A Finger in Every Pie

Treat, not Trick: A Halloween Dinner

                                                              Most Tuesday evenings find me sitting in my FOUR HOUR class for the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad administration program (someday someone affiliated with this program is going to read this blog and I'm going to get dooced right out of the class, my job, and possibly my ectoplasm and all other proof of my existence).  Most Tuesdays, G is working till late out on Long Island, plying his trade.  He picks me up from class, and we get home at about 9:00 pm.  So most Tuesday nights, we have soup for dinner.  It's good soup; it's homemade soup; it's soup that I've usually made on Sunday afternoon in anticipation of terrible, tiring Tuesday night.  A few weeks ago we had minetrone; then there was mulligatawny.  Last week it was black bean made on a ham bone.  This week I made  split-pea/barley/chicken/vegetable. 

But since, oddly enough, class was cancelled tonight for Halloween, we're not having the soup.  I'm not particularly scared of teenagers playing pranks, but then I actually work in public schools.  Some folks are scared of that kind of stuff.  Thus it was decided that in order for us all be home snug in our beds or helping our little ones harass the neighbors for candy, we should cancel class.  So tonight, I decided to cook a real dinner (on a weeknight!) as I wait for G to come home from his Tuesday travails. 

I longingly perused Laurie Colwin's Halloween menu: the John Thorne pumpkin tian that Lindy mentioned recently in the comments on this post; something called a Wensley Cake; and meatloaf.  But pumpkin/squash tian and Wensley Cake would have required a trip to the store.  Having gotten home early for a change, I really wanted to make good use of time by slothfully lying around on my bed for a while, having a little snack, reading the rest of the novel I've been toting around lately and playing on the Internets.  But I could still make meatloaf, something we haven't had for quite a while, it occurred to me.  I had everything in the house.   And what's even better, meatloaf would give me something with which to make a plane sandwich for  upcoming trip to L.A.  I need something sustaining on those long flights, more than Blue Chips and a bevvie, thank you very much.  The meatloaf would also provide some of G's meals while I'm away.  Usually he makes something he likes to refer to as "The Sandwiches of Abandonment" or  "The Soup of Sadness" or even "The Ramen of Loneliness" when I call from far away and ask what he's eating.  At least the abandonment sandwich will have some meatloaf in it this time. 

But what to have with the meatloaf, if no tian is in the offing?  Salad is certainly a safe bet.  And then it hit me.  We'd had lovely baked garnet yams a few nights ago, and there were some leftovers sitting in the fridge.  What could be more festively Halloweenish than sweet potato home fries, bright orange and crisp-edged? 

And alas, no Wensley cake.  But there are still financiers and World Peace cookies ( I know you're sick of hearing about those cookies.  Just try them), so I took the liberty of decorating one as a reverse Jack-O-Lantern.  I'm a little nervous to think what Pierre Hermé or Dorie Greenspan would say about my putting peanut butter on a Korova cookie, but I'll bet it tastes pretty good.  I can't really tell you, since we haven't had dessert yet.

I can tell you, however, that the salad was green and fresh, and that the yam home fries turned absolutely lush and molten under their crisp exteriors.  And the meat loaf?  Well, as Laurie Colwin herself said,  " [Meat loaf] is nice, homey food, and usually a hit with young and old...it always seems to be good.  I have never run into an unlovable meat loaf, but I have loved some better than others."  This one is very lovable, I assure you, for Halloween or for any other occasion. 

Halloween Meat Loaf
from More Home Cooking

I'd really rather give you the recipe in Ms. Colwin's own inimitable words.  I don't have many compunctions about doing so, since it's already been published online on a much-trafficked culinary site.  Here it is, then:

"A few years ago I ran into a really delicious meat loaf at Caldwell’s Corner, the premier breakfast and lunch place in West Cornwall, Connecticut. This meat loaf’s winning feature is its texture, which is light and velvety. Naturally I attempted to prize out of David Caldwell (an agreeable, bearded former coffee buyer and father of twins) the secretof his success, which actually may be that of his wife, Alice. The trick is to soak two 1-inch-thick slices of homemade bread (crusts discarded) in 1 cup buttermilk for 20 minutes and stir the mixture into 2 pounds ground chuck with 2 large eggs. The Caldwells make their own bread, but any good, grainy loaf, such as levain, will do. Perfectionists can buy a round loaf – about 7 inches in diameter and about 3 inches high – and cut 2 slices from the middle. (In a pinch, 2 slices of the best packaged bread you can find will do.) It doesn’t matter how you season the meat loaf: Every cook has a different method. I use 1 large garlic clove, minced; 1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; and 1 tablespoon ketchup. Sometimes I add a couple of tablespoons of a nice thing called Ortolina, which tastes rather like a concentrated form of V8 vegetable juice. You can buy it in a tube or a jar in specialty food shops. Bake the meat loaf in a loaf pan, 9 by 5 by 3 inches, at 350 degrees F. for about 1 hour." 

