Yesterday was chili night

What is this? Two food related posts in a row? What happened to the dragons? Don't you all worry. My dragons are fine. They are more than fine--they are fine and well fed! The fact that this blog oscillates between my writing and food related topics is not going to surprise anyone that knows me well. I am very openly obsessed with food and cooking and come from a family of foodies, where everyone knows how to cook and enjoys a good meal, whether it's a sophisticated tasting gourmet dinner, or a simple down to earth homey one pot dish. As it stands, I'm very passionate about a few things in life. My husband, my writing, and food. Get me started on either of those subjects at your own risks only.

Yesterday was chili day. That means starting to chop early enough for my mise en place to be done by 10am, and the chili to be on it's way to a one way trip of at least 6 hours before reaching it's destination in the Parthenon of comfort food at 11am at the latest. Chili is one of dishes that are often misunderstood imho. A good chili is not a complicated thing to do, and it's definitely not an expensive dish to make, except maybe for the peppers (and even then we are talking single digits). All you need to make a good chili, is a good pot, patience, and time.

Yes, I've put a good pot first. Not that you can't have a good chili without a good pot--it's just a lot harder. Because it has to simmer for so long, and because nobody has the time to stay next to the stove and stir for 6 hours, a good pot is truly essential. Of course, you can always start your chili on the stove and then let it cook in the oven on low, but I found that if it should work in theory, the end product never quite manages to be as tasty somehow. I'll put a note on pots at the end of this post.

And then, there was patience--the most underrated ingredient to good food in my opinion. Can you make a chili in an hour? sure. But the flavors won't have time to marry and combine. You'll need to boil it hard on high heat instead of simmering it on a corner of your stove for a full day. There are no miracles in life, stews (which is essentially what a chili is) take time. In fact, it would even have been better for me to cook that chili the day before my guests arrived and reheat it, letting the flavors expand overnight.

Back to my chili. I'm an advocate of beans, unless I plan on freezing. Now let me warn the purists that will materialize out of thin air and start screaming of heresy. This is MY chili. I never pretended it was the exact copy of the first chili that was ever made. I don't give a rats ass if you approve of it or not. I like beans in my chili, and if you don't like it, you can bite me.

This little detail being taken care of, back to the beans. I experimented with fresh and canned beans, and I have to say that as much as I always try to use fresh ingredients, in that case, canned beans give me better results. I like to mix two types of beans, pinto and red kidney. I think they have very distinct textures and both  contribute to the end result. Of course, if I plan on making a batch for pure freezing purposes, I won't add beans. I also won't reduce the chili quite so much, because it will finish reducing when I reheat it; I'll also add the beans at that stage in that case.

I don't think that there is a "best chili" recipe. Chili is like gratin dauphinois. As Joel Robuchon (my cooking GOD) says it: "The best gratin dauphinois recipe is the last really good gratin dauphinois I ate".

I don't pretend to have the ultimate chili recipe. I have the chili recipe that I ended up with, after adjusting it to my particular taste, and to what I wanted to find in a chili.

I must be onto something though, because guests always come back for more.

And if you managed to read all of the above without falling asleep your face embedded in your keyboard, then you definitely deserve to get a copy of my recipe. So here goes:

For my chili, you will need:

• 1 pound of chuck, cut into half an inch cubes
• 2 pound of ground chuck, 80-20.
• 1 pound of bacon
• 2 yellow onions, finely diced. 
• 2/3 of a head of garlic, de-germed and pressed.

• 3 bell peppers, preferably green (they have more flavor), cored, peeled, and diced into half an inch cubes. (why peeled? because it makes them a lot easier to digest). It's also really easy to do with a simple vegetable peeler. Yes, yes, I know, I could have roasted them under the broiler and done the plastic bag trick--I just couldn't be bothered lol) 

• 2 cups of strained tomatoes
• 3/4 of a small can of tomato paste
• 2 cans of pinto beans, with juice
• 2 cans of kidney beans, drained but not rinsed
• 1 cup of fresh chopped cilantro
• 4-6 cups of beef stock (approx cup per hour of simmer)
• 1 12oz bottle or can of beer.
• 1 small can of chipolte in adobo sauce
• 1 tsp of onion powder
• 1 Tbsp of garlic powder
• 3 Tbsp of chili powder
• 2 tsp of paprika (not smoked!)
• 2 Tbsp of ground cumin
• 1 tsp of cayenne
• 2 Tbsp of ground coriander
• 1 Tbsp sea salt, plus adjustments later.
• Green onions and sour cream for garnish.

