Texas Home Cooking Page 14
2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
Chiles pequíns to taste
Masa harina, as needed
Serves 8
Two or three hours before you plan to begin making the chili, rub the chuck well with a mash made from two to three of the garlic cloves and salt. Sprinkle the meat with the chili powder to lightly coat it. Loosely cover it with plastic, and set it aside.
Fire up enough hardwood charcoal to sear the meat on an outdoor grill, preferably one with a cover. At the same time, soak a few handfuls of mesquite chips in water. When the coals are covered with gray ash, spread them out evenly, and scatter the damp mesquite chips on top. Then immediately set the meat over the smoke, about an inch from the coals. Cover the grill, and adjust the dampers to maintain a slow, steady heat. Let the meat sear for about 12 minutes (this process is meant to flavor, not cook, the meat), and turn it over to sear the other side for the same amount of time. Remove the meat from the heat, saving any juices on its surface, and transfer it to the refrigerator. Let it cool thoroughly, about 1 hour.
When the meat has cooled, trim away any surface fat or cartilage. With a sharp knife, cube the meat into the smallest pieces you have patience for, saving all the juices. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan or Dutch oven over moderate heat. Mix in the remaining garlic, and sauté it until it turns translucent. Stir in the meat and all reserved meat juices, adding just enough beef broth to cover. Pour in the lime juice, and sprinkle in the rest of the seasonings, stirring and tasting as you do. Crumble in a few whole chiles pequins to bring the heat up to taste. (Don't try to adjust the seasoning perfectly though. It's easy to ruin a chili by correcting the flavors too soon—the long cooking will smooth and sweeten it.)
Turn the heat down as low as possible. Long cooking toughens, not tenderizes, if the chili is allowed to boil. Every half hour or so, stir the chili and taste for seasoning, adjusting as you wish. After the first hour, thicken the chili as you like by adding the masa harina a teaspoon at a time. The chili should be ready to eat in 3 hours, although it will benefit from a night's aging in the refrigerator.
Serve the chili steaming hot in large, heavy bowls with an ample supply of soda crackers and a side of beans, but not much else except maybe hot black coffee or quart-size glasses of iced tea or a few frosty bottles of Lone Star beer. And after a good long while, we'll push things aside, lean back in our chairs, and start arguing.
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Will Rogers's favorite canned chili was Wolf Brand, which humbly originated in Corsicana, Texas, in 1921. The company's founder, Lyman T. Davis, did the canning in the back of his meat market at first. He named the product after his pet wolf, who was pictured on the label.
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John Thorne calls chili a "savory concoction of meat, grease, and fire" and writes that it's "the natural child of the arguing state of mind. There's no recipe for it, only disputation, and almost anyone's first thought after a taste of somebody else's version, no matter how much it pleasures the throat, is that they could make it better."
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Howling Coyote Chili
John Thorne's Old Buffalo Breath is our favorite traditional chili, but we're also partial to this unconventional version, our own chunk 'em creation. An all-pork chili, it's heavily influenced by the incendiary carne adovadas of New Mexico.
6 ounces (about 18) dried red New Mexican chiles, preferably from Chimayó
2 ounces (about 6) dried ancho chiles
4 cups unsalted beef stock
½ medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 garlic cloves
½ teaspoon salt
3 pounds boneless pork chops, trimmed of fat and cut in ½-inch cubes
Serves 6 to 8
Preheat the oven to 300° F.
Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles. Transfer them to a baking sheet. Toast them in the oven 8 to 10 minutes, watching carefully so as not to burn them. Remove them from the oven, and, when they are cool enough to handle, break each into two or three pieces.
In a blender, purée half the pods with 2 cups of the stock for about 1 minute. You should be able to see tiny pieces of chile pulp, but they should be bound in a smooth, thick liquid. Pour the liquid into a Dutch oven or large, heavy saucepan, preferably cast-iron. Repeat with the remaining pods and stock, adding the onion, oregano, cumin, Worcestershire, garlic, and salt to the batch as well. Pour this liquid into the pan, and stir.
Add the meat cubes, and bring the chili to a boil. Reduce the heat until the chili just barely simmers. Cover the chili and cook for 3 hours, stirring occasionally during the last 1½ hours.
Uncover the pan, and continue simmering for another 30 minutes, stirring frequently. The chili can be eaten immediately but is better if refrigerated overnight and reheated.
We serve it with icy Bohemia beer from Mexico and fresh flour tortillas.
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A 1959 Mexican dictionary called chili con carne a "detestable food passing itself off as Mexican, sold in the U.S. from Texas to New York."
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Fritos Pie
Because chili is best reheated rather than directly off the stove, it's great for leftovers. Texas cooks have developed many dishes just to use leftover chili. Daisy Dean Doolin created the best-known of these dishes in her San Antonio kitchen in 1932, making a savory pie out of her chili and the new corn chips that her son timer was selling. At the company Elmer founded, Dallas-based Frito-Lay, the dish later won official designation as "Fritos Corn Chips Chili Pie."
