Folks, I must confess… I just had th’ best birthday that I can remember. I turned a billion years old, and a few pals came over to Chez Stelzer for dinner to celebrate my rapid deterioration into bones and dust. A small gathering, just a few folks, nothing big.
Chef Ashley, aka the future Mrs Stelzer, prepared her family’s stellar recipe for real Kentucky fried chicken (which I’ll post here if she lets me… dunno how secret the recipe is supposed to be), and baked apple dumplings which we topped with ice cream. I made an awesome white bean and hominy chili, one of my go-to Autumn slow cooker recipes. The recipe is taken from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, by Robin Robertson (2004, The Harvard Common Press):
Perfect Hominy White Bean Chili
Slow Cooker Size: 4 to 6 quart
Cook Time: 6 to 8 hours
Setting: Low
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder, or more to taste
1 jalapeño chile (optional), seeded and chopped
One 14.5?ounce can crushed tomatoes
Two 15.5-ounce cans navy or other white beans, drained and rinsed
One 16-ounce can hominy, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chili powder and cook about 30 seconds longer.
2. Transfer the mixture to a 4-quart slow cooker. Add the jalapeño, tomatoes, beans, hominy, water, cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper, cover, and cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours.
3. Just before serving, stir in the cilantro and taste to adjust the seasonings.
Serves 4 to 6
—
… simple, no? Though it’s delicious as it is, I would modify it by adding more hominy and less tomato. I’d also use fresh tomato, rather than canned. This chili works better when it’s less spicy, at least, to my taste. I love th’ spicy, don’t get me wrong, but I prefer this chili on th’ milder side ? so you may want to go easy on th’ jalepeno. Use half a pepper, diced fine. Also, keep in mind that some genetically inferior people do not like cilantro… so I give ‘em the option of adding it at th’ end or not. If they choose incorrectly, I simply don’t invite them back to my house for dinner.
The evening cheerfully went on, and who should arrive but Mr Jonathan Coleclough, fresh from riding his fold-up bicycle from Arlington (a suburb outside of Boston, where the Brainwaves Festival was taking place) all th’ way through bitter cold to my apartment. Dig how no-bullshit this guy is: he packed his fold-up bike into his luggage, and checked it from Reading in the UK to Massachusetts, then biked around every day in our brutal sub-zero weather. WOW!
Because a conflicting gig prevented me from attending Brainwaves to catch his set, Jonathan graciously played a ten-minute improvisation for acoustic guitar and laptop out of my stereo speakers… here is the crew, taking it all in:
Yup. Awesome. That’s Brendan Murray, Jim NingNong, and me, with Coleclough on the far right. He’s got some fishing line threaded through guitar strings, and is slowly bowing… th’ signal is being processed by his computer. Pic taken by Danny Gromfin on his phone/camera. It was a lovely f’n evening.