I did a bit of adaption to Ms. Colwin's recipe since, as she says, you must season it as you see fit.  Her seasoning is remarkably like what my mother used to use in meat loaf.  I mostly did what she suggests, although  I used 3 large cloves of garlic, finely minced, and a large minced up shallot as well.  I used the ketchup, mustard and Worcestershire, but had no Ortolina, which I've never come across.  I added a few big shakes of Penzey's Old World Seasoning and about a tablespoon of smoked chipotle Tabasco sauce. 
 

SHF #24: In Miniature

When I myself was quite small, there was nothing I liked quite so much as little things.  I was fond of dolls, and would lovingly create tiny everything for the favorites in my possession: tiny clothes,  tiny books, tiny tea parties and meals, and entire diminutive environments.  I once, at about the age of ten, transformed a narrow vertical bookcase into a  doll apartment building, complete with teensy hand-sewn cotton-filled  futon mattresses for one of the rooms.  I loved miniatures of all kinds, and would beg, borrow or make them myself in order to have the little things I needed to create miniscule worlds.   I longed for bonsai trees so that my miniature spaces would be green, too. 

Most of all I loved tiny food.  As soon as I saw lady apples and seckel pears in the market each fall, I begged for them.  "They'd be perfect for my dolls," I'd croon to my mother, hanging on her arm at the market pleadingly.  I adored baby vegetables too, even if the scale wasn't quite small enough for my dolls.   But the first time I ever saw petits fours, I really fell in love.  They were the tiny square iced-cake ones with a bitty flower on top, and unlike every other one of their ilk I've eaten since then, they were as delicious as they were beautiful.  Made in the excellent and authentic French bakery in the town where I grew up, they were perfect little layer cakes, made of genoise cake filled with buttercream, dipped in a layer of apricot glaze and iced in chocolate or pastel fondant frosting.  And of course, they were the perfect party food for the petite dining room I had made in my bookcase doll's world. 

When I saw that Jeanne was hosting a Sugar High Friday with tiny treats as the theme, I first thought of recreating those sweet little cakes of fond memory.  But knowing in the midst of the tangle of several hellish weeks that I was going to be running late for this event (and I'm still hoping that I get this posted before our lovely host awakens from her slumbers, since she extended the deadline to whenever she wakes up on Saturday), I decided that I couldn't quite manage the multiple recipes that iced and filled petits fours would require.   I decided upon two other treats:  first, miniature Korova cookies.  These required only that I defrost some frozen cylinders of dough made last weekend, and re-form them into tinier cookies for baking.  I gave them the bit of dress-up that true mignardises require:  a sparkly fragment of candied violet stuck on with an extra dab of chocolate. 

My other treat required a little more ingenuity.  It's a sort of scented almond baby financier cupcake filled and topped with a droplet of this summer's apricot curd, waiting in the freezer for a special occasion.  What better moment than SHF? 

The financier is made from my favorite scented madeleine batter, made with beurre noisette instead of plain melted butter.   The apricot curd can actually be made in any season, and is almost as delicious made solely with dried apricots as it is with fresh.  Assembly requires only that tiny cupcake cases in tiny muffin tins be almost-filled with the madeleine batter, and a half-teaspoon drop of apricot curd dolloped on top.  The batter rises around the curd, which provides a tangy, creamy fruit center in the middle of all that fragile, fine-crumbed almond cake.   These bake just like my original madeleines recipe, for 8-10 minutes at 400F.  At serving time, you need only dollop another drop of curd on the top of the cooled cakelets for a pretty presentation. 

I still love miniatures, but I no longer waste my tiny treats on dolls.  It's fortunate that as small as these cakes may be, both recipes have a large yield.  Little things as tasty as these demand multiple servings in a big-people world.

