Pork Pork Chile Chili: I won $100 bucks with this baby!

Yay! My first food contest winner. Maybe I need to get a truck and take this show on the road...

I've had to rework this recipe so that you can make one normal sized "big" pot (like a 6-quarter) - I made mine in a gigantic (like 5 gallon) pot that is about the size of 3 or 4 regular pots, so my exact exact recipe wouldn't work for most people, but this should be very very close - I'm a firm believer in inexact recipes and making cooking your own anyway, so feel free to experiment. Also it's very easy to make as a very low fat vegan recipe by just leaving out the meat. My inspiration was to do something in between a pozole and a Southwestern styled green chile stew - Enjoy!

PORK PORK CHILE CHILI with bacon and avocado cream topping

1 can garbanzo beans
1 can cannellini beans
1 can great northern beans (feel free to use dry beans instead of canned - just use 1 lb total and just use a mixture of several different types of white beans and cook before using them for the chili)
1 1/2 lbs ground pork
1 pack bacon
1 large can (probably 28oz or something) hominy
1 bulb garlic
1 bottle light colored Mexican beer (I used Corona)
1 small can green enchilada sauce
1 1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
4 4oz cans Hatch fire roasted green chiles, chopped
2 pounds fresh tomatillos
1 small jalapeno pepper
3 green tomatoes
1 large white onion
2 yellow onions
some fresh chives (I don't know...some...)
some Italian parsley (yeah, some...not like a lot, you know...)
4 shallots
1 bunch green onions
1 heaping tbsp chili powder
1 bay leaf
olive oil
salt
black pepper
1 1/2 cups Greek yogurt
1 large avocado

Chop all of the onions, about 2/3 of the garlic, shallots and chives and cook with about 2 tbsps of olive oil over medium high heat in what will be the main chili pot.

Preheat oven to 375.

Essentially the base of the sauce begins with caramelized onions, so while you make and prepare all of the other ingredients, you will be constantly stirring the onions and then adding each new vegetable to this mixture and continuing to stir it over medium heat. Whenever it seems to not stir easily or not have enough moisture, hit it with a shot or so of beer, being sure to also stir up any browned bits in the pot with the beer.

Lay your bacon and the jalapeno pepper out on a cookie sheet and cook til crisp, about 10-20 minutes - keep an eye on it. Pour all bacon grease from the pan into a separate skillet. Reserve bacon. Chop and de-seed pepper and add to onion mixture.

Add ground pork and the rest of the garlic to skillet and cook in the bacon grease until cooked through. Add one can of the green chiles, a shot or so of the beer and a cup of water to the skillet and let the meat braise over medium heat.

Chop the green tomatoes and the tomatillos and add them to the onion mixture. Add green chiles to the onion mixture. Add hominy, spices and enchilada sauce to the onion mixture.Add all of the pork mixture to the onion mixture.

Use remaining beer to deglaze the pork pan - over medium heat just pour the beer in there (add a little water to the beer bottle if you need a little more) and then basically stir and scoop up all of the little porky bits left in there.

Add all of that liquid to the chili pot. Continue to stir and cook as the chili thickens as desired.

Chop up/crumble all of the bacon.

For the avocado cream mixture - mash avocado and mix into the yogurt. Whip until fluffy.

Top chili with the bacon and avocado cream.

Enjoy! You know...in the comfort of your own home...don't even think of trying to come at me at some random chili cookoff all Bobby Flay Throwdown style...seriously....

Maybe my best creation EVA: Mojito Carrots

Okay - listen - this stuff is good. Seriously, seriously good. It's at least the best carrot recipe you ever had and at most: The Best Thing You Have Ever Put Into Your Mouth. Or, you know, something in between...

Here was my thinking:

I want to make some carrots...some glazed carrots....I need to use up that rum...like butter rum glazed carrots....I should make mojitos....mmmm...mojitos....oooh, I have mint, too!....OMG! I should make mojito carrots!! Done. And done gloriously - seriously - MAKE THIS!! (unfortunately my drasted camera is still on the fritz, hence the crappy photo - don't let this stop you!!)

MOJITO CARROTS

4 pounds raw carrots

about three or four mint branches (stalks? thingies?)

1 stick of unsalted butter

about 4 shots of dark rum

about a cup of brown sugar

Kosher salt to finish

Slice the carrots diagonally and boil in salted water for about 45 minutes. Drain and return to the pot. Turn on medium heat. Chop the mint leaves and throw those in there. Throw the whole stick of butter in there. Add the sugar and the rum. Stir and toss to coat as the butter melts - about 10 or 15 minutes. Turn the heat up a little until the mixture bubbles and looks caramely.

Pour into serving bowl and sprinkle with salt. Serve hot.

Enjoy it and be happy to be alive, baby!

Vinegary Stove-top Pot Roast

Because pot roast is super fatty and needs some acid to balance it out, but also because I didn't have any beer or wine on hand and had to improvise...

The result was a very Italian-like taste. I'd already made mashed potatoes to go with it, but I think it would be outstanding with a creamy parmesan polenta (I might even make some to go with the leftovers now...).

1 3-4 pound cross rib roast or other pot roasty type roast
1 white onion
1 yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
a bunch of fresh chives
3 stalks celery
2 orange bell peppers
2 cans of diced fire roasted tomatoes
4 carrots
about a pound of crimini mushrooms, quartered
1 tbsp concentrated tomato paste (the kind that comes in a tube)
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp coriander
2 bay leaves
about 2 cups or so of water or broth
oil or fat for browