Christmas Chili

I ran across a recipe for "Texas Red Chili" by a guy who writes for Texas Monthly, and he pointed out that this was the basic recipe - no frills, no 80 secret ingredients. Just plain ol' Chili. I 'lowed as how that sounded pretty good, and since the recipe calls for you to make it up and then refrigerate it for a spell, I could make it up ahead of time and we could have it for our Christmas lunch.

We had all the spices - I just needed the meat and some fresh jalapenos and fresh Ancho peppers - so when we went out for supper, we stopped at the Yuppie HEB and got everything but fresh Anchos. I found dried, so I figured I would improvise. Got it all home and put on my Wick Fowler hat and went to work.

Do you know how hard it is to cube 3 ponds of chuck? At the HEB I turned up my nose at the ready-made chili meat - not lean enough, I thought. Of course, if we had a kitchen knife that was sharper than a serving spoon, it might have been easier. I decided that if we were going to eat meat that didn't come sliced into sandwich portions we might have to invest in a knife.

Okay, meat is cut up. You know, we don't have a skillet big enough to brown 3 pounds of meat. Two batches? Nahh, just keep flipping the fall-out back in the skillet. Note to self: add big skillet to list. And lots more paper towels.

Now make a puree of the peppers. Except the dried Ancho is sort of like an old boot. That stuff is pretty leathery. Oh, well, toss it in anyway. The blender should take care of it. Now put the browned meat and the pureed peppers with Ancho chunks in the pot (we do have a big pot, and it only took Mom half an hour to find in the far recesses of the cabinet), add water and bring it to a boil, adding spices along the way.

You might want to know that cooking a big pot of anything with a lot of spices and chili peppers in it tends to affect the sinuses and eyes - even if you go into the computer room and shut the door. We're all breathing freely now; it's seeing the TV through the tears that's hard. But this gave me an opportunity to research Ancho peppers, and it turns out there's no such thing as fresh Anchos. Those would be your Poblanos; dry them and they are called Anchos.

At this point, I began to wonder what else the writer did not know about cooking Chili. But it looked like Chili, and it smelled like Chili, so after simmering for an appropriate time, I put it in the fridge to wait for Santa.

And it tasted like Chili. Maybe we just started a new Christmas tradition.