It’s so good that we made it twice in one week and devoured it each time voraciously.

Ingredients

• a little cooking oil
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 jalapeños
• 1 good-sized eggplant*
• 8oz mushrooms
• 1/2 pd ground beef (optional)
• 1 32-oz can of diced tomatoes (or fresh equivalent)
• heaping 1/2 tsp of cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Chop the onion coarsely. Chop the eggplant in 1/2″ cubes – if you’re an engineer, you might have a tendency to really obsess about this but really you just want to make sure the eggplant is cut into cubes small enough to choose.
2. Slice the mushrooms. Chop the garlic and the jalapeños finely. If you desire a spicier chili, leave the seeds and the ribs on the jalapeños.
3. Put a little cooking oil into a sauté pan and heat over a medium flame. Sauté onions, garlic and jalapeños and sauté until onions are translucent. Add ground beef, cumin, and as much salt and pepper as you think you’ll like. (The idea here is to let the cook the salt, pepper, and cumin flavors into the ground beef.)
4. Add tomatoes, eggplant, and mushrooms. Simmer gently until eggplant is well-cooked and cumin have mixed well, about 1 hour. Taste and adjust seasonings to preference.

Postprandial Notes: Mwfwfffmmmmwwha.. oh, sorry, can’t talk now… eating the best chili I’ve had all year.

*”Good-sized” being such a relative term, I’ll attempt to qualify what a “good-sized” eggplant is: Imagine a regulation-size football and shrink it about 30%. Sort of kids’ size but about twice the size as one of those happy-fun squeezy footballs and about three times the size of the tiny stress relief squeezy footballs. Roughly the size of a mens’ size 9 running shoe or a small butternut squash or a Cornish game hen.

Imagine for a moment, that my two cowhorn plants are a pair of pretty, young adult lovers. They stumble out of their shabby chic New York apartment in search of late brunch after softly lit and brilliantly filmed session of enthusiastic Sunday morning lovemaking. In a rustle of hastily thrown on jackets and tousled hair, they brush past an elderly, disapproving neighbor who glares at them over her +2 reading glasses. In return, they throw her a pair of happily sheepish grins as they turn down the stairwell.

In the movie of my life, however, the cowhorns just looked at me like, “What? This is what we do.” Or at least, I imagined they did. I also imagined that one of them looked at me, winked and said, “Just keeping the ‘horn’ in cowhorn.” before he spat a nice wad of ‘baccy on the ground.

Ahem.

My first thought was to make a ristra with all the peppers but it occurred to me that, despite the drought we’ve had this summer, DC’s weather may not be dry enough for them to fully dry out before mold sets in. Peppers don’t have to be dried outside – if I had a dehydrator, I could have used that. Or I could have built a custom drying screen for the hood of our white Jeep Cherokee and waited for a sunny day (or several). Or I could stick them in the oven.

Drying anything in the oven is pretty straightforward – just set the oven to 150° and walk away for some time. Depending on the size and variety of peppers, drying time will vary (for example, jalapeños will dry faster than cowhorns which will dry faster than larger cayenne varieties. In the case of cowhorns, I left the oven on for 12 hours, turned it off when I went to bed, and left the peppers in the oven overnight.

Preparation

1. Discard any peppers with bad spots or peppers that have started to go soft. Wash and dry the good ones.
2. Lay the peppers on the oven racks. Place them however you wish but try to keep them from overlapping or touching one another. You can also lay the peppers on a screen or cheesecloth but resist the urge to put them on a cookie sheet as this will prevent even airflow.
3. Set the oven at 150° and leave them in until dried, checking occasionally for brittleness. When done, turn off the oven and let them cool completely in the oven before removing. If you’re paranoid (as I tend to be), leave them in overnight just to be sure they are thoroughly dried.
4. The peppers are fully dried when they are hard and brittle to the touch. They should not be flexible at all – if they are, leave them in until they aren’t. Flexibility means water and water means mold, which means you’ll be throwing your peppers out in a few weeks when you go to crumble them over something and find they’ve turned into something from Where the Wild Things Are.
5. Remove from oven and use however you like. Crush into red pepper flakes and store in a bag or jar. Store whole peppers in a dry place and use for seasoning in chilies, soups, and stews.

PLEASE NOTE: During and for a period after drying, your house will be filled with the most wonderfully deep, smoky aroma of roasted peppers. It’s possible you might be the sort of person who doesn’t like this. It’s also possible you might also be the sort of person who doesn’t think kids slippers can make your cleaning life easier. Either way, I bet you clicked on that link.

