Lunch

Hebrew National beef hot dog with homemade chili on a potato roll.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

The dog and the chili are leftover from our inaugural catering event. Oh, I am hearing the howls out there, the cries of "Foul!" Because there is nothing very sustainable here. In fact, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the meat on this bun came from a feedlot somewhere. In fact, the parent company is the evil ConAgra that we all love to hate so much.

But this is a perfect illustration of how far the rest of the world has to go to catch up with the ethicureans. Tens of thousands of people were fed at events all over the District of Columbia beginning over the weekend. How many of the ingredients do you suppose were local or organic or sustainably raised? Believe me, even the most liberal people we know don't bother to ask where the food comes from at a party--even when they're the ones throwing the party. We are just starting to see the beginnings of food conscious hosts out there asking for politically correct menus. Most people would choke on the additional cost.

So as professionals we consider ourselves to have feet in both worlds. We eat out of our garden, pastured eggs, grass-fed meats and dairy. But when we're cooking for others, we feel compelled to give them what they want, though for small affairs we can often sneak our home-grown products onto the menu.

From a health standpoint also this dog has nothing to bark home about. These are the jumbo Hebrew Nationals--quarter-pounders with 30 grams of fat in each. I cut one-third off mine, which still leaves a considerable portion of soy- and corn-based fat. (I am apologizing to my arteries as we speak). What we'll probably do is freeze the rest and save them for another party another day. Meanwhile, close your eyes and enjoy this rare and sinful treat....

Chili Variation

My favorite resource for authentic Texas chili is our friend Melissa Guerra and her gem of a cookbook, Dishes from the Wild Horse Desert: Norteno Cooking of South Texas.

Chili in this part of the country is so simple a cowboy could carry the ingredients around in his saddle bag. A puree is made from dried chipotle and ancho chilies, then cooked with tomatoes, roughly ground beef, some ground pork and onion. The dried chilies impart great depth of flavor. Of course there is the usual controversy over whether beans have a place in this chili (Guerra thinks they do.) I love the dish for its pure honesty and lack of pretense.

My wife, however, wanted to do something a little different for the All-American cocktail reception we catered for the inaugural. As usual, she turned to her kitchen bible, The New Best Recipe book from Cook's Illustrated. Their chili con carne is very similar to Melissa Guerra's, but calls for using dried chili powder, whole beef chuck and bacon. It's thickened with masa harina, the nixtamalized corn flour used to make tortillas. A nice touch, I think.

This time of year as we approach Super Bowl Sunday, you'll see "chili ground" beef showing up in the market. It's a much large grind of beef specifically made for chili. Who knew? Using whole chuck roast, my wife decided to tear up the beef once it had been cut into pieces and cooked in the chili. That helped incorporate the meat more thoroughly into the stew. But she ditched the bacon and I thought that was a good choice: I don't want bacon bits floating around in my chili. She also decided to put beans in the chili to bulk it up. She used small red ones, not the big kidney beans which I find a little too commercial.

1/2 pound dried beans, such as small red beans or pinto beans, soaked then cooked

3 tablespoons ancho chili powder, or 3 medium pods (about 1/2 ounce), toasted and ground

3 tablespoons New Mexico chili powder, or 3 medium pods (about 3/4 ounce), toasted and ground

2 tablespoons cumin seeds, toasted in a dry skillet over medium heat until fragrant, about 4 minutes, and ground

2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican

7 1/2 cups water

4 pounds beef chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes

Salt

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil or bacon grease

1 medium onion, minced

5 medium garlic cloves, minced

4-5 small jalapeno chilies, stemmed, seeded and minced

1 cup canned crushed tomatoes

2 tablespoons juice from 1 lime

5 tablespoons masa harina (or 3 tablespoons corn starch)

To toast the chilies, remove the seeds then place the fleshy parts in a hot iron skillet, about 1 minute on each side, until the color changes slightly and they become very aromatic. Allow to cool, then grind in a food processor.

Mix the chili powders, cumin and oregano is a small bowl and stir in 1/2 cup of the water to form a thick paste. Set aside. Toss the beef cubes with 2 teaspoons of salt. Set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil (or bacon grease) to moderately high in a heavy pot or Dutch oven and brown the meat in 4 batches. Set the browned meat aside.

Reduce the heat and add 1 tablespoons olive oil or bacon grease to the now empty pot. Add the onion and saute until soft, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and jalapenos and saute until fragrant, another minute or so. Add the chili mixture and cook another 2 or 3 minutes. Add the browned beef, crushed tomatoes, lime juice, prepared beans and remaining 7 cups water. Bring to a simmer and continue cooking at a steady simmer until meat is tender and juices are dark, rich and starting to thicken, about 2 hours.

Mix masa harina with 2/3 cup water (or cornstarch with 3 tablespoons water) in a small bowl to form a smooth paste. Increase the heat to medium, stir in the paste and simmer until thickened, about 8 t0 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and ground black pepper to taste.

You can serve your chili immediately with some slices of iron skillet corn bread. Even better, make the chili a couple of days ahead and let the flavors meld.

