Chili Beans

[txanne]

What are chili beans? Could they also be called pinto beans, do you think? (Those are What One Uses in Texas in dishes requiring beans.)

[Emma Bull]

Or red kidney beans. Or black turtle beans, for black bean chili. Or chickpeas, especially when one has a can of them in the cupboard and wants to add them at the last minute.

[antongarou]

About 30 or 45 minutes before you want to serve.

That's when my recipe says to add the canned beans. So add another 30-45 minutes to that?(i.e. 1-1.5 hours)

[MadGastronomer]

You soak the dry beans overnight, then add them at the same time you would canned beans. But you MUST soak the beans, in plain cold water in the fridge.

[kayjayoh]

What are chili beans? Could they also be called pinto beans, do you think? (Those are What One Uses in Texas in dishes requiring beans.)

They are whatever beans happen to be in the canned marked "chili beans" when I'm at the store. (Yes, I'm kind of a barbarian.)

Bush beans seems to indicate that they're are red beans in chili sauce.

http://www.bushbeans.com/products/otherbeans.php

[txanne]

Aha! Much becomes clear--Texas isn't one of their "selected areas."

[trinker]

Totally, although the Cincinnati thing sounds gross.

It's not bad, if you think of it as a chile-laden spaghetti sauce.

In California where we don't have to worry about regional cuisine because everyone's from somewhere else,

AHEM!  Not true. And there's California regional cuisine. I'm California-born, of a California-born grandmother. (Yeah, I *look* Japanese. And have heritage from there. And spoke Japanese before English. But I'm still a native-born Californian, and I thank you not to erase my existence with your unfounded assertions.)

California's regional cuisine, incidentally, is those things I miss like mad when I'm away from the area. A certain sense of how to build a proper salad, for one.

chili is what you make when you've got a bunch of to]matoes and you find a pound of meat in the fridge that you forgot about and now you have to use it today or throw it away. With whatever peppers you happen to have on hand, and cornbread if you've got it or rice if you don't. And you could put some carrots or other sweet root vegetable in too if you're feeling virtuous.

Do *WHAT*?! Carrots? Sweet root veg? Not a chili anymore, and I say this as someone who tosses in corn niblets and chocolate and powdered espresso with wild abandon. You can make a spicy veg stew with those things, but That's Not Chili. (mutter mutter crazy newcomers and their barmy ideas about what Californians do...)

Anton, if you can't find cornmeal, you could also serve it over couscous. Cheezy couscous would be best, but plain would be ok too. And if I were you I'd use the date syrup as the sweetener. I bet it would go pretty well with the cinnamon.

The idea cheezy couscous with date syrup-sweeted and cinnamon-spiced carrot and sweet root veg "chili" is too much for even my adventurous mental palate. AIEEE!!!

(If you want to serve something over couscous, how about a Moroccan style stew with carrots, sweet root veg, random meat, onions, garlic, cumin, date syrup, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom... LEAVE OFF THE CHEESE.)

[el_jefe]

AHEM!  Not true. And there's California regional cuisine. I'm California-born, of a California-born grandmother. (Yeah, I *look* Japanese. And have heritage from there. And spoke Japanese before English. But I'm still a native-born Californian, and I thank you not to erase my existence with your unfounded assertions.)

Yes that, except for the japanese bit.



Antongarou, chili is rarely perfected the first time. I would suggest a note book, and every time you make a batch,  try something new. Eventually you will have your own perfect recipe that is distinct and delicious. Play with the local spices especially, so you can make us drool over what we can't have

[glinda_w]

[
Antongarou, chili is rarely perfected the first time. I would suggest a note book, and every time you make a batch,  try something new. Eventually you will have your own perfect recipe that is distinct and delicious. Play with the local spices especially, so you can make us drool over what we can't have

*seconds this*

And then you'll reach a point where you don't use the recipe / notebook at all, and every batch will be slightly different, but it'll always be very good. (Someone recently asked me for the recipe for my tomato/spaghett/whatever sauce, which I do in the 16-qt stockpot and then bung it into pint jars in the pressure canner. I apparently had the epitome of blank looks on my face... recipe? I've been making this since I was a teenager, from what was originally my mother's non-recipe - mine has diverged quite a bit over the decades, from what started out a fairly bland thing. So I started in with "well, you put some olive oil in the bottom of your biggest stockpot, then add minced garlic, and a fair amount of chopped onion and celery and bell pepper. Oh, and carrots. And zucchini if you've got it." and was interrupted with "But, how *much* of those?" and I went blank again.

For cakes, muffins, quick breads there are recipes; the proportions of dry ingredients to liquid to leavening need to remain fairly stable, but the rest can be experimented with. Pies? I cheat; certain brands of premade frozen pie crusts are, alas, better than what I make from scratch, but the fillings are strictly home-made.

And then there's bread, which is an art form, although again there are some basics - quantity of yeast to amount of flour (unless you're starting with a shoggoth)...

