'Bowl of Chilli'

Geiger

First of all, I know nothing about chilli. I'm not even sure what the ingredients are for a standard bowl of the stuff. It's just that I really want to try some kind of spicy soup and I've seen these bowls of chilli on tv before. So if anyone knows of a good recipe or any other info about it I'd really appreciate the info.

Misticles

chineses have hot soups if thats any help or here... http://www.mcld.co.uk/recipes/chilli-soup.htm

Geiger

Hmm, that looks good. You can actually get that kind of thing in a regular chinese takeaway? Heh, how did I miss that on the menu...

CJhaughey

A bowl of Chilli is usually a tomato based stew with beans and mince meat as well.
Off the top of my head, here goes.
1 Onion Diced
500g mince , good quality not too greasy.
2 small peppers diced one green one red.
1 454g tin kidney beans.
1 tin chopped tomato
2 Tbsp Tomato puree
2 Tbsp oil
1 clove of garlic minced
Fresh Chillis finely chopped to taste.
1 tsp Smoked chilli powder (Pimenton)

In a heavy bottomed frypan
Saute onions and peppers until soft , remove
Brown mince in small lots over high heat avoiding stewing effect.
place browned mince on top of the onion and pepper mix.
turn down heat and fry the garlic and fresh chilli lightly, don't brown the garlic or it will taste bad.
add the chopped tomato and deglaze the pan with this,
add the beans and rest of ingredients to a pot preferably heavy bottomed and stir until all combined.
cook gently on a low heat for 15-20mins
serve in a bowl with some corn chips
The consistency can be modified by adding more juice from the tomato
This will make a pretty spicy chilli depending on what type of fresh chilli you use and how much you use.
A word of warning Habanero chillis can be too hot for some.

Geiger

Cool, thanks a lot for the recipe, CJhaughey. Just wondering, aprox how many chillis should be chopped to taste?

The Sweeper

First of all, choose a type of chili. The three most common available in the supermarket are fresh jalapeno, fresh birds eye and fresh habanero.

The Jalapeno (pronounced halapenio) chilis usually have a "one chili" or "two chili" stamp on the pack indicating their heat. They're normally the mildest available at the supermarket.

When you get them home, slice the very tip off one and taste the tiny piece you've just cut. You should get an indication of the heat of the pepper. I'd use one full Jalapeno, WITHOUT SEEDS, chopped finely, for a mild to medium chili. One with seeds for something a little hotter. Again, tasting is the only way to decide how hot it is.

Imagine eating an orange - until you taste it, you've no idea if it's going to be really sweet, really sour, or a mix of the two. Same with chilis. Don't assume they're hot, taste them first.

The little birds-eye chilis (tiny red pointy chilis) are hotter again. I wouldn't normally bother taking the seeds out of these, because it's so fiddly, I'd just chop them and put them in my chili.

Habaneros are hotter again, they're sort of a squashed pumpkin shape, like a chinese lantern.

I'm growing my own thai dragon chilis and habaneros at the moment, and drying them into ristras (pepper strings) - they're pretty cool.

As always with chilis, just remember - taste first, leaving seeds in = more heat, and always, ALWAYS WASH YOUR HANDS!!! Don't touch any membranous part of you if you've been chopping chilis or you will know all about it!

Geiger

Heh, really want to try some of these ideas now. Hoping to taste some next week. Might go to a chinese and see if they have any on offer and what the price is like. Thanks for the info MJD

dalk

Chilis should be hot in my opinion... or at least have a good chili flavour...

A lot of peoples chilis end up like some sort of crap bolognese... no chili flavour and no heat. Whats that all about?

The Sweeper

I think cumin is an important ingredient in a good chili. That, and I use two squares of Green & Blacks dark chocolate to smooth out the acidity of the tomatoes and generally make the whole thing smooth.

