Texas RED Chili in a Crock Pot

Texas red. Real Texas red chili does not have beans in it. None. You can put beans on the side. You can add some beans later and call it a topping.  You can't cook it with the beans. You'll get the Dreaded Texas Ticket. I hear they issue them to any person that beaks a major Texas rule and it does not matter where you live. It is even enforced outside the United States. You might not get the ticket today. You might not get it tomorrow. But you will. And no one will be there to console you when you cry.

In order to make this dish you need a few things - in no particular order.

Dried chilies - multiple kinds. Be festive. Make sure they are flexible (mostly) and are not moldy.
masa harina
oregano
cumin
a cinnamon stick
tomato paste
chile in adobo sauce
bouillon paste
cojita cheese
red wine (or beer if you are more authentic)
lemon juice
lime juice
brown sugar
some random condensed syrup made from balsamic you got from Grocery Outlet
butter
beef chunks
garlic
onion
bay leaves
green bell pepper
fresh black pepper
a corner of an old chocolate bar that may or may not have rice bits in it



But really, Texas red starts out in the grocery store. Some grocery stores will carry all the ingredients. But others will carry only a few leaving you to scratch your head wondering if you should substitute crumbled tortilla chips in for the Masa Harina or will just plain corn meal work? Should I use wheat flour?

The Masa Harina is for the thickener. Not every store will have it. Some videos on youtube swear by corn chips as an adequate substitute. Others listed tapioca balls (?). A few listed flour if you can't find anything else. One listed arrow root.

SMDH

I'm going to go with a hard no on the tapioca and the arrow root. With my personal hard no, I include corn starch and gumbo filé powder. Just .... no. I don't put Masa in my gumbo. Likewise I won't put filé in my chile.  I know they rhyme. That's not an excuse to mix them up.

It is important to check out the chiles. If you don't know which chiles to buy then buy all the chiles. I bought all the chilis. One time when I bought all the chilis there was just one available which was an amazing huge flat black flexible chili that smelled like a sultry raisin. I highly recommend that one. But the others are all good, too. You can mix them together.

The other place that Texas red starts is in the kitchen. I'm using a slow cooker because I am lazy.

You have to take all the dried chili peppers and then roast them gently until there is a smooth toasty smell of awesome. You don't want anything to burn.

But who am I kidding? Of course chili cooking starts when you open the wine!
You need enough wine set aside to put some in the chili recipe unless you plan to add beer. Which, technically, is more Texas. But actually I think red wine cooks down with the raisiny flavors of the dried chili peppers better (shit, you are all going to think I am potentially sophisticated here).

Really, it all leads down to why you need to throw in the corner of an old chocolate bar at the end.

But, you have to cut those chilis open and scrape out the seeds inside. You can wear gloves for that intimate doctor experience and then you can make your own ASMR videos by tapping the chili peppers with the gloves while rattling the seeds next to powerful microphones and then making wiggly patterns with your fingers into the camera. If making an ASMR video while putting together this chili, definitely wear those periwinkle non latex gloves for the best sounds of finger wiggling. Otherwise any latex glove will do. But these chilis are not that potent. It is not necessary to wear gloves unless you plan to put your fingers anywhere near your eye ducts at all for the rest of the evening.





For those of you who *don't* know what ASMR videos are, they are a kind of creepy game adults have discovered is a substitute for that magical play time ritual little girls (and some boys or non gender binary kids) do when they sneak away to a quiet corner to draw pictures on each other's backs  with their fingers and the one being drawn on guesses what it is. But the real reason for the game, which is never discussed,  is so they can get that tingly feeling in their head when the picture is being drawn. This is why everyone fights for more time being the person that is being drawn on and serious fights break out about the fairness of who gets how much time being drawn upon and labor unions formed to protect the working rights of those doing the drawing. But the darker side of the childhood girl games is the Rose Garden, where the ASMR tingly feeling morphs into mini top and bottom games of who can tolerate something that starts out gentle and then becomes this horrific torture chain indoor to make neat rows of blood red blotches up and down the receiver's arm. I just tried to show this to my husband who had never heard of it and he couldn't handle it. I suspect most secret girl games are too much for the likes of those who lean towards softer arts, like football.