Just a note before we start. I have divertuculitis, which is a conditions that prevents me from consuming anything with seeds. That's why my tomatoes are strained, and why I seed all of my peppers, even the chipoltle in adobo ones. If you decide to leave the seeds, please remember that for the same amount of jalapeno peppers you will end up with a much--much hotter chili. I also use sea salt. It's not quite as strong as kosher salt, so make sure you adjust the salt proportions to the type of salt you use, by tasting as you go.

1. Dice your bacon pretty small and render it, starting on a cold pan with a little canola oil on medium low. Cover and let all that wonderful pork fat melt. Take the bacon out with a slotted spoon, and reserve it for whatever you can use bacon in--mash potatoes, potato skins, salad, you name it. You get the idea.
2. Add 2 Tbsp of butter in that wonderful pork fat, and add onions and peppers. Season with a little salt to help them render their water. Saute on medium heat until peppers and onions are nice and caramelized.
3. Add the garlic let it fry for a minute or three, making sure it doesn't burn.
4. Add the beef cubes, raise the heat to medium high, and saute until the beef is nice and brown, stirring once in a while so the onions and garlic don't burn. DON'T SALT YOUR MEAT YET.
5. Add the ground beef and stirr. Saute until it's starting to brown and the meat is almost cooked through. Don't break it up too much, it will add more texture to your chili. 
6. Once the water released from the beef has almost disappeared, add all the spices and the salt and toss. Let it all fry in the pan, stirring often, for a good 5 to 6 minutes on medium/medium-high.
7. Add in a small can of chipoltle in adobo, seeded and chopped, with the juice of the can. Stirr and let cook for a minute so that it coats and permeate all the beef.
8. Add the strained tomatoes, the tomato paste, the beer and the beef stock. Cover and bring to a boil
9. Add the 2 cans of pinto with the juice, and the 2 cans of red kidney without the juice (but not rinsed). About this, one small word. I used to use masa or flour to thicken my chili. I found out that using the juice in the box (and all the starch coming from the beans it contains) brings me the same result, without having the flour making my chili stick to the bottom of the pan as it cooks.
10. Add the chopped cilantro.
11. Stir. Cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer on LOW, and come to check on it and stir every 45 minutes or so. If it reduces too much, add a little stock. 
12. Simmer for at AT LEAST 4 to 5 hours. More is better. 
13. Once it's ALMOST to the right consistency, taste it for salt (taste a beef cube, not a bean). Add salt if needed to make it taste delicious. I always end up adjusting the seasoning at the end and adding more salt. Something as simple as seasoning well is often the difference between an "ok tepid dish" and a great one. 
14. Serve with chopped onions, cheddar and sour cream. 

Side dishes? You have quite a few options. You can make a southwestern-type pilaf (with onions, garlic and a little tomato paste). You can serve it with a pile of nachos. Or on top of fries. 

I take baby yukon gold potatoes that I cut in two in the lenght and boil in well salted water with 2 cubes of beef bouillon until the potatoes are tender. Then I toss them with a Tbsp of butter in an aluminium disposable pan, and roast them under the broiler, first skin side up, then flesh side up, until they are nice and toasted. I then add the chopped bacon I ended up with earlier, a little salt and a generous amount of shredded cheddar cheese, and hop under the broiler until the cheese melts. These small potatoes are always a giant hit.