Cuddling Up to Cucurbitacae -- The Winter Version

"Oh yeah, we eat everything.  Everything except squash, ewww, just so disgusting.  Anyway, great, can't wait for our dinner.  Can we bring anything?"
    - Anonymous dinner guest

I confess, I sometimes fail to understand the food prejudices of others.  How could one despise something as shapely and toothsome as winter squash?

I find that many of my acquaintances hate squash, even to the point of calling it "squish".  Poor maligned gourd.  What's not to love? Most of them are naturally quite sweet; some are a bit nutty-tasting while others are smooth and creamy or starchy and more fibrous.  I'll admit that the only way I don't love them is in savory/side-dish preparations where they've been sweetened.  I absolutely eschew the use of sugar, honey, maple syrup, marshmallows and yes, cinnamon in my squash, unless it's for dessert.  I hate to mask the natural sweetness of these beautiful members of the cucumber family.  I'd rather just enjoy their honeyed flavors as nature made them, or else heighten them by providing savory counterpoints like a bit of pepper, some herbs, a few shallots.   But back to the squash-haters.  Surely there's enough variety among acorn, butternut, hubbard, sweet dumpling, kabocha, cheese pumpkin and about a dozen others that everyone should be able to find at least one lovable squash-mate. 

Take, for example, the darling delicata pictured above.  This is a squash so luscious that I generally take the advice of Laurie Colwin, whose essay on vegetables  in her lovely book Home Cooking first persuaded me to try delicata squash.  She recommended merely baking it with butter and pepper, since the flavor of this gorgeous vegetable requires no other dressing.  A woman ahead of her time, the late Ms. Colwin first wrote about delicata squash some 20 years ago.  This was during an era when most of us were resigned to a choice of acorn or butternut once fall crops began to appear.  I brook no sneering at butternut, however, which remains a perennial favorite of mine -- and which I gave a lovely new treatment quite recently, in a tantalizing gratin.

Both squash and pumpkin have appeared on our table quite a lot of late.  We've seen no fewer than two incarnations of pumpkin bread in as many weeks, one with chocolate chips, one with apples and streusel.  The former was eaten with great enjoyment by my cooking class students.  I gave it to them without saying what it was, asking them to identify ingredients by taste.  I was very proud and pleased when Elisa identified pumpkin.  "It tastes like pumpkin pie," she said.  "Except that I don't like pumpkin pie, and I like this."   If this weren't enough to give me joy, Adriana recalled last week's lesson on the relationship between vitamins and the colors of fruits/vegetables.  She mentioned that this tasty treat must be loaded with vitamin A, since pumpkin is in the yellow/orange family.  Considering the benefits of eating dark chocolate, this version of pumpkin bread is practically a health food, my students decided.  In any case, they were quite enraptured with it, and happily copied down the recipe for home use. 

The latter pumpkin bread was inspired by another baker at my workplace, who shared it with us at a meeting, and told me it was one of those little recipe handouts she'd picked up at Whole Foods.  I went online, found it, and was struck by its amazing similarity to this recipe.  Granted, the topping is different, but the basic proportions...where do recipes originate, and who really invents them, anyway?  Which version came first, Whole Foods' or The Gourmet Cookbook's?  Who adapted and changed whose original recipe? 

Whatever the answer, my version (which had less cinnamon and more ginger) went partying on Saturday night, making its way to a foodblogging soiree hosted by Danielle of Habeas Brûlée.   The food at this event was extraordinarily varied and interesting.  There were Danielle's onion soup dumplings, Nicole's sweet pumpkin/leek packets drizzled with pomegranate, Stephanie's squash and roasted banana soup (more pumpkin! more squash!), and chili -- but not just any chili.  This was authentic Texas Red made by Lisa from Homesick Texan (which was compared by eaters to Indonesian rendang and Cuban ropa vieja, among other things).  There was also a wonderful sort of vegetable casserole under a masa harina crust, made by Vanessa of Vanesscipes, and bread from Tse Wei, doyen of Off The Bone.  I brought Parma ham bundles and my favorite Green Fattoush Salad, both adapted from Nigella Lawson's Feast.  Jessica of Su Good Eats brought her amazing macarons, and although I didn't get to taste it, I know there was carrot cake from Stephanie, the marvelous Pie Queen  -- and probably some other delectables which I can't remember at this point.  I had to run out before dessert was eaten, since my beau had kindly come to collect me and was double-parked outside.  My hosts, Danielle and her partner Dave, insisted on packing a slice of their fantastic chocolate cake with cocoa nib whipped cream for me to take on my way.   I left behind a platter of slices of the pumpkin bread at the left, along with some Korova/World Peace cookies which I'd finally gotten around to making (and yes, they're every bit as spine-meltingly good as everyone says they are).  I don't know how the pumpkin-apple streusel bread was received by the company at large -- but judging from the way G has been scarfing it down, I have a feeling they probably didn't hate it.   

