2010 Cooking Club Week 24: Chilli!

nice1franko wrote: »

Looking forward to trying this. I'll have to wait til I come across some of the ingredients though.

I've a few questions:
1) About how much flour do you need - couple of spoon fulls?

Start with a tablespoon full, stir in, let cook for a few minutes (the flour has to hydrate) and see if it's thickened enough. If it has, stop, if not, add a level teaspoon more and repeat. You want to add it slowly because it's a lot easier to thicken the gravy than to thin it. An exact answer is hard here, because it depends on how much liquid is in the pot after cooking, and that depends on the ingredients used, for example, what kind of beans you used (or if you used them), how much water was in the tomato paste, how dry you cooked the mince, and so on.

2) How much garlic? Looks like 3 or 4 cloves?

There were about six medium-sized cloves smashed and minced in mine.
But I like garlic

3) If I can't get dried chillis I was going to just use 2 or 3 normal chilis with the seeds in. Does that sound ok?

I'd leave the seeds out, especially if you've not had chilli before. And yes, it sounds fine. The dried chillis tend to add more flavour than heat, which is why I keep them about, but if you can't get dried, fresh will still give you flavour as well.

4) How much bacon? Looks about 200g?

A little bit more I think - it's basicly a little over an inch of back bacon cut down to small cubes, with some of the fat trimmed away (but not all!).

I've never found anything that quite substitutes for the chipotles I'm afraid
Marks and Sparks are doing a smoked chipotle salsa at the moment which has a similar flavour, but I don't know if it'd survive being used as a glaze when browning meat like that (and some joker put sweetcorn in it).

As to the nachos, I'm unfussy. One bowl with chips, one with guacamole (homemade, with lots of tomatoes and some jalapenos thrown in as well). Done.

Mr Magnolia wrote: »

Sparks, thanks a million, win win.

Cheers Magnolia.
Yes, I can indeed cook a dream meal in a kitchen I built with my own hands. Screw you Old Spice

It didn't need the rice.

Yup, but where it's really good as well is if you do a mission-style burrito with it.
Take one large flour tortilla, spread a bit of sour cream over the top two thirds of the surface, sprinkle over some rice, spoon on some of the chilli and some of Marks'n'Sparks chipotle salsa (ignoring the sweetcorn some idiot put in it) and wrap it up. Very filling, very delicious.

The nacho's were great with it btw.

And you got the right chips too - much more structurally sound than the dorito standard

The batteries on both cameras were dead so had to use the camera phone.

Looks great!

nice1franko wrote: »

Did this last night. I'm no chilli connoisseur but it's the best I ever had. Makes what I thought was Chilli seem like baby food or somethin.

Aw, shucks

Anyway, the chipotle chilis in adobo sauce are something else alright - can see why you advise not to skip it. Are there any other recipes you use it in?

Damn near every tex-mex kind of meal I cook.

For example, cut three or four chicken breasts into largish chunks (the main breast should give five or six, the little fillet another one or two bits). In a large mixing bowl mix a tablespoon of the adobo sauce, the juice of one lime (reserve the halves), a teaspoon each of salt and paprika, a half-teaspoon of chilli powder and cumin seeds, a teaspoon or so of tomato puree and about two tablespoons of olive oil (you could use peanut if you have it as well). Whisk all that to a smooth paste and if doesn't have the consistency of a thick tomato soup, add more oil until it does. Then chop the remains of the lime into four quarters, chuck them into the marinade and add the chicken. Toss to coat, cover over and marinade in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably for a few more. Never left it overnight, but it ought to be okay.

Then fry it off in the skillet until it's cooked through (should be ~10-15 minutes, don't use high heat, you want to cook, not sear), and pour off the excess liquid in the skillet. Set the chicken aside on a cutting board to cool for a few minutes, and in the skillet, cook some julienne'd onions and green peppers at high heat until soft; put them in a bowl. Cook a cup of basmati rice; add to another serving bowl. Cook some pinto beans, either from dry (best results) or reheated from a can (meh, it's all good), and put them in yet another serving bowl. Now go back to the chicken, and chop it down from the large chunks to much smaller chunks so it almost looks shredded. You want the bits to be the same size as the bits of onion you get if you roughly chop an onion. Put the result in a serving bowl and put on the table with some sour cream, some salsa and flour tortillas, and you have proper chipotle&lime marinaded chicken mission-style burritos, served family style.
(To assemble, it's a schmear of sour cream on the tortilla, a layer of rice, a scattering of beans, a line of shredded chicken topped by a line of salsa, all rolled up and scoffed).

Generally you're looking at a few hours Ponster. You add the flour right at the very end, same as with the pressure cooker, but the cooking time is going to be anywhere from four to six hours (or even longer) depending on the meat itself. When the meat chunks are falling apart is when it's done, basicly.

And the beer was the heaviest I could find to hand that wasn't stout. You just want something that's middle-of-the-road. Budweiser and other lagers are too light; stouts get really bitter when you cook them. And I wouldn't waste tsing tao and it's too light anyway So whatever you have that fits that bill will do. (Actually, you can use lagers and nothing goes too wrong, you just get better flavour with beer - so if the choice is lager or stout, use the lager and don't worry about it).

All lager is beer, but when I said beer, I was shorthanding for "a middle-of-the-road, not-lager, not-stout beer"

And yes, ale would be a better word to use