About pots:

I used to make my chili in a huge Le Creuset cast iron pot, and it was working very well. Last Christmas, Dave (my husband) bought me this amazing pot, the "Pauli never burn" sauce pot, that I had been contemplating for some time. I have to say that it brought the pleasure of cooking chilis, gumbos and the likes to new heights. It is virtually impossible to burn something in that pot. They are a few drawbacks, of course. First of all, it weights as much as a dead horse that just had a good meal. But then again, so did my cast iron pot. The second drawback is that it takes a while to heat up at the beginning, and that browning and sauteeing is a lot slower too. When I'm really in a hurry, I do the browning in another pan, than transfer it to the pauli pot for the simmer part, deglaze the old pan and dump it in too.

Anyway, here is the link to the Pauli pot. http://reviews.chefscatalog.com/8855/24703/reviews.htm

You can have your beans and eat them too!

Today was a big, BIG day. The kind of day you wish you had twice the amount of hours to have a chance to stay on top of things. It all started at 8am. Sun was shining, my MS was calling and my dragons and I were in excellent spirit. We did a serious dent in the rewrites for a couple of hours (maybe 5?), then I spent an hour color coding my edits throughout the MS. It was a pain, but it will make things a lot easier to spot for the next session of rewrites.

At 2pm I headed to the supermarket to buy a few things I still needed for tonight's dinner, as well as everything I will need for tomorrow's dinner (We're having my SIL and her fiancé for dinner, I promised them a chili). That's right, I'm THAT insane. I planned 2 heavy duty meals two days in a row LOL.

Back to tonight's dinner. I made a traditional Egyptian fava beans and artichokes stew. It is typically eaten for lent around Easter, because it is usually made without any meat. It is served with rice and is absolutely delicious. I couldn't find fresh fava beans for Easter but I found them this week end and I couldn't resist.

So here I am, 6 pounds of fresh fava beans, about 4 to 5 pounds of medium artichokes. Time to get to work! Started to peel and turn the artichokes and to open and peel the fava beans and sort them (the really big ones needed to be blanched and the second skin on them peeled as well, the small ones were tender enough to keep their skin). Worked on it until 5pm, ended up with about a pound of fava's and beautiful artichoke hearts, then proceeded to actually cook the stew. Just for kicks, I'll add the short recap of the recipe at the end of this entry.

It is now 8pm, dinner has come and gone, and the stew was well worth the effort.

I've written. I've cooked. I've eaten and cleaned up. Time to relax with the husband in front of the TV!

And tomorrow ... chili! LOL


     Artichokes and fresh fava beans stew.

1. Fry 2 finely chopped onions in clarified butter, until they turn light golden. Add half of a bag of frozen artichoke hearts and saute it with the onions until everything is nice and golden. Why also use frozen artichokes when you have fresh ones, you will ask? Well, the frozen ones pretty much melt into the stew, thickening it up and making it a lot meatier. 
2. Once the onions and frozen artichokes are medium gold, add the fresh artichokes cut in 4 that you previously had soaking in water and lemon juice. Also add the artichokes stems that you also peeled and reserved in lemony water. Saute the fresh artichokes for about 6 to 8 minutes on medium heat. 
3. Add the fava beans, except the big ones you blanched and peeled. Saute everything together in the pan for another 8 minutes or so, stirring once or twice. 
4. ONLY AT THIS POINT, season your dish with salt (see salt if you have it) and about 1/2 to 3/4 of a tsp of cinnamon. Saute for enother 2 minutes, so the cinnamon melts into the vegetables and the butter. 
5. Cover with chicken stock (or water if it's lent), leaving 3 inches of liquid above the level of the vegetables--you will use that liquid after it reduces to make the rice.
6. Bring to boil and lower to simmer and cook almost covered for about 30 minutes. 
7. Check for seasoning and add the big fava beans that you blanched and peeled. Season them with a little salt before you toss them in with the rest.
8. 15 minutes later, Check a fava bean (one with it's skin, not a blanched and peel one). If it's tender enough, the stew is ready. Turn the heat off and take a few ladles of liquid from the stew, leaving enough liquid to reach half the level of the vegetables. Reserve the liquid for the rice and cover the stew.
9. Make a standard pilaf. Use fresh butter, not clarified, and for the love of all that is sacred, don't be afraid to use enough of it to fry the rice! I use about 2Tbsp of butter per cup of basmati rice. Once your rice has fried in the butter on low heat for about 3 to 4 minutes, add the liquid you took from the stew as well as a few fava beans from the stew (about 2 Tbsp). Season your rice, but keep in mind the stock is already seasoned. 
10. Bring your rice to boil, lower the heat to LOW, cover and leave it alone for 19 minutes. 
11. Check rice and stew for doneness and seasoning. Fluff up your rice and serve it on a large flat plate. Serve the vegetable stew in another deeper plate. 