But we haven't just been eating cake.  Although I don't have any pictures of their glory, savory renditions of squash have included two new dishes -- both using shallots as a complementary flavor element.  The first is the aforementioned butternut gratin, which I created a couple of weeks ago.  Save for the somewhat difficult process of peeling the tough rind of the raw squash, it's delightfully easy to assemble.  Unlike a potato gratin, where the cream will separate if the potatoes are not partially cooked first, this can be put together with raw ingredients and popped into the oven, where cream and squash and cheese meld together into a golden triumph.   The other dish was part of last night's dinner:  a new version of my favorite squash purée, made this time with the lovely delicata, shallots, lashings of butter and cream, and seasoned with nutmeg, parsley, mint and black pepper. 

So don't be a hater.  Consider curling up with some seasonal gourds, and making them your friends.  They'll do lots of good things for you while they lend their rich round flavors to your autumn and winter tables.

Butternut Squash Gratin
Peeling the squash is something of a challenge, and a bit time-consuming.  Make sure that you remove all of the creamy, biscuit-colored rind, and any signs of green beneath it.  After that, it's a snap.

2 large shallots, peeled and sliced
1 Tbsp. butter
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups thick organic heavy cream
1/2 cup mixed grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Romano cheeses

Preheat oven to 400F.  In a small saucepan, sauté the shallots in butter until they just soften.  Butter a large baking dish.   Place a layer of squash slices in your baking dish, and scatter some sautéed shallots over them. Add salt and pepper and a sprinkling of grated cheese.  Repeat layers until all ingredients are used up, reserving a couple of tablespoons of cheese for the top.  Pour cream gently over the squash, lifting slices with a fork to allow cream to coat all the layers.  Sprinkle the top with the reserved cheese.  Place foil lightly over the dish, and bake for 1/2 hour, until squash slices are starting to become tender and cream is thickening.  Remove foil, and bake for another 15 minutes or so, until the top becomes brown and bubbly.  Remove from the oven and let sit for about 10 minutes before serving.  This allows liquids to seep back into the squash so the casserole won't be watery when you serve it. 

Creamy Delicata Squash
I almost just baked the squash and ate it plain; it's so good that way.  But I felt like tinkering, and I have to confess that this is even more delectable.  This is a variation on my former favorite squash recipe, to be found here.  Since last night, I've decided that I now like it better made with delicata, mint and sweet cream than the original of butternut and crème fraîche.  As I made it, I was thinking about a passage in How Green Was My Valley, wherein the Welsh narrator describes making a vegetable dish called potch, with "bruisings of mint," which I happened to have in the house.  He also mentions putting the dish in the oven to "soften the raw, ungentle nature of the onion." This made me decide to sauté the shallots first, especially since G is not a fan of that "raw, ungentle" flavor.  Someday I'll make potch, maybe the next time Bakerina comes for dinner.  But for now, this is an excellent substitute. 

2 large delicata squash
2 large shallots
About 3Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup heavy cream
A good grating of nutmeg
1/4 cup of fresh Italian parsley leaves
2 Tbsp. fresh mint leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400F.  Cut the squash in half lengthwise (use a decent knife and be careful of your fingers).  Scoop out the seeds from the cavities.  Sprinkle the halves with salt and pepper, and dot with butter.   Bake the squash halves, cut sides up, on an oiled or buttered baking sheet, with a couple of splashes of water so that they steam a bit and don't get too dry.  Tent them loosely with aluminum foil.  The baking time will depend on the size of your squash.  Check after twenty minutes, but make sure you bake until a knife or a fork slips easily into the flesh.  Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.

In a small saucepan, sauté the sliced shallots in a tablespoon of the butter.  Add the cream, and bring just to the boil -- then turn off the heat.  Peel the still-warm squash and dump the flesh into a food processor bowl fitted with the chopping blade.  Add the rest of the butter, the shallot-cream mixture and some salt and pepper, and process until just smooth.  Add the parsley and mint, and process until you have a creamy purée flecked with green.  At this point, you can eat it immediately, or remove it to a buttered casserole, top it with buttered crumbs, and bake it until it becomes a bit crusty.   Either way, I trust you'll enjoy it as much as we did.