Real Texas Chili, Ground Large

Question: When did chili become the dish of choice for the Super Bowl? I don't remember this being the case when I was growing up. (Maybe we didn't have a Super Bowl when I was growing up.)Now when the Super Bowl rolls around, it seems that every chili recipe in the world comes out of hiding, and some of them are pretty awful. When I got a call for some chili recently (and, yes, it was for Super Bowl Sunday), I turned to my wife and asked what I thought was the only pertinent chili question: Do we do chunks, or ground? My wife was siding with chunks. I was leaning toward ground. As this began to take on the feel of a domestic dust-up, I dashed to our library to check what I figured must be the most authoritative voice on the subject, our Texas friend Melissa Guerra.

I first me Melissa Guerra after I'd sold a story about my molcajetes to the Dallas Morning News. The Texas paper wanted some local comment and steered me to Melissa, who sells Mexican cooking impliments and ingredients from her ranch near the Mexican border. We correspond periodically. One day I received a note from her asking if I would care for a copy of her new cookbook, Dishes from the Wild Horse Desert: Norteno Cooking of South Texas. Up to that point, I had no idea how deeply Guerra's roots are planted in that part of the country.

Guerra writes about the Texas she knows best, where her family has been living for eight generations. She describes a distinctly local cuisine, born of a Mexican heritage but adapted by German, Czech and Polish immigrants. It is a parched, sometimes lonely, but also soul-stirring contryside. I love the book because I am a sucker for good food prose. Spare me another book of recipes! I'd much rather read about you, where you come from, how food connects you with the planet. Guerra spins a fascinating story out of her local food culture , dishing up tons of useful information along the way. (Another great book with a Mexican flavor is Recipe of Memory: Five Generations of Mexican Cuisine, which is part family album, part memoir. A lovely book to read and own.)

As for chili, Guerra explains that this is a dish that evolved on the cattle trail. Ranchers and cowpokes carried dried meat around in their saddle bags and would hydrate it for meals, adding chiles to mask unpleasant flavors. Guerra believes there probably were no beans in the original chili. But she sometimes adds them anyway because "I adore the sweet flavor and thick, silky body that the starch from beans add to the chile con carne...."

Her recipe calls for ground beef and ground pork. So when I e-mailed her asking whether cubed beef would work, I received a long, detailed reply.

Guerra said she regretted not explaining in the book that what she meant by ground beef was a specific chili grind, which is made using a larger-than-usual die in the meat grinder. She suggested I ask my butcher to grind some beef in this manner. So I raced off to the meat counter at Whole Foods and had hardly gotten the first few syllables out of my mouth when the clerk interrupted me, saying, "You mean for chili?" And he pointed over to the refrigerator case and there, sure enough, were several packages of beef ground large for chili (it was a couple of days before Super Bowl Sunday.) Apparently, Whole Foods is hip to the chili-for-Super-Bowl thing.

After locating a butcher who will grind your meat large, the next step is to render some dried chiles. This is as simple as boiling the chiles in plenty of water, then removing the seeds and veins and running the chiles through a blender with a few canned tomatoes and some of the cooking liquid. Note: Melissa Guerra calls for a much greater quantity of chipotle chiles than I use in this recipe. The chipotles (a dried version of ripe jalepeno chiles) impart too much heat, in my view. Lucky me: the local Safeway carries dried ancho and chipotle chiles in bulk in the produce section. Just be sure to wear kitchen gloves when handling chiles.

Finally the meat is mixed with some sauteed onions and the chile sauce. It's a very simple preparation with just a few ingredients, but the end result will take you all the way back to the Horse Desert of South Texas. Thank you, Melissa.

P.S. You don't have to wait for Super Bowl to make this chili. It will warm your bones just about anytime you are looking for a hot, sturdy meal--especially with a big slice of iron skillet cornbread and perhaps a Caesar salad with garlicky croutons. This is the menu we are preparing for this weekend, when we travel to St. Mary's County Maryland for a traditional "matanza," or pig slaughter and sausage making marathon, with our farmer friend Brett Grohsgal. There will be a report with photos anon.

Texas Chili
Makes 12 Servings:

Three or four dried chipotle chiles

Six ounces dried ancho chiles

1 15-ounce can peeled Italian plum tomatoes

2 Tbs canola oil

1 pound ground pork

4 pounds ground beef

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 large onion, cut into medium dice

Render the chiles by cooking in a large, heavy pot of water until the chiles are soft and have turned from a raisin color to a dark red. Remove from water. Reserve cooking water. Wearing kitchen gloves, carefully open the chiles with a knife and gently scrape away the stem and seeds (don't worry if you don't get all the seeds). Place chiles in blender or food processor with just enough cooking water to make a thick slurry that pours. Add tomatoes and blend till smooth. Press this through a fine-meshed strainer to remove any bits of skin or seeds from the chiles. The finished puree should be about the consistency of a thick spaghetti sauce. Set aside.

In a heavy pot or Dutch oven over moderately high heat, heat the oil till smoking, then brown all the meat in batches, seasoning with salt and pepper. If there is more than 2 or 3 tablespoons oil in the pot, drain some off. Then, over moderately high heat, cook onion till soft and lightly brown, about 8 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix meat and onions and pour in just enough of the chile/tomato puree to your taste. It should be just wet enough to slide around in a bowl, but not soupy. If you have puree leftover, freeze it for another time. Serve hot with the aforementioned corn bread and perhaps some grated cheddar cheese, sliced radishes and sour cream (or queso fresco).