3 cups Fritos corn chips
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup (4 ounces) grated mild cheddar cheese
2½ cups of your favorite chili
Makes 4 to 6 servings
Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Spread 2 cups of the Fritos in a medium baking dish. Top the corn chips with half the onion and cheese. Pour the chili over the onion and cheese. Top with the remaining Fritos, onion, and cheese.
Immediately bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pie is heated through and the cheese bubbles. Serve the pie hot.
Variation: We nostalgically prefer a pie served in individual-size Fritos bags, with a plastic spoon and a lot of paper napkins, which you eat standing up on a street corner downtown. Buy the snack-size packs of corn chips, slit open the side of each bag, and layer in hot chili with the onions and cheese.
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Snackers around the world munch 16 million packages of Frito-Lay products daily. The company grinds up 600 million pounds of corn a year to satisfy our cravings for Fritos, Doritos, and similar morsels.
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Chili Chile Skillet
This leftovers dish mixes ideas from three Texas favorites: chili, cornbread, and cobbler. You couldn't lose with it even if the cat fell in the skillet.
3 cups of your favorite chili
¾ cup chopped roasted green chiles, preferably New Mexican or poblano, fresh or frozen
½ cup sour cream
1 recipe Just Good Plain Cornbread batter ([>])
Serves 6 to 8
Preheat the oven to 400° F. Grease a 10-inch skillet, preferably cast-iron, and place it in the oven to heat while you prepare the other ingredients.
In a medium saucepan, heat together the chili, green chiles, and sour cream until the sour cream melts. Reserve the mixture.
Remove the skillet from the oven, and pour the cornbread batter into it. Top the cornbread batter with the chili mixture. Return the skillet to the oven, and bake about 30 minutes, until the cornbread has risen up through the chili and browned on top.
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Apart from tradition and Texas dogma, a practical reason to banish beans from chili is their tendency to spoil the leftovers. Beans don't keep well, and they turn mushy during reheating.
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Chili Hominy Skillet
This is another wonderful leftovers casserole, with the corn flavor in this case coming from nuggets of homing or pozole.
4 cups canned hominy or cooked pozole
4 cups of your favorite chili
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2 cups (8 ounces) grated mild cheddar cheese
Serves 6 to 8
Preheat the oven to 325° F. Grease a large, heavy skillet, preferably cast-iron. In it, layer half of the hominy or pozole, the chili, onion, and cheese. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the casserole is heated through and the cheese is bubbly.
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Joe Cooper said, "The aroma of good chili should generate rapture akin to a lover's kiss." The statement became the motto of the Chili Appreciation Society International.
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Personalized Chili Powder
If you want a scratch chili, but also like the convenience of a ready-made powder, package your own brand, avoiding commercial fillers like salt and unnecessary exotica like allspice. Adjust the seasonings to your taste. The recipe can easily be scaled up or down in size.
1½ ounces (about 6) dried red chiles of moderate heat, preferably ancho and New Mexican (we mix them 4 to 2 respectively)
2
to
5 (more or less, to taste) dried red chiles of greater heat (we choose either chile de árbol or cayenne)
1½
to
2 tablespoons cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1½
to
2 tablespoons garlic powder, preferably one that hasn't sat on the grocer's shelf for 3 years
1 tablespoon ground oregano, preferably Mexican
Makes about ¾ cup
Preheat the oven to 300° F.
Break the stems from all the chiles, and remove the seeds. Transfer the chiles to a baking sheet, and arrange them in a single layer. Place the pan in the oven. The chile de árbol or cayenne pods will be toasted first, so remove them after 4 or 5 minutes. Bake the larger pods an additional 4 or 5 minutes, until they are well dried.
When the chiles are cool enough to handle, break them into two or three pieces each and transfer them to a blender. Pulverize the pods briefly, until you have powder. Add the remaining ingredients, and blend just until they are combined.
Store the chili powder in a jar or other covered container for up to 3 months.
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The original chiles in Texas, the ones that grew wild in the state, were little round chiltepins, not the larger pods that became the preferred chili ingredient by the late nineteenth century.
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Chicken-Fried Steak and Other Chuck
As splendid and noble as barbecue and Tex-Mex are, both pale before the Great God Beef dish, chicken-fried steak. No single food better defines the Texas character; it has, in fact, become a kind of nutritive metaphor for the romanticized, prairie-hardened personality of Texas.
Jerry Flemmons, Plowboys, Cowboys and Slanted Pigs
If you ask a group of Texans to guess the most prominent feature of Heaven, at least half would say a steady diet of thick, juicy grilled steaks. That's just Heaven, though, and just talk. What they really like to eat here on this flawed Earth—what their base instincts crave more often than anything else—is a plate-size hunk of sorry beef pounded, battered, fried, and then drowned in a bucket of gooey gravy. Somehow, all that abuse heaped on a mean cut of meat produces Texas ambrosia, a golden slab of earthy perfection, the chicken-fried steak.