In Search of Subtlety and an Almost-Perfect Chili

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with cinnamon.  It seems to go in phases, from childhood moments where cinnamon toast remains a delectable memory, to the times where a well-meaning but perhaps absent-minded or possibly selectively deaf barista has dusted cinnamon atop my coffee drink, despite my exhortations not to do so.  I now loathe it on coffee -- although I occasionally liked it brewed in coffee when I was in college.   I like spice cakes and breads and cookies, where cinnamon usually leads the called-for combination of spices.  I'm also fond of the Mexican-chocolate or Eastern-European Lebkuchen effect of chocolate exposed to a very small quantity of cinnamon, although some of my family members feel that this spoils chocolate entirely. 

I often like cinnamon in fruit desserts, but not used to excess, and not with every fruit.  I won't, for example, use cinnamon with apricots or peaches, although I will sometimes with plums and apples.  People seem to think that a recipe using apples is carte-blanche to throw in spoons of cinnamon, which will, especially if you're using wonderful seasonal apple varieties like Northern Spy or Winesap, completely obliterate all the glorious apple flavor.  Just a pinch, just a hint -- that's really all that's needed.  The first time I made an apple tart using cardamom and vanilla was something of a revelation;  I had discovered that while cinnamon is fine with apples, it's not strictly necessary.   I love using just a whisper of it in ricotta ice cream -- not enough to even tell it's there, but enough to give the flavor an indefinable boost.  And I like cinnamon very much as a subtle touch in savory dishes; Moroccan and Greek food as well as the late, deeply-lamented Laurie Colwin's favorite company dish of crunchy, oven-baked chicken all come to mind.  It just seems important not to use it to excess, especially if one has strong, high-quality cinnamon.  This finicky approach of mine is in sharp contrast to G, whose adoration of the spice leads him to crave cinnamon toast made on cinnamon-raisin bread, a longing of his which I indulge occasionally at breakfast or for a snack. And when I make it for him, the scent rises warm to my nose and, often as not, I'll make a piece of cinnamon toast for myself on a piece of plainer bread, since I don't really need or want the double-cinnamon whammy. 

Probably the best thing I had to eat during my recent trip to Montana was the chocolate chip cookie I received on arriving at my Doubletree Hotel -- which contains, although you might not even realize it, the faintest ghost of cinnamon (that last statement, by the way, is not intended to cast any aspersions on the local cuisine, about which I still know very little, sad to say.  It was just that this was a 3-day business trip, with a) no time for searching out restaurants, b) late night work sessions, and c) room-service or hotel-restaurant dinners).  Actually, I didn't receive my cookie on arriving.  But being a veteran of numerous stays at Doubletree Hotels from San Diego to Tarrytown, I knew my rights.  At some point after getting settled, I remembered that I hadn't received my signature warm check-in cookie.  So I marched up to the desk to demand (actually to politely ask for) it. 

It was good.  It always is.  In fact, it's pretty much the best thing about staying in a Doubletree Hotel -- which is by no means a bad place to stay when you're on business.  It's not exactly luxurious, but it's reasonable comfortable and serviceable.  And they've got cookies.  But they just give you one, although it's a pretty good size.  The cookie sets up a serious craving for more cookies, which the nice Doubletree people use to their advantage by having tins of cookies available for sale at the desk.  A tin of six cookies costs anywhere from $9.00 to $12.00, depending on which Doubletree you're staying in.  Or they're available by mail for $8.95 a tin, plus shipping and handling. 

Now, the ones handed out by Doubletree are pretty good cookies.  I think it's safe to say that they're made with excellent ingredients, since I have a fairly good taste-detector in terms of anything made with a mix or ersatz components.  The problem is that it can get pricey to fill a cookie habit like this, once it's initiated.  So I restrained my craving until I got back to NYC and googled Doubletree cookies.  I found not only online recipes, but discovered that a number of bloggers have made and enjoyed this recipe, whether it is indeed the actual Doubletree formula or not.  That was good enough for me, so I made it too.  They were very delicious, and did hit the craving spot.  In fact, the ones I brought in for colleagues and for my cooking class set up a whole new series of cravings in others.  The cooking class availed themselves of the opportunity for some consumer math.  I explained to them that even using premium quality chocolate chips (Ghirardelli) and other relatively expensive ingredients, it only cost about $10 to make 40 very large cookies, comparable in size to Doubletree's.  Now that they realize it's possible to make cookies that retail for $1.50 for only 25 cents, they now want to hold a bake sale to fundraise for our cooking class.   