Tomato and chocolate together is not an uncommon mix in Mexican food, and if you haven't tried it yet then you should... a 'mole' is a chocolate and tomato sauce (with a lot of other interesting things in it... I make it with tomatoes, onions, chocolate, almonds, raisins and spices - cook it up then blend it smooth and it's fantastic).

Blub2k4

Can you give us a bit more info on that "mole" oh great bourbon (tenessee sour mash to be exact) drinking one?
cheers.

CJhaughey

You are right MJD i forgot the cumin!

The Sweeper

Mole Poblano is a chocolate and chili sauce. Sounds odd, tastes great. Chicken with a mole poblano sauce is excellent served with spicy vegetable rice. It takes about 20 minutes to chop everything required, and a little over an hour to cook. I'd recommend making this as a dinner dish for about four people with the ingredients below, takes a bit of time so do it on a weekend. You will need either a hand blender, or a food processer, because the sauce in this dish HAS to be blended!

Right, there are umpteen shortcuts you can use while making this, for instance substituting chicken breast fillets if you're not brave enough to buy a whole chicken and section it, but I'm going to write this up the way I'd do it and you can work back from there. Also, you can just serve this with plain boiled rice and it's good.


CHICKEN MOLE POBLANO

• one whole chicken, cut into pieces and skinned
• 3 tblsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped fine
• 3 fat garlic cloves, chopped fine
• Chili to taste - be this two or three tiny birdseye chilis to blow your head off, or one jalapeno with seeds out, chopped fine. I tend to like one mid-tempered jalapeno, seeds out, and one firey birdseye chili, seeds in.
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted (one tbsp for the sauce, one for sprinkling over the top of the finished dish)
• 1 tablespoon chopped almonds (I like to use the toasted and pre-chopped packs from the cake-making aisle of the supermarket)
• 1 1/2-inch cinnamon stick
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 8 whole cloves
• 3 fat vine ripened tomatoes, skinned and chopped (with seeds and juice)
• 2 tablespoons raisins (plumper and juicier the better, don't use some wizened little rabbit-turds that've been at the back of the cupboard for two years)
• 3/4 of a pint of chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter
• one quarter of a large bar of green & blacks dark chocolate, or alternatively 25g of any good-quality dark chocolate with a high cocoa content
• salt n pepper to garnish
  
  SPICY RICE
• a shake of olive oil
• 250g of long grain rice (to serve four people)
• 4 spring onions, chopped fine
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine/crushed
• a green pepper, deseeded and chopped fine
• a handful of sweetcorn kernels (I prefer to use frozen than tinned)
• a fresh mild green chili (try a jalapeno) chopped with seeds out
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 pint chicken stock
• a large handful of chopped fresh coriander
  

Friday Night

Take your whole chicken and section it. You want to come out with two drumsticks, two thighs, and four breast pieces, skinned but still on the bone, for tommorow's dinner. Cover these pieces and put them back into the fridge. Throw the remainder of the chicken, e.g. the skin, back, shin pieces from the end of the drumsticks, and the wings, into a big pot, top up with clean, fresh cold water (about 3 pints if it'll fit), drop in a quartered onion, a quartered carrot, a quartered stick of celery, ten whole black peppercorns and a bay leaf, and make stock. You'll use this stock tomorrow making both the sauce and the rice. Don't put herbs like parsley and thyme into the stock. Don't salt it either. Obviously you can be a peasant and use a stock cube instead of going to this trouble, but I buy free range organic chickens and there's no way I'd waste even a little bit (not for that money! :eek:)

Saturday

THE SAUCE

Chop your onion, garlic and chili. Use a dry frying pan and a medium to high heat and toast your seasme seeds, keeping a close eye or they'll burn. Set the toasted seeds to one side. Pour boiling water over your three vine tomatoes, then run cold water over them. Peel the skins off (they should split off easily), then chop them and keep flesh and seeds to one side.