Anyway ASMR has devolved these little childhood games into remote videos you can watch on youtube of young women wearing a lot of make-up playing doctor (and common, let's face it...mother) on youtube, which is both fascinating and also a little bit sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeG5iTFw_1U

https://youtu.be/3s0I9eClG7Y

https://youtu.be/tmhmKEhnIpA

So,  now that your chili peppers have been unstemmed and deseeded, take all those soft and leathery skins and throw them in a bowl of water which will randomly be sitting next to you. We will assume it is clean water set aside for that purpose. You are going to soak those babies until the fruit side is all soft and squishy again and the skin side is flexible with just a little give. Like the way you hope your vagina will be when you are 80.











Okay, I actually forgot to roast them. This is a super important step. I admit that I failed here.

Roasting the chilis is a super satisfying experience and one that I put on my list of self soothing tools  that I have in my personal self care toolkit along with stepping on a photo of Trump's face out in the yard with muddy horse poop boots on. It just makes one feel so refreshed! I live in the city which makes it just a little challenging to get the horse poop.


Throw out the stems and the seeds. Do not give them to your dog no matter how much he thinks he wants to eat them.

It's like when the dog thought he wanted to see your Grindr Profile and he was really enthusiastic, but later you could feel him being disappointed in you in ways you could not imagine thereafter.



Take the stew meat and then decide if you want to roll it in wheat flour or not. In this case I forgot to. But I can't be sure why it is part of the point. I mean,  we are adding masa later, so......

But I did cook the meat in a big chunk of butter on all sides until brown. Then I poured the meat and the juice from the pan into the crock pot.

I took one small onion, a small bell pepper,  and all the leftover garlic clove bits which included 7.  I had to pick a few from the floor  (still in the casings) because my partner made marinara yesterday and thought he used all the garlic.

Haha! No! I am victorious.

I briefly did think about roasting all of them first, but then poured another glass of wine and didn't.

 I  put the one onion which I had cut into quarters and all the peeled garlic in to the processor. I food processed the hell out of them and added them to the mix.

This is the second best way to cut an onion besides making your partner go out on the deck and do it for you.

I then took the soaked chili skins and ground them up in the food processor with the wine, brown sugar, cumin, oregano, lemon juice, lime juice, soup bouillon, and some cojita cheese (just because, why not?). Then I blended the hell out of them until they were a seriously thick, blood red paste.

This was added to the crock pot along with some water, more cheese, a bit of balsamic paste, some tomato paste, and a small corner of slightly old chocolate.










Oh yes, I also added a well stirred smattering of masa into the mix.

And a cinnamon stick which kept emulating a bone bit.



The entire thing was set to hot to make the stew meat tender and left for the entire night.

You can add a ham hock, which .... let's be honest, will make the whole thing 20 percent more AMAZING!!!! But do you really have time to pick all those bones out?

Ground pepper can just be in there or not. Some say you should add hot sauce at this point. I say that is an end of dish addition. And then you silently judge the person who added hot sauce to your chili before they ate it.


I set it to low and cooked it the entire night. If it isn't thick enough by the end, add more masa. I also added a wee bit more brown sugar, a splash more of wine, and some added thickened balsamic at the end to give it heft.



Take out the cinnamon stick and the bay leaves.

Let it cool. Serve with sour cream and chives. Possibly some chopped fresh onion and definitely more cojita cheese.



And definitely don't give any to the dog.

West Oakland Irish Corned Beef

 I just thew together the best corned beef I have ever made. Ever!!!!  And that's saying a lot if you had previously eaten my Guiness based corned beef stew. Mmm. Mmm. mmm.

This one, I didn't think was going to be that good because I went more culinary rogue than ever before with corned beef.

 That's pork on the upper left and cow on the lower right. 

The pork loin from Grocery Outlet (Bargain Market) we meant to cook smelled like farts. And not the good kind. So, that put us in a dilemma having prepped all the ingredients for the roast. But Gross Out sells corned beef all year long! And we had it solidly frozen in our freezer from last year. 

Which.... is both good and bad. 

But I figured in a slow cooker it doesn't matter. As we look to our current political landscape, clearly nothing matters anymore. So why should a silly rule about cooking a solidly frozen piece of meat from last year?

I threw that in with a frozen ham hock. Because, if you don't know by now, the secret to great corned beef is the flavor of smoked pig. 

There. It's out. Corned beef is weird and rubbery until it is flavored with the magic of the back end of a thick fat hog that's marinated in back ally poker deals and a tiny bit of hickory thrown in for good luck. 

But that's not all! 

We stole... I mean, we got some fresh rosemary from our neighbor's yard and it is sprinkled with that hint of West Oakland magic which really draws out the nuances of the dish.