And they’re usually the first ones I turn to when making something up. My usual approach to eggplant is either to turn it into baba ghanoush or to just grill it and serve it with a curry-flavored mayonnaise. But today, I not only harvested two lovely eggplants off the bush, but a nice handful of green beans and I wanted to use them both while they were super-fresh from the backyard. I did a little Googling and came across a few recipes for Thai eggplant curry with green beans and a recipe for Bangain Bharta (an Indian curry with eggplant).

So I combined them. To be honest, this is much closer to an Indian curry than a Thai curry – it’s richly layered, warming, and a perfect fall dish. I chose to eat it plain with some leftover meatballs from a few nights before but you could easily adapt it however you like.

The Dragon’s Tongue beans are still going strong despite the cooling weather. These are near-perfect specimens, showing off their characteristic purple stripes.

Ingredients

• 1 good-sized eggplant
• 1/2 cup of green beans
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 jalapeños
• 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger (or 1 tsp dry ginger)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 cup water
• cooking oil

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Rub the eggplants lightly with oil and bake for 15 minutes on each side, turning halfway through. Remove after 30 minutes and let cool.
2. Chop the onion coarsely. Chop the garlic and the jalapeños finely. (For maximum heat, leave seeds and ribs on before chopping or, if you prefer a milder curry, de-seed and rib the jalapeños before chopping.)
3. Chop the eggplant into large chunks. Top and tail the green beans and cut them into 1″ long pieces.
4. Heat oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add cumin, onions, garlic, ginger and jalapeños and saute for about 7 minutes.
5. Add eggplant, green beans, curry powder, chili powder, and water and cook covered for about 20 minutes. Serve warm, over rice or by itself

Postprandial Notes: I mainly threw this recipe together to use vegetables picked from the garden this morning but the fundamental recipe could be easily adapted to cabbage instead of eggplant and bell peppers or cauliflower could easily be substituted for the green beans. You could also add chicken or tofu for some more protein or tomatoes for a more acidic curry.

It’s not curry unless it’s bright yellow. Sadly, time has proven that I’m a terrible cooked food stylist. But I will take this opportunity to point out that beans have completely lost their purple stripes – nifty, no?

This is a pretty basic salsa recipe (adapted from this one I found on Epicurious and easily customizable to your favorite tomato type or heat tolerance. I used a combination of yellow and cherry tomatoes because that’s what I have on hand and I encourage you to experiment with your own favorite tomato/pepper combinations.

Ingredients

• 2 medium-sized tomatoes
• 1 cowhorn pepper
• 12-15 sprigs of cilantro
• 1 large garlic clove
• 1 small onion
• juice of a half a lemon
• Salt to taste

Preparation

1. Chop the tomatoes and onions and add them to a bowl. I chop them coarsely but, depending on your onion tolerability, you may want to chop them finely.
2. Chop the garlic, the pepper(s) and the cilantro finely and add to the onions and tomatoes. Add lemon juice and salt and stir till well blended.
3. For maximum raw onion kick, serve immediately. For maximum flavor blending, let the salsa sit covered overnight in the refrigerator.

Postprandial Notes: I also made a batch of guacamole, substituting a cowhorn for two jalapeños. Here it is slathered all over a freshly grilled burger. Yum.

So I decided to make chili. Now, before I get started on a rant about chili and especially the horrendous state of chili in DC, let me just state that 8 years of living in Texas have quite heavily influenced what I expect chili to taste like: rich, dense, layered and spicy. In fact, the spicier, the better.

Obligatory Chili Rant: Apologies to the President but what they serve at Ben’s Chili Bowl is not chili. It’s so far from what chili should be that, if chili got together and had a family reunion, BCB chili would not be allowed in the family picture.

The inspiration for this chili came from this recipe I found on Epicurious – I modified it quite a bit, upping the amount of seasoning, reducing the amount of meat, changing the type of beans and adding mushrooms and soy sauce. (For slightly more hoity-toity variation, you could also use red wine in place of soy sauce or, if you’re feeling particularly boozy, you can omit both the soy sauce and the broth and just use beer.) And, of course, substituting fresh yellow tomatoes for boring ol’ canned red ones.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 3 large onions chopped
• 2-3 jalapeños, seeded and chopped
• 1 head of garlic (about 8 small cloves), chopped fine
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 cup chili powder
• 4 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 10-12 baseball-sized yellow tomatoes
• 1/2 pound of brown mushrooms
• 1/2 cup dried pinto beans (or 1 can prepared beans)
• 1/2 cup dried black beans (or 1 can prepared beans)
• 3 cups of beef or chicken broth
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• salt and pepper
• favorite toppings: sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, saltines, bread, tortilla chips, chopped cilantro, etc.