Get a large, reasonably deep, heavy-bottomed pan to make the sauce. Heat your 3 tbsps of olive oil on a medium to high heat. Add the chicken pieces and seal and lightly brown them on all sides. Then remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and leave them to one side.

Add the chopped onion, garlic and chili to the pan and soften them for about five minutes. Now add one tbsp of the toasted sesame seeds, the almonds, your whole spices and your ground spices, and cook for a further five minutes. Mind your heat - nothing should be browning or burning, it should just be sweating off nicely. Now stir in your chopped tomatoes, your raisins and your 3/4 pint chicken stock.

NB: If this is last night's stock, it'll be cold, so add it slowly, stirring all the while, so you don't take all of the heat out of your pan.

When the sauce starts to simmer, stir in your peanut butter and your chocolate. They should melt into it. Season well with black pepper and sea salt. Now let the sauce simmer for another five minutes.

At this point you need to blend the sauce smooth. You may want to remove the cinnamon stick now, because it may not blend down smoothly. I make this in a deep enough pan that I can take the pan off the heat and use a hand blender directly in the pan to blend the sauce. You may need to - carefully - pour it into a food processor in batches and blend it. You want the sauce to be really smooth, but you don't want to scald the bejesus out of yourself, spattering sauce up the walls, or have it exploding out of your food processor.

Once your sauce is smooth, return it to the heat.

(At this point I tend to open my first bottle of cold beer. If you want to taste the sauce for seasoning now, you can. You're about to put half-raw chicken back into it, so better taste it now than in five minutes.)

When the sauce begins to simmer, add the chicken that you'd left to one side. Bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat right down to the lowest setting, cover and simmer for up to one hour, or until the chicken is very tender. Add more liquid if you need to (water, rather than more stock).

THE RICE

Just after you've put the lid on your chicken mole poblano, start cleaning up the almighty mess you've just made. You want to start over with your spicy rice, so clean down chopping boards and wash up the blender. This will take about 20 minutes of your time.

The next 20 minutes should be spent chopping your spring onions, garlic, green pepper, chilli and coriander. Give your chicken mole sauce a quick glance, to make sure nothing's drying out. Now put another large saucepan onto the heat. Put your olive oil in the pan, heat it, add the spring onions and garlic and soften. Then add the peppers, chili and sweetcorn and cook for 5 minutes.

Now add your cumin, and then your uncooked long grain rice and stir to coat every grain. Stir in a pint of chicken stock, again slowly if it's last night's cold stock, bring to boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes (turn the heat down!) or until the stock has been absorbed and the rice is tender.

While you're waiting sort out your serving bowls, make sure your remaining tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds is to hand and grate some dark chocolate for serving. Remove the rice from the heat and fluff it up with a fork. Stir through the remaining chopped coriander and season to taste with salt. Leave the rice to stand, covered for another five minutes while you finish with the chicken mole poblano.

Move your chicken mole into a serving dish. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and some grated chocolate. You could even slice some more raw chili and use it for garnish. Move the rice into a serving dish. Bring the mole and the rice to the table in serving dishes with large spoons so people can help themselves.

Open more cold beer.

Eat.

pickarooney

Jazis, I have to give that a lash. It's Friday night, and I've a virgin chicken in the fridge, and a fair few bottles of Leffe in me, so off we go.
No idea what green and black's chocolate is, but I'm sure something rich and Belgian (perhaps Jean-Claude van Damme?) will suffice.

pickarooney

That turned out delicious Cheers MAJD.

Wex1

Am starving now, thanks.......

PS. Was fed chili when 2 wks overdue with 3rd child - old story that it might help start labour - it did and he loves the stuff, the hotter the better

NoDayBut2Day

Mmmm.. we're having chili tonight. I love it served over white rice with cheese on top.

*goes to eat some now*

Geiger

Heh, I've been so busy I forgot all about this thread. Practically drooling after reading all the recipies etc. Still haven't got to try it There's a jar of Homepride mild Chile sauce in the cupboard. Has anyone tried it before?