Traditionally, you serve the rice then a ladle of stew on top of the rice. Put lemons on the table for a fresh squeeze on top. It is also traditional to accompany it with thick plain yogurt on the side (the greek type), but that's optional.

I took a few pics throughout the process. I'll post them tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Working my way through, one chapter at a time.

I'm now about 200 pages into my rewrites.  My rhythm wasn't quite as good today, mainly because I had to waste 4 hours this morning fixing my hard drive and troubleshooting windows. A lot of frustration later, it seems to be working--for now at least. I then proceeded to get to work on my rewrites, and have literally been working on them for the past 9 and a half hours. My eyes are crossing at this point, and I need to stop for the day. Nothing else to report, really. Just a typical day of grinding on the road to Rewrite No II, LOL!

Today was a good day.

I am pleased to report that today was a good day for my rewrites. I polished my 4th chapter (one of the new ones), and worked my way up to page 130 of my MS on my current rewrite. I had a good rhythm and things went smoothly--I wish every rewrite day was going through so seamlessly! I also had a lot of fun reading and reviewing work from some of my fellow writers. It's now 8pm and my dragons are pretty tired, so I'm going to close the shop for the day. I hope tomorrow will be as productive as today was.

Incoming game plan!

Here it comes, the infamous and merciless gameplan. I've been studying this fantastic book by Noah Lukeman, "The First Five Pages", and to my dismay many of the caveats he mentions find an echo in my novel. I've first tried to list everything I should be watching for as I was reading it, and thought with a great dose of arrogance that I could fix it all at the same time... Nice try, Sherine. Think again, LOL! I was getting so confused and had to change so many things at once that I ended up freaking out--unable to come up with good rewritten material; I was losing myself in the process as well.

I found that if I address the problems one rewrite after the other, it works a LOT better. Of course, it means that I'm going to have to rewrite that blasted MS 10 times instead of one. But hey, whatever works, as long as it ends up as good as it can be, right?

So here goes:.

1. Current rewrite. I'm taking care of the changes of settings. The new races, the new beginning, tying up a few lose ends and rewriting a few chapters I'm not happy with. I'm also going to sneak in there to watch out for abusive use of adverbs and adjectives, and change the most common/cliche ones;
2. Rewrite + 1. Dialogs part I. I have to look at my dialogs under the microscope, and make sure they are all relevant, essential to the story and the scene. Eliminate all commonplace dialogs. I also have to eliminate useless descriptions, whether they are between scenes or included in dialogs. 
3. Rewrite+2. Dialogs part II. Same as above, this time concentrating on eliminating unnecessarily informative dialogs and letting the characters show it instead, whenever possible. Also track down overly melodramatic dialog, specifically in the "romantic" scenes... I'm a girly girl and I have to watch myself to make sure I don't tip over the cheesy line, lol.
4. The next step isn't a rewrite per-se, but it's going to be an important and hard thing for me to do. I need to leave my MS alone, I'd say for at least 2 weeks. I can add new scenes or write alternate endings, but after being so immersed in my edits for so many rewrites, I need to give my eyes a chance to be fresh again.
5. Rewrite+3. What have I lost?. I personally think that a risk we take when we do so many rewrites is to lose the soul of our story by cutting a little here, changing a little there. I need to read the story as if it was the first time and ask myself if my characters are still compelling or if I polished the story so much it has no texture left. In which case I need to strengthen my plot and check for improvements I can make on characterization if needed. Make sure that by swapping things around, I didn't end up making the read confusing, or something like two POVs in the same chapter. Make sure my hooks are still powerful enough.