 I'm not sure if it's the glint of sparkly goodness of left over burnt aluminum dust from the now defunct recycle plant or that thin dusky smoke of industrial diesel which adds a bit of unique bounce to West O herbs. Either way, it's a winner!

By now you also know that the secret to bringing out the flavor ( besides salt) to mamma's home cooking is to always add one healthy fuck-ton of mashed garlic. It tastes good and it's good for you! 

Because it can't always be meat... I added carrots, potatoes, celery.  Since I didn't have cabbage I added nature's mini cabbage! Brussel sprouts. So cute! Like the kawaii of the cabbage kingdom! 

I was out of soup base. I know I know.  shameful. I did not even have any of those left over flavor crystals from the chicken ramen.

But a sprinkle of soy sauce is, like, basically the same thing. That and a small can of tomato paste. 

Again, so cute! So kawaii!

I didn't think to buy beer since this was an off the cuff and spontaneous meal. I don't normally keep beer around. But I did just come from Grocery Outlet (Bargain Market). And they have insane mystery wine grab bags. Like.... it's normally an $80.00 bottle of wine. But it's here for 11 bucks! And it could be okay. But it could also be that crazy batch the radium fell into which gives it that extra bite. You won't know until you try. And it's all non-refundable! 

I once had an amazing score of something called "potable alcohol" I bought there. Boy it smelled bad. But it made the prettiest colors in our fire pit. 

Btw..... I don't remember how much wine I put in there. More than a glass? I pour larger than a 4 oz. pour. Who doesn't? Except those new trendy wine bars in the Mission,  I guess.

Also, I threw in that tiny odd packet of picking spice they stick on top of the meat. Does anyone else think of those free safer sex kits given out at pride when they open them? I mean you have to wash the outside goo off before you use them. 

No? Just me? Ok. 

I also, of course, added powdered mustard and fresh sage and two water glasses of water. I put it on low for the night after I passed out, I meant...  I fell gently asleep. I let it cook until falling lightly apart. Any sooner than that is too soon.

And remember, the Irish were not subjected to the horror of slavery that so many individuals kidnapped from Africa were. Just because they were subjected to awful treatment, low opportunity, and discrimination doesn't make it the same thing. Here is a really good article from The Root on the subject. 

https://www.theroot.com/when-the-irish-weren-t-white-1793358754

Any questions?

Thai Coconut Soup with More Expensive Wine plus an Open Letter to Martha Stewart.

Today I went for a St. Supery Fume Blanc to start off with. I thought it would be good to push the edge of the cheap wine rut I had been stuck in for a while. Actually, it tasted a bit like  Boone's Farm, but without all the sugar and costing more than three dollars. Also, it tasted good. You know what I mean. The taste of all those pears, cherries and apples but without the urge to light it all on fire from the bottle while pouring it over a six pack of Hostess Twinkies.

 Expensive wine is like that.

With Thai Coconut Soup it is important to remember that any vegetable can be thrown into this thing. Thai people are not as strict on the proper veggie mix as Caucasian people who write Thai recipe books like to pretend that they are.

Since we are going for authenticity I am going for whatever is in my fridge that might spoil. I have corn on the cob which I will cut off the cob, red bell peppers, portobello mushrooms, purple cabbage, small potatoes, spring onions, and broccoli. It's all going in.

Now I *did* go to the store. When I bought the wine, I also bought a few things one might really want to have to have on hand just in case you want to make this actually work out for you. These included; coconut milk, fresh cilantro,  serrano chili peppers, basil leaves, garlic, limes, and a soup base.

I tried to buy lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves but the local Pac 'n Save is only hip enough to carry $15 wine on a discount. That's about it. To make up for the lack of the necessary items I bought a concentrate Thai green curry paste.

It'll do, pig. It'll do.

 I mean, really, if you were actually going to go all authentic on it's ass you'd have started with a ham bone and you didn't, did you?

I didn't think so.

Anyway, I already own powdered galangal. You can use regular ginger but that shit is not the same thing at all. Not to say that ginger is not awesome. It is. It really is! But it is just not the same thing.

 And you, Martha? You didn't even tell them to include ANY ginger what-so-ever? What the hell kind of soup are you making?

I think middle America can handle a little ginger. I know that you've been in jail and you want to protect others from the kinds of things that you've seen. You know, I once caught a galangal by the tail and tried to extract the pungent spice from its scent glands. I can say in all honesty that it wasn't pretty. Have you ever expressed an ass of a wild dog with razor sharp canines? Well neither have I. But ginger is pretty safe even if it causes you some PTSD episodes. Leave in the ginger, for god's sake. Breathe and repeat this affirmation with me! "Just because it smells similar doesn't mean it's going to bite you on the cooter."