Preparation

1. If using dried beans, place beans in a pot and cover with double the amount of water. Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes. Cover, turn down heat to low and simmer until beans are cooked for two hours, checking periodically to check water levels. Add water as needed. Set aside.
2. Chop onions, tomatoes, and mushrooms coarsely. Remove seeds and ribs from jalapeños and chop finely. Peel garlic and chop finely. Heat oil in a sautepan and saute onions until semi-translucent. Add garlic and jalapeños and saute for 2 minutes. Add beef and brown well, breaking up any stubborn clumps with a fork.
3. Throw in tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, spices and broth. Mix thoroughly and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for around an hour, until chili starts to thicken. Ideally, let the chili set for a day before serving to let the flavors chill out and mingle.
4. Serve topped with your favorite stuff.

Postprandial Notes: I actually made both a vegetarian and a meat version of the chili for a Social Justice Camp planning meeting. This round, I merely omitted the meat but in the future, I will increase the amount of mushrooms and probably include kidney beans for greater bean variety.

Ingredients

• 2.5 pounds pork shoulder or butt, cut into 1/2″ cubes and trimmed of most fat
• 4 cups Red Chile Sauce
• 1 small acorn squash
• Sour cream

Preparation

1. Marinate the meat in the sauce fo 24-48 hours, stirring occasionally.
2. Preheat oven to 350°. Bring the marinated mixture to a boil and then transfer immediately to the oven. Bake, covered for 2 hours
3. Cut squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Cut pointed end flat. Steam in a covered pan until flesh is tender. Place cooked squash on plates, cavity-side up. Fill with carne adobada. Spoon sour cream generously over the top. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper to make it look pretty.

Postprandial Notes: Carne adobada is incredibly flexible – we’ve been eating it with tortillas, wrapped in raw kale leaves, cooked with grits and just by itself. It is also incredibly spicy. Expect to sweat while you are eating it.

“I haven’t been cooking as much recently as I would like to (and perhaps even as much as I should), so this evening was a real treat. I tend to take my time cooking – carefully chopping and lining up the ingredients so that they can combine to maximize their flavor potential. Of course, I don’t really know what I’m doing but it usually works out.

Tonight’s recipe is a perfect example of mis-judging the amount of spice required for the dish. When I first started cooking, I would occasionally do this with salt – that is a hard-learned lesson, and I haven’t done that in a LOOOOOONG time (knock on wood!). See if you can pick out the spice that I was overly exuberant with this evening.

The name for this dish comes from its inspiration. I was looking at what we had to work with and was vaguely reminded of my favorite New Mexican squash dish: Tecalote Squash. This is clearly not the same, but it does allude to it, so I carried that through in the naming convention.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

• bacon fat
• 1 med white onion, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• freshly ground yummy salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 bottle cayenne pepper
• a touch of cumin
• 2 lg pieces of bacon, cooked, sliced into strips
• 1 chicken leg and thigh, painfully skinned, deboned, and cut into bite-size chunks by someone inept
• kernels removed from 1 ear of sweet corn
• 1/2 purple pepper, chopped
• 1.75 small heirloomy tomatoes
• 2/3 cup black beans

Preparation

1. Heat the bacon fat over med-high heat in a skillet.
2. Saute the onions and garlic for about a minute. Turn up the heat.
3. Add the chicken and let brown for a minute.
4. Add salt and pepper, cayenne and cumin – keep it moving!
5. Lower the heat to medium and add the bacon. Give it a minute.
6. Follow with the corn, pepper, and tomatoes and a little more salt and pepper. Stir it around nice. Give it a minute.
7. Add the black beans and turn the heat back up to med-high to really get things cooking!
8. Once they are, lower the heat again and let it simmer away until the peppers are done.
9. Serve with tortillas and some sort of dairy because “Holy mother of God! I added too much Cayenne!!” (you can tell because Chris hiccups)

It’s still yummy, though – Chris said so.”

• 1 cup black beans
• half an onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, grated
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tsp oregano
• salt and pepper, to taste
• optional: lemon juice
• your favorite taco toppings

Preparation

1. Soak the beans overnight. Bring them to a boil and simmer until soft.
2. Drain liquid, retaining some. In a skillet or frying pan, heat cooking oil and saute onion until translucent. Add beans, garlic and spices and 1/2 cup of the bean liquid. Saute until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat, sprinkle with lemon juice if so desired.
3. Heat tortillas. Heap with beans, shredded lettuce or cabbage, tomatoes, pico de gallo, salsa, sour cream, cheese, etc. Enjoy with lots of napkins.