After a day or so, these cookies aged into being just a tiny bit cakier than I would want; I'm always seeking the holy grail of the crisp-chewy nexus when it comes to chocolate chip cookies.  These met that criterion when they were oven fresh, and can recapture it upon a slight reheating.  Everyone who tried them absolutely loved them.  But for my taste, there was too much cinnamon in the recipe.  Mine seemed more cinnamon-y than the original Doubletree cookies, where I didn't really notice the cinnamon presence.  You would think that just a quarter-teaspoon would provide that subtle, almost-not-there quality I was seeking.  But it was still too much.  Perhaps I'm using stronger cinnamon than they do; whatever the reason, if I make these cookies again, I'll cut back the cinnamon. 

More successful was my recent use of cinnamon in what I am currently calling "the best chili of my career."  Every year, as soon the air breathes even its faintest chill, G starts making noises about chili.  I like to respect this wish, since for the most part this is a man who eats and appreciates almost any dish I create for our dinners.  But chili has had me a bit befuddled.  I like it, sort of, but I always find it too heavy.  Three spoonfuls and I'm done.  I never seem to make the same chili twice, since I'm not usually happy with the results.  But this time, using as a template this recipe from Epicurious, I devised a formula which, while not exactly "light", doesn't leave you feeling as if a colony of large heavy things have taken up residence in your stomach and are never going to go away.  I have a feeling that part of the secret rests in my having used lean cuts of meat, and ignoring G's pleas for the addition of sausage, which I have often added in the past, but which ups the fat content exponentially.  I'm not fond of Cincinnati or "sweet" chili, but I did want a mellow kick to counterpose some of the powdery sharpness of the other spices.  Cinnamon was my friend here, providing a flavor balance which neatly tipped the occasionlly acrid notes of chili powder and cumin.  Sadly, I have no picture for you, although I'm not sure chili is the most photogenic of foods anyway.  We ate this for several dinners, along with my favorite cast-iron skillet buttermilk cornbread and each time we were so greedy with anticipation that I forgot to take a pic.  It seems I've finally found a chili recipe I'll save, and make again. 

Practically Perfect Chili

This makes a moderately spicy chili, but nothing that will win the kind of competition where the purpose is to burn down through the judges’ esophagi all the way to their stomach linings.  Personally, I like spicy food, but I also like to be able to actually taste what I’m eating.  Now this is not to say that there isn’t room here for your preferences.  If you’re a Texas chili die-hard, leave out the beans.  If you eschew the use of tomatoes in chili, eschew to your heart’s content (although the tomato presence here is not noticeable – the gravy is thick but with a meaty, not an acid flavor).  Don’t like peppers?  Ditch ‘em.  Spicier?  Add another chipotle or seven, and leave in the seeds.  I have full confidence that you can fine-tune this one to your likes, and find it just as delectable as I did. 

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ pounds beef stew meat or chuck steak, trimmed and cut into ½ inch cubes
2 ½ pounds boneless pork butt or boneless country-style spareribs, trimmed and cut into ½ inch cubes
2 large onions, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
10 garlic cloves, chopped

1 26-ounce box Pomi chopped tomatoes
½ cup strong black coffee
1/3 cup New Mexico chili powder
3 canned chipotle chilies in adobo, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon smoked chipotle Tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. oregano
½ tsp. cinnamon

2 19-ounce cans kidney or small red or pinto beans, rinsed and drained

Grated cheddar cheese
Chopped fresh cilantro
Chopped red onions
Sour cream

Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add beef and pork to Dutch oven in small batches and sear well over high heat.  Cook over medium-high heat until no longer pink, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Transfer mixture to bowl, using slotted spoon. Add 2 onions, bell peppers and garlic to pot and sauté until tender, about 12 minutes.  While sautéing, add in all the dry spices:  chili, cumin, coriander, cinnamon and oregano. Return meat mixture to Dutch oven. Add tomatoes with liquid, coffee, Tabasco, and chipotles. Season with salt and pepper. Cover Dutch oven and simmer until beef and pork are almost tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour.

Add beans to chili. Simmer uncovered until beef and pork are tender and chili thickens, about 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning. Ladle into bowls. Serve, passing cheese, cilantro, and sour cream separately.  Best accompanied by a hot pan of cornbread. 

Serves 10.