Not even football is more popular in the state, but Texans don't brag much about this humble dish. They'll get passionate over barbecue and Tex-Mex, and go loony with chili, while stuffing themselves into silence with chicken-fried steak. It's not embarrassment—an unknown emotion in Texas—but rather an assumption that CFSs are just something inherited, like being a good cusser. Texans come out of the womb knowing that they have a special relationship with chicken-fried steak, a divine dispensation granted no one else, and they keep quiet about it for the same reason that a pretty girl doesn't gloat to a plain one.
Home on the Range
That feeling, contrary to many in Texas, is buttressed by fact. Texans did inherit chicken-fried steaks, maybe not directly from God but at least from the next best source—the cowboy.
Texas was born rich in land and cattle, but neither were worth much at the time. Everywhere the first Anglo settlers ventured they found wild longhorns, descendants of cattle brought to the state by the original Spanish colonists. Some Texans, mainly of Mexican descent, rounded up the wild animals and pioneered ranching in the southwestern brush country, making money primarily from hides and tallow. These early ranchers and cowboys, caballeros and vaqueros, ate plenty of beef themselves, but they didn't have a profitable means of getting their cattle to distant meat markets.
The railroad became the way, when it reached Abilene, Kansas, in 1867. By then the five million cattle in Texas outnumbered people ten to one. Because of this supply and a growing demand for beef in thriving northern cities, the price per head was much higher in New York than in San Antonio. Anyone who could add, much less multiply, saw the potential, particularly since cattle reproduced each year. As one rancher remarked, the business was like running a house of prostitution—you could maintain your inventory no matter how much you sold.
The problem was getting the cattle to the railroad, and the solution to this was the cowboy. For a little over twenty years, up to 1890, the cowboy's life was devoted to driving vast herds north from Texas across open range, over legendary trails such as the Chisholm and the Goodnight-Loving. This was the job at its romantic peak, before it mutated into tending fences and attending rodeos. The cowboy's heroic period, which waned from natural causes, left an amazing legacy. The world had a new mythology, America had a mounted icon of individual freedom, Hollywood had hundreds of movies to make, and, best of all, Texas had the chicken-fried steak.
The Chuck and the Wagon
The open range the cowboys crossed on the great trail drives provided them with little sustenance. The cattle ate well on the grassy plains, but the men had to survive on beef and the meager rations they could pack for the long trek. They learned immediately to take along a resourceful cook to make their "chuck," as they called their food, and a chuck wagon to serve as a moving kitchen and cupboard.
The wagon was the cowboy's real home on the range, the place he went not only to eat, but to bed down, to talk, to treat cuts, to get some soap, to fetch a rope. When the outfit was plodding along the trail, making maybe ten miles a day, the wagon carried everyone's belongings, from bedrolls to horse hobbles. The back wall of the wagon folded down into a work table for the cook, exposing the chuck box, a warren of compartments containing all the provisions and utensils needed for months at a time.
Every few days the crew butchered one of their cattle, or preferably a stray, consuming the meat before it spoiled. On most days they ate beef for breakfast, dinner, and supper, always with coffee and sourdough biscuits. The cook usually cut the meat into thick slabs, dredged the steaks in flour, and fried them in suet or tallow. The diet might seem monotonous today, but the cowboys rarely tired of it.
When the trail days were done, and the cowboys settled back in Texas, they continued to yearn for those fried steaks. Before long every country cafe in Texas was happy to oblige, and every mamma was raising her kids on that same celestial chuck.
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The Texas Restaurant Association recently reported that 90 percent of its four thousand members serve chicken-fried steak. an official calculated that Texans order eight hundred thousand of the steaks a day, not counting any they eat at home.
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Original Chuck-Wagon Fried Steak
This isn't the tastiest way to fry a steak, but you might find it fun. It's an authentic re-creation of what the cowboys ate on the open range, except that any steak you use will come out juicier
and more tender than a cut of long-horn.
1 pound cheap steak, cut 1 inch thick
½ cup beef suet
Salt
¼ cup all-purpose flour
Serves 1
Tenderize the steak by pounding it with a meat hammer or hacking it with a heavy knife. Melt the suet in a Dutch oven or thick cast-iron skillet until it is sizzling. Remove any cracklings.
Salt the steak, and dredge it thoroughly in flour. Cook it in the skillet, covered, approximately 5 minutes per side, or until it is well done. Serve it with Chuck-Wagon Sop.
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The Dutch oven was the chuck-wagon cook's all-purpose utensil. A large, deep, heavy iron skillet with three legs and a hefty lid, it was used both for baking biscuits and frying steaks.
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Old cowboy saying: "Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule, or the cook."