Chili with Chipotle and Chocolate

I think this recipe calls for a bit too much sugar, so I’d probably back off the next time.  I didn’t wimp out too much on the chili powder, and actualy ended up adding regular chili powder about halfway through.  The result was a great, slightly sweet, smoky, complex chili that was really enhanced by the chocolate flavor.  Don’t be afraid of chocolate!  This was really good too, during our first real cold snap of the season.  Look for some new vegetarian recipes this week!

• 2 c. diced onion (1 large)
• 1 c. chopped red bell pepper
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 1/4 lb. ground turkey
• 3 Tbs brown sugar
• 1 Tbs chipotle chili powder (or back off on that if you’re a wimp like me, and add more later)
• 1 Tbs chili powder (just the regular kind)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 30 oz. canned pinto beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 c. chicken broth
• 2 chiotle chilies in adobo (canned) minced
• 2 oz. unsweeted chocolate, chopped (I used a really good, super dark chocolate)
• 1 Tbs cocoa powder
• Cheddar cheese, sour cream, or lime wedges for garnish

Heat a large Dutch oven and spray with cooking spray.  Add onion, red pepper, garlic, and turkey, and saute for 8 minutes or until turkey is browned and veggies are tender.  Add sugar, chipotle powder, cocoal, cumin, pinto beans, tomatoes, chopped chiles, and broth, and bring to a boil.  Simmer 15 minutes.  Add chopped chocolate and stir until melted.  Serve with cornbread

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Corn Chowder

I’m trying to find new vegetarian recipes that I enjoy that don’t involve meat substitutes.  Those were a staple of mine when I lived as a vegetarian for three years or so… I just used Boca crumbles and Quorn chicken.  This soup, adapted from Simply Recipes, makes use of the Eastern shore’s abundance of corn this time of year.  While some people in the house were not too fond of this, I certainly liked it, and froze a portion of it to see how well it will hold up, and to have this really light summer taste sometime when all of this great produce has gone the way of the frost.  That sounds grim.  This is un-grim food.

• 1 Tbs butter
• 1 chopped yellow onion
• 1/2 carrot chopped (about 5 baby carrots, I figured)
• 1 chopped celery stalk
• 3 ears corn, kernels removed, cobs reserved
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 1/2 c. milk (I used 1%)
• 1 Yukon gold potato, peeled and diced
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1/2 tsp. fresh thyme
• salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large saucepan.  Add onion and sautee 4-5 minutes.  Add carrot and celery and continue cooking another 4-5.  Break the corn cobs in half and add them to the saucepan.  Add milk and bay leaf.  Recuce heat to prevent scalding, cover, and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occaionsally to prevent the milk from scalding.  (Use the lowest heat you can but keep it simmering.)  Discard corn cobs and bay leaf.  Raise heat, add potatoes, red pepper, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes or until potatoes are almost fork tender.  Add thyme and corn kernals, let cook 5 minutes and serve.  Remove about 2 cups of the soup and blend with an immersion blender, add back to main pan.  Garnish with cilantro and sour cream, if desired.

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Quinoa Tabbouleh and Cucumber Soup

According to the package that it came in, quinoa is “The Supergrain of the Future!”  So I guess I better start learning what to do with it.  First things first:  Do not go into your local hippie supermarket and ask for “kwin-oh-ah.”  They will laugh at you.  It is “keen-wah.”  Oh.  I had to take the woman over to the bulk bin and say “This stuff.  Do you have more of it somewhere else?”  And they did.  And it came with a little pamphlet declaring it as the super grain of the future.  The future is now, man.

Anyway.  I’d never even had quinoa before tonight. And I like it, a lot.  It’s like nutty couscous, with a little bite to it, like perfectly cooked rice.  I will discover more things to make with it soon.  Anyway, here it replaces couscous or bulgar in a rather traditional tabbouleh, and is accompanied by “cucumber soup” (which was looked down upon as “green mush” before I actually made it, and then made and enjoyed, at least, i think it was.)  The cucumber soup is more like a very finely pureed raita, with the mint and the yogurt and such.  I think next time, I’ll back off a little on the yogurt, because there was too much of it and our “soup” was very watery indeed.  The tabbouleh, on the other hand, was wonderful and flavorful and I used two cucumbers from my very own garden!

Tabbouleh

• 1/2 c. uncooked quinoa, cooked with 1 c. water (cook like rice, about 12 minutes)
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/4 cucumber, peeled and diced
• 2 green onions, finely chopped
• 3 Tbs finely chopped mint
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 3 Tbs lemon juice
• Salt (more than you think) and pepper to taste

Combine all of that stuff in a bowl and stir it up.  Let it sit around until it is cold.

Cucumber Soup

• 1 1/2 cucumbers, peeled and cut into big chunks
• 3/4 c. plain yogurt
• 2 Tbs mint (a few leaves)
• Salt (again, more than you think you’ll need)

Now, in order to make my cucumbers not be ridiculously water logged, I do a little trick that involves chopping them up into big cubes, and putting them in salted ice water for a few hours.  I’m not sure it does anything, but… whatever.  That’s what I do anyway.  Then, you rinse them off and put all that stuff into a food processor and let ‘er rip.

To make the fancy circle in the middle of the soup, I put a cookie cutter in the bowl, filled it with the tabbouleh, and smashed it down with a spoon.  Then, I sort of smushed it down as I lifted it (the first attempt was not so pretty, and I realized I needed to smash a little more) and then ladled the soup around it, and added some extra tomatoes as garnish.

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