 BTW,  I know I told you all to be creative, but what the fuck is up with an english cucumber as a garnish on a goddamn Thai soup? Really, Martha? And Fuck You with your lemons! This isn't Goddamn British Codfish.  And, you didn't even say to add ANY peppers.... ? At all? The curry paste isn't going to carry itself, you know.

Now, it is up to you to tweek your recipe. You could put chicken in there or pork or cow or tofu or peanuts. Today I am not doing any of that. But YOU could. It's just that kind of soup. I encourage you to go crazy with it. Just be careful.

But first, the garlic.

You really must use fuckloads of garlic. I enjoy the use of a garlic press. Some say this is not necessary. Some say that this is cheating. To those people I say; Fuck you! And for those of you who want me to tell them exactly what a "fuckload" is, I say;   Here at "Many Much Cookings of Greatness," we don't infantalize our readers like those lackeys over at say..... Martha Stewert's blog do.

 Just sayin'.

After you press the garlic in the pan, you should chop up some onions. I am using spring onions. You can use whatever the hell onions you want.

I *do* have sesame oil on hand. It's way better than that crap Martha Stewert told you to fry up onions in and it's really cheap so long as you just go to an any regular asian market instead of Whole "Ooops! I-Fucked-Ur-Rent- Budget-Up-So-Now-You-Have-to-Eat-At-Soup-Kitchens-For-The-Rest-Of-The-Month!" Market.


You will want to gut and chop your serrano chili peppers while wearing gloves unless you like hella seeds in your soup and you want your ass ring to burn like fire at regular intervals in the day. You should know by now about the gloves and that no amount of Vaseline will take the burning away until you've cried enough salty salty tears over your hands.

Actually, I didn't wear gloves.

And I kept all the seeds in unlike all you pussies.

Now here is where the sesame oil comes in. Put that shit in the pan. I don't know how much,  just put it in there. You want enough to saute some crap. I think you can handle eye-balling that amount? You know how to saute, right? Ok! Do that thing that that thing entails! You Go! I believe in you!

By now you will be done with the chopping and the saute-ing. It is time to fill a large pot with water and cause it to boil!

YEEE-Haww! Beers, Steers, and Queers!
(shhh... do a little dance here.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyGp98Xoq9g&feature=related

Once it boils, put your entire can of coconut milk in along with the juice of three or four limes. Put a teaspoon in of galangal, or not. Put in enough soup mix for the water, and then add a healthy few flings of the green curry paste. Add your saute'd stuff in and then realise! "Oh NO! I forgot the soy sauce!" So add that, too. Put all liquidy boil-ey things into the larger pot with all the chopped and waiting veggies. Add more water until the pot is kinda full and then add half the cilantro you bought.

Now it's full!

Put a lid on it and set it to low/medium. Add another lime. Add some more galangal, but only if you can stand the pain. Also, throw in a glass of the wine. It's like christening a boat!

But please! Without the broken glass!

You did refrain from throwing glass in there, didn't you?

Oh Shit! There is no time! The basil! Put the basil in! Now Now Now!

 That......... was close!

Martha, why did you tell them to just add basil as a simply a garnish? Are you afraid of basil, too?

You know that it has none of the agitated spiciness of galangal, right? I've worked with people from the prison system. I know that it does funny things to people. Are you becoming one of those folks that believes cornstarch and catsup are enough?

It's not enough, Martha.

 Just because cornstarch causes things to  have the consistency of cum does not mean that it automatically contains protien! You have to listen to me and hold my hand.

Just try to say this with me: "Items that might not go into pruno are still worth cooking with. Items that might not go into pruno are still worth cooking with!"

 Please! We can work through this together.  I'm a professional. Just trust me enough to take this dried galangal. I swear it won't bite.

How to Make Soup!

      First you make soup by getting out a really large ass pot.  You are going to need a pot because a pan is too small to make soup in and you can't make soup on a plate. You are going to use a large ass pot because everything that might go bad in your fridge, barring a few items and adding a few others, is going to go into that pot. You should adjust the size of "large ass" to fit your personal needs. If you, say, live in Oakland, what might be a "large ass" for someone else might be a medium sized or small ass to you, particularly if that other person lives in, say, Mendocino County. I hear that there is a lot of speed there. For the hipster boys that thought it would be fun to start an ironic frat house two doors down from you and play loud football in the street at 11pm on a Monday night, this might mean be the equivalent of a sauce pan.

