with numbers when I have a perfectly awesome iPod and The Joshua Tree?

(I also have appalling taste in music for being an aspirational hipster, but that’s another post.)

The bread’s cooling now. The yellow book demands at least two hours, but knowing the Capt’n, the first loaf will be gone within the next twenty minutes.

Happy birthday, my fine fellow.

The Capt’n, like so many fearless leaders before him, has been struck by that most medieval of aliments — gout.

Or “teh gout” as we call it around these parts. Because adding “teh” just underscores how ridiculous that particular diagnosis is in the early 21st century. I mean, honestly, with a disease like teh gout, we should just pack up and move to the Tudor court. Turkey leg, anyone?

Anyway, Dr. Google informs us that a diet rich in dark red or blue-skinned berries will help ease symptoms, which means I had the perfect excuse to try out the yellow book’s brand of blueberry muffins.

The Capt’n likes to inform me that, because he’s an American-American, he enjoys a sweet muffin. Call him crazy, call him uncultured, but he is not all about a savory breakfast bread. Maybe he’s belying his cultural ignorance, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and he’s drawing it in the vicinity of sweet cakes.

So I knocked the sugar content up by a quarter cup.

I did not make the adjustment for the high altitude — we’re talkin 5,500 feet above sea level, people! Denver, a measly 5,280 feet can suck it — and I used the Gigato-jumbo muffin tin someone gave me when I got married, which produced six slightly deflated muffins.

Next time? Smaller cups, a little baking powder for loft, and maybe two full eggs instead of one egg and one yolk.

Not that the Capt’n minded, mind you. Thirty seconds after I extracted the first muffin from the tin, half of it was stuffed in his mouth, and he proceeded to run around the kitchen, making a “mwaaaaaaat” noise, which signifies approval and also, hot.

I wish I’d had the camera ready for that.

This afternoon, after more than a week, the Capt’n fired up the new engine in his car and then proceeded to drive it around the neighborhood without having to ring me for help (or at least a tow) once.

I thought I’d bake to celebrate. Why not? The boy needed brownies, and the Yellow Book suggested Katherine Hepburn’s recipe. “oh, this is a dream,” the yellow book soothed. “It’s Katherine Hepburn. C’mon. ‘Philadelphia Story?’ You fucking love ‘Philadelphia Story.’ ”

The yellow book swears like a sailor.

So I made Katherine Hepburn’s fan-fuckin’-tabulous brownies, and you know what? She’s been dead for four years, we can stop kissing her culinary ass. Those brownies were gawdawful. Seriously. The batch I made could have doubled as fragrant poker chips and they had about the same taste as poker chips. Actually, strike that. Molded plastic tastes better.

I am terribly disappointed, if you couldn’t tell. This is the first time the yellow book has steered me wrong, and I can’t believe it’d fuck up something so badly as brownies. Who fucks up brownies? I mean, honestly. Kate Hepburn might have been a master of screwball comedy, but her brownies screwed over my evening.

Blegh.