Mmmmmfood. And whatthehell am I doing up this early? Oh, right, today's the day my new feline overlord chooses me and comes home with me, and after a week and a half without a cat, and after the slow, sad fading of the Annie-cat before that... yeah, overexcited, that's me.

[tylik]

AHEM!  Not true. And there's California regional cuisine. I'm California-born, of a California-born grandmother. (Yeah, I *look* Japanese. And have heritage from there. And spoke Japanese before English. But I'm still a native-born Californian, and I thank you not to erase my existence with your unfounded assertions.)

Yes that, except for the japanese bit.

Especially considering how important Californian regional cuisine has been in terms of national cuisine. An emphasis on fresh, raw or lightly cooked, high quality produce, and relatively simple preparations? A bit (or more) Asian and Mexican influence? Heck, many if not most of the major food movements of the moment got going in California.

I, of course, am a native born Seattleite. Seattle being one of those places where a lot of people are from somewhere else - especially California! Of course, my mother, though born in New York, grew up in California and is herself the descendant of early Spanish speaking settlers of California... which shows up more than a little in the cooking I learned from her. And I grew up hearing stories about the avacado tree in the back yard of her childhood house... (Oh, gods, now I'm hungry.)

[eschatonic]

AHEM!  Not true. And there's California regional cuisine. I'm California-born, of a California-born grandmother. (Yeah, I *look* Japanese. And have heritage from there. And spoke Japanese before English. But I'm still a native-born Californian, and I thank you not to erase my existence with your unfounded assertions.)

Yes that, except for the japanese bit.

Especially considering how important Californian regional cuisine has been in terms of national cuisine. An emphasis on fresh, raw or lightly cooked, high quality produce, and relatively simple preparations? A bit (or more) Asian and Mexican influence? Heck, many if not most of the major food movements of the moment got going in California.

That's a new development though, not a traditional thing. Well, except for the Asian and Mexican influences.

My parents came to Los Angeles from New York, and very few of our friends/neighbors were born here. And since, when the arrived, they didn't know anything about Mexican or Asian cultures or cooking habits, what they developed and passed on to me was a feeling that we don't have to be constrained by what's traditionally done anywhere.

Also, my food weirds people out. But they eat it and most of my friends think it's not too bad. So maybe it's just me? Or maybe lots of people don't get the Introduction to California Cuisine cookbook when they move into the state.

[MadGastronomer]

{Fresh, high quality produce, raw or lightly cooked, is} a new development though, not a traditional thing.

But at the forefront of that movement is Alice Waters, who lives and owns restaurants in San Francisco. It is a definitely Californian movement.

(Alice Waters is one of my heroes.)

[tylik]

{Fresh, high quality produce, raw or lightly cooked, is} a new development though, not a traditional thing.

But at the forefront of that movement is Alice Waters, who lives and owns restaurants in San Francisco. It is a definitely Californian movement.

(Alice Waters is one of my heroes.)

And she opened Chez Panisse in '71... which might not make it traditional, but it's not that new, either, at this point. (And for California, almost forty years is getting on towards traditional. Well, sort of. And it's even more involved, because when I say "Mexican influence"... my forebears were Spanish speaking settles of California. Culturally, they had a lot in common with Mexico, but they weren't Mexican*, and that's about as traditional Californian as you're going to get, if you're of European descent.)

I think the sense of lack of constraints is important in West Coast cooking generally - I mean yes, there is a sense of using local ingredients and all, but there's also tremendous license to play.

* I think. Another friend's family was Mexican, but the borders changed, y'know? So it's not like they came to California from Mexico, they were just there, but there stopped being Mexico. Or so she explains it.

[chicgeek]

Mmm, chili. I'm another heretic that uses canned beans-I don't have as much time to cook as I'd like. I prefer black beans, but most varieties work.  Chopped onion, a little garlic, chopped red and green bell pepper, sometimes I add corn. Yes, I know that's not a usual chili ingrediant! I don't make sweet Cincinnati style chili, but Louisville is close enough that I grew up throwing broken spagetti in the pot. Or sometimes I add cooked rice instead. Chili powder and cumin. Love cumin in chili! If I have salsa on hand, I add some. Not much, just a splort. Canned tomatos. Whatever I have-plain, chili seasoned, or even italian seasoned. I don't make chili when it's fresh tomato season, and the hard, almost flavorless ones that pass for fresh in winter? Better to used canned, especially in a well seasoned dish like chili. And due to lack of time and cash, and catering to various diets, half the time I make it without meat. Sometimes add shredded cheese on top. Grab the saltines and a cold drink, and you're set.
And yes, cornbread is perfect with chili, whatever version of chili you make. Non sweetened cornbread, of course.

[Emma Bull]

Mmmm, cumin. And oregano, another "sekrit" ingredient often found in yummy Mexican cooking (at least around here). I would, of course, make that LOTS of garlic, but I'm like that. And whole-kernel corn, especially with black beans, is an excellent notion.