Cooking and Romance

I am very lucky to share a great passion for cooking with my fella. While it is lovely to have this in common cooking with a man has been an adventure and not always a smooth one. I remember the first time he cooked in my kitchen I sat on the couch, silent, eyes wide, fighting the urge to jump off the couch to see what the hell he thought he was doing in my kitchen. I was able to take a few deep breaths and eventually really enjoy the fact that he was cooking for me, just me. And he made his signature stuffed hungarian peppers and if he wants people to know that recipe well then he might need to start a blog of his own. In any case, let's just say since then I have very much learned to roll with it and let him cook in my kitchen, to have him cook with me and even to act as his sous chef from time to time. We do have our duels over which tool to use, what method, and of course the menu, but that's more fun than anything else, especially when I am right. However, if I am completely honest I will tell you that we create some lovely recipes together. In fact the best ones come when we do wrestle over a detail or two.
Here's a recipe inspired by my newest power tool from Rick, a 3 quart cast iron dutch oven. I am having fun with recipe titles these days because of him too... This recipe is a true collaborative creation. Rick's contribution was the beef cubes not ground beef, spice and flour mixture and limited tomatoes. MIne was the ground dried ancho chili, the overall method of cooking and the addition of amber ale for deglazing.
So Glad I Found You Chili
Serves 4 hungry people
3/4 pound beef chuck cubed
1/2 dried ancho chili ground in a coffee ground you use just for grinding spices
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds ground as described above
1 tablespoon Emeril's Essence spice mix
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/3 cup flour
2 medium onions roughly chopped
1/2 cup celery chopped
2 jalapeno peppers seeded and chopped (wear gloves, it will save your eyes and other tender parts later)
3 to 4 tablespoons of canola or light olive oil
2 cans red pinto beans rinsed well
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano
1 cup of amber ale for deglazing the pan
1.Cube the beef with a very sharp knife. If the meat is slightly frozen this will go more smoothly.
2.Grind cumin seeds and dried ancho chile pepper. Mix all spices into the flour. Put flour mix in a paper or plastic bad.
3.Add meat and shake a bit. Take each piece of meat out separately and shake off the excess flour. Save the remaining flour in the bag for later.
4.Heat 2 large frying pans on medium high heat. Add 1 to 1/2 tablespoon's of oil to each pan and heat until you start to see little swirls in the oil.
5.Add meat into the oil and leave it be for at least 5 minutes on each side or until the meat starts to really brown. Don't fuss with it to much or crowd all the meat into one pan or you won't get much of the lovely brown stuff later. Remove one completely browned piece out at a time and place in a large bowl.
6.Saute onions in one frying pan and deglaze the other with the beer by heating the pan to medium high and adding the beer scraping up all the brown bits and adding liquid and brown bits to the bowl with the meat.
7.Add the reserved flour mixture from the bag with just a little more oil into the other frying pan and let the flour toast for a few minutes until the mix bubbles a bit. Add the peppers and celery to the pan stirring often for 5 to 8 minutes until the veggies soften so the flavors marry.
8.Transfer the cooked meat, vegetables and liquid and the all the reamining ingredients to the dutch oven, stir and cover. Heat oven to 250 F and put the dutch oven in the oven and let it cook for 3 to 4 hours.
9.You can go about your business, it won't need any attention. Be careful! That cover will be so hot and it's easy to forget when you are hungry and getting ready to serve. Serve with cornbread and salad and a nice dark amber or IPA.