Chili Experiment v.47
There are times, fellow Lizardim, that you sit up and say, “It’s 11:30 pm, and I must undertake a food experiment.”
I’m sure you are all familiar with this urge/sensation.
And so, I was driven to try to make a vegetarian version of my Chili Experiment V.42.
Because.
PREP:
1. Set your Tivo/radio to a celtic folk station (shut up; just do it!).
2. Spend a bajillion years (25 minutes) cutting up the chiles, onion, peppers, and mushrooms.
Chiles: 2 Ancho, 2 Chipotle, 2 Guajillo.
Mushrooms: 1 pkg Maitake (hen of the woods), 1 pkg mixed (baby bellas, oyster, shitake), 1 pkg sliced portobellows.
3. Couple TB of peanut oil, 3 pats of butter, salt & pepper. Start sauteing/poaching up the stuff from #2.
4. Make a space in the middle, add a pat of butter or a drizzle of olive oil, then throw in a diced clove of garlic.
5. Add can of sweet corn.
6. Cook on high awhile, stirring.
7. Open 2 cans of diced tomatoes. Add.
8. Open can of pumpkin. Add.
9. Stir!
10. Half a bottle of beer, and scrape the fond!
11. One TB of powdered cocoa, one splash of apple cider vinegar, two splashes of Worcestershire sauce. STIR!
12. Add additional spicing or whatever (I tend to use a bit of cloves, Italian Herb Mix, and smoked papkrika).
12a. Handful of crushed wakame.
12b. 2-3 TB of turbinado sugar to counter the starchiness of the pumpkin and the black beans (in the next step).
12c. About a TB of miso; I used South River’s Three Year Barley.
13. Add canned black beans (rinsed twice!) to the pot. STIR!
14. Cook forever (1-2 hours?) in a heavy Dutch oven sort of vessel. Stir once each 15 minutes.
15. Cook your starch delivery system.
I’m somewhere between #14 and #15 here, but it smells damn good.
Here’s what it looks like at the moment:
It’s got about a half an hour more to simmer. I should prolly start on #15 soon.