Since I’ll be moving out next week, I woke up this morning knowing that this will probably be the last time that I’ll be cooking in this condo. Like so many times in the past I spent my morning in Kensington Market collecting my ingredients from various shops. With the drop in temperature I decided to cook a hearty chili. The recipe I found online involved beer which I thought was a great idea, more on this later.
Here are my ingredients. You’ll notice a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce that I found in a tiny Latin American grocer in Kensington. The beef is lean ground chuck.
Accompanying me for this meal is a special Spanish wine composed of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Tempranillo. A very good wine that was easy to drink and fared well against the spices of the chili. Doing some research I found out that the Gran Coronas Black Label by the Torres family is quite a famous wine.
As always, here’s my mise-en-place:
To start you brown the beef:
Once the beef is browned you drain it and begin sauteing all your veg:
Add the beans and beer then let simmer:
After several hours this is what you get:
So the flavour was there but I’m used to my chili being quite hearty and thick. I was a little disappointed that there was so much liquid even after four hours of simmering. I think the excess liquid comes from the tallboy of Guinness that I added. I admit, the thought of cooking with beer did appeal to me, but for this recipe I would recommend against it. Also, I’d recommend adding some tomato paste while sauteing the veg to keep the tomato flavour potent. Fortunately, my dining companion Ms. Torres Gran Coronas more than made up for the weak conversation of Mr. Chili.
Although my chili was a bit of a let down I still enjoyed cooking it. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I’ll have my own place to cook again…