If I make it that far I'll be at least ... half way there LOL! What? You thought that is all it was going to take? I wish--but I have no illusions. After I'm done with the above, I will have a better, tighter MS, but it won't be perfect by any means. I'm thinking another Algonkian workshop after that---not the pitch and shop one, but one we'll actually work on our manuscripts together. I had originally planned to do the April one, but with what happened with my mother, I fell behind the schedule I had for myself. 

So there you have it. That's what my writer's life is going to be for the next couple of months. Am I overwhelmed? A little; am I excited? Most definitely!


PS: A note on "The First Five Pages" - It's not a writer's manual. It has nothing to do with "Story", by Mckee, or "The 20 Master Plots" by Tobias. Both were excellent books, but this one is different. It doesn't even attempt to teach us how to write. It just tells us, in no uncertain terms, what will get a MS rejected. If the examples given are a little exaggerated, they show very clearly what you absolutely have to avoid. Will it stop my MS from ending up in the trash if it isn't good enough? No. But at least it won't be for the reasons he lists ;)

The Dragons are taking a day off...

That's right, I didn't write a single word today. What's even worse, I don't even feel bad about it. Had a lovely afternoon with Dave. We first drove to Sonic and got ourselves 2 huge slushes, then proceeded to take the scenic route to Delicious Orchards, one of my favorite shopping places. The fruits and vegetables there are literally harvested every day, and the quality is truly superior. Nothing in common with those waxed tasteless goods you find at your local supermarket.

Sadly it's really expensive, and we're kind of broke, so we can't go there very often. I bought some fresh fava beans that you can only get for about a month every year, and some beautifully fragrant heirloom tomatoes. Then we sat outside of the Orchards (they have nice tables there with parasols and a few really good food stands). We shared a chili dog and some fresh apple dumplings covered with powder sugar.

We then drove to town, for I had to check Bestbuy for a few things; the weather was so beautiful that we decided to take the scenic route home around 5pm and Dave surprised me by taking me to PFChangs for dinner. Amazingly, despite the chili dog and the dumplings, we were starving!

Definitely a great day in my book! Nothing else than good food, great wheather, and my man's company. Sorry, my dragons, but you'll have to wait till Monday to get pampered again! :)

Time for big decisions...

I'm at a point in my rewrites where I have to make really big decisions... What do I leave untouched, and what do I change? I've been advised to remove all Tolkien reminders from the story, which I did. No more elves, orcs or goblins--I created new races and settings to fill their parts, and changed too cliché city and character names to more original ones. I'm obviously leaving dragons, because DUH it's a story about dragons, and also griffins, because if they are fantasy-based creatures, I don't consider them specifically Tolkienish.

Another question was whether or not to leave Kings and Princes... Michael Neff wanted me to take it out; the editors I've pitched to didn't seem to have a problem with it at all--including the one who wants to see my MS (he didn't even bat an eye at the mention of Kings and Princes). I've thought about it a LOT. I even had alternatives to all royal characters and titles all laid out... but I decided against the change. If they are not absolutely vital for the story to work, they do bring an innocence and fairy-talish atmosphere to the party that I really wish to keep in the storyline.

The last big question was whether or not to remove the part of the book happening in a school setting. Detractors were saying that it reminded them too much of Harry Potter. Once again, I laid out alternatives. That part of the book could have happened in a magical military academy instead of a school, but frankly the differences wouldn't justify the change. You don't have a whole lot of potential settings if you want several youngsters to interact together, alongside adults and spies, with a war in the background.

Ive also realized that the school setting is only used in a small part of the book, about 100 pages into the story. By the time someone gets to that point of my MS and the hero arrives at the school, it should be painfully obvious to them that this is no Harry Potter story. It's the story of a Dragon-wizard, who in the course of his quest to save his kind, just so happens to spy undercover in a human school of magic for a while, before leaving the school altogether to go save the girl, and ultimately win the war. I don't see the shadow of Harry anywhere in there--do you?