     Onions and garlic go in first. They don't *have* to go in first. If you find you forgot to put them in first you can always put them in later.  It will really not make that much of a difference. But you want to put in the garlic and onion first if you are into that sauteing thing. Soup can be made without sauteing and it is fine, but today you are going to saute. Other cooking peoples say to saute in a frying pan or wok. This is bullshit unless you like cleaning more dishes.

It's important to add one fuckload of minced garlic and two fuckloads of chopped onions to the pot with no heat. Then you are going to add just south of a shitload of olive oil, or enough to coat everything on the bottom of the pan and turn on the heat. Don't turn on the heat before or you might burn your garlic. Burnt garlic sucks and you don't want it in your soup.

Tip: send your husband out to chop the onions in the backyard with goggles. This works way better than the other way you have been doing it.

Start to add some salt and pepper to your mix, then decide to use the Penzey's Ruth Ann's Muskego Ave. Chicken and Fish Seasoning, which is really a sort of lemon pepper salt thing and you have been putting it on most everything since you got it despite your original suspicion of it as being just glorified salt. Plus your mother-in-law got it for you.

Stir everything until the onions are no longer just white, but are now kind of a pearl color.

At this point it is really time to open the red wine. Pour in half a bottle. This is going to leave you and your husband with only a glass each and you are going to want more. You should have bought more, but you were thinking that one bottle of wine and one bottle of vodka would be enough last night. You were mistaken. So, plan a wine run in the middle of your soup making.

Pull everything veggie or meat that might go bad out of your fridge. Be sure to sniff the sausages and check if they have a sticky or slimy texture before chopping them up and putting them in the pot.

Tip: A bad smelling or slimy sausage is not something you should put in your pot. Tell your husband to shower or perhaps get that thing checked out by a qualified physician.

Potatoes go in early if you want a creamy texture of dissolved potato or late if you want chunks. Scrub well, but don't bother peeling them. Why would you peel them, anyway? Carrots should be peeled, however. You then add chopped bell peppers, tomatoes, turnips, and  yellow squash in the pot. You chop up some fresh basil and then realize you have to add the entire bunch because you chopped it on top of the sausage area and you can't put that shit back now because it might turn septic. So, the equivalent of a  fuckload of basil goes into the pot. You also add some Herbs de Provance because it sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you.

Your pot is now full. You will have to put the other vegetable back in the fridge. Hopefully you have added some water to the pot so you have a pot full of both  vegetables *and* boiling water or you might need to separate the batch into two pots. You don't have any broth, but Bragg's will do just fine. It's really the same thing anyway, right? And plus, look at the shiny hair!

Now you are ready for your wine run. Put it on simmer and tell your three cats to make sure the house doesn't burn down while you are gone.

Target is the place to go for the soup wine run. While there you can also pick up other things like lint brushes and attempt to find some sort of ginger matching foundation for your husband. Sadly, you find that Target, like MAC, has a bias against gingers and there is no foundation there for anyone with a pink based complexion. The MAC store clerk lied when she said that adding blush to the light foundation would convert it to a ginger hue. Instead, it converted your husband into a large carrot. Don't believe the MAC counter ladies.

You notice that there are a plethora of hot ladies at the Target. Was this always the case or did more ladies become hot as you hit your mid-thirties? When you realize that you said this out loud you notice that the woman in the yellow polka dot dress is quickly moving away from you and into the next aisle. Maybe this is because you have a little of the impetigo left over on your face which your cat gave you last month. It's not a good look.

There is a really hot Amazonianly tall giant red head of a woman in front of you and your husband at the check out line wearing only an oversized man's work shirt and cowboy boots. Your husband looks at you and says something about that being the way he wants to die. You hit him in the arm, but secretly you agree.You both decide it would be a bad idea to ask her if she knows anything about ginger foundation.

Back at home, you can now open the second bottle of wine.


Taste your soup. If it is a little bland,  add  one buttload of Bragg's and a half a bottle of the newly opened wine.

If your flavors are still off, add some of that spicy beer mustard that worked so well when you were making corned beef and some siracha because siracha goes in everything.  Stir and taste again. The flavors should now be starting to have a harmony. Add just a bit of thyme and this  thing called "Mural of Flavor" from Penzey Spices because the name sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you. You might add a lemon, but you do not have a lemon.

Boil down for an hour until the flavor is more concentrated and enjoy!