PS: thank you Terri, for helping me to sort things out in my head ((hugs))

A small step for me, a GIANT step for my dragons...

Today was a good day--a very good day indeed. The muses were on my side, my dragons decided to cooperate with my efforts, and I finally finished to merge the new beginning with the old stoyline of my novel... What's even better, is that I actually think it's good! Of course, it's only the first 50 pages, but they are truly crucial to the rest of the story. I am so relieved to be over that particular hurdle, I could dance alone in my apartment like a 10 year old. Many rewrites will come on those pages, but I truly believe I finally nailed it.

Now I need a drink, a sandwich, and a break! I've been glued to my screen for the past 5 hours and my eyes are starting to cross, LOL!

I also need to start to think about dinner, I have veal that I need to use today. I think I'm going to make scalopini alla milanese, flatened and breaded veal scallops, fried in butter and olive oil. I put a third of parmesan in the breading and use panko breadcrumbs for extra crispiness. They are usually served with safran risotto (the milanese part), but I don't have arborio rice left for the risotto, so I think I'll make a salsa of diced roma tomatoes with a little olive oil, salt pepper and fresh basil, and maybe a few sauteed potatoes on the side.

Either way, it's going to be good. Tonight, we are celebrating the official rebirth of my novel! Bring on the Chianti!

Baby steps in the right direction

I finally managed to get back on track today, and if I'm not running as fast as I was before my Euro-trip, at least I'm back on the path. I think I finally found a way to link the new beginning with the former story, which was the hardest part. Wrote and rewrote a bunch of versions today, and I can feel I'm getting there. It needs work, of course, and it's frustrating not to be at the same writing level as I was 5 months ago, but I'm hoping that daily work will bring the cruise speed back--and the substance is there even if it needs polishing.

No other groundbreaking news for today. I'm now off to cooking dinner. Tonight: Cajun shrimp and pasta--my interpretation at least. A spicy cream sauce with plenty of good stuff like sauteed diced onions and pressed garlic, chopped pancetta and heavy cream, tossed with fresh angel hair pasta, and finished (in the pan) with shrimp that I sauteed aside with cajun spices and reserved for the final pan toss, and a handful of chopped scallions. Yum. Writing it made me crave it even more... off to the kitchen!

A new beginning... literally.

Finally came up with a new beginning to my story I'm actually happy with. Not that there was (in my humble opinion) anything wrong with the old beginning, although editors would disagree with me there. Apparently it's a no-no to start with a character's birth. Since I didn't want to condemn my poor dragons to death by trashcan before they were even born, I yielded and set myself to writing another start to my novel. My dragons were notoriously uncooperative during that part of the rewrite process. Even now, I can feel them glaring at me behind my back when they think I'm not paying attention.

At 3pm, I then resolutely put my pen aside, and tackled my second task of the afternoon: re-seasoning my cast-iron skillet. I bought these beautifully well marbled thick cut new york strip steaks earlier this week, and wanted to do them justice. Well, let's just say that this part of the day didn't go quite as smoothly as the rewrite. I didn't have shortening at hand, so I used peanut oil--and ended up with a sticky coat of shiny goo. Ack!

I caved in and went to buy some Crisco, and then proceeded to scrub the goo out of my pan, making it even more necessary to re-season it. It's now baking upside down in my 350 oven for an hour. I just hope I'll be able to achieve a proper (if thin) seasoning for tonight's dinner.

I totally blame the dragons, of course. I just knew they'd get me back for zapping their grand entrance scene.

Back on the saddle again...

That's right, I'm (finally) back. I apologize for letting this blog collect dust for so long. Long story short I had to take care of some pretty hard core family stuff, and only just managed to get back on the neverending rewrites train a couple of days ago. I found my pen pretty rusty and my dragons are not always cooperating. Expect more in a few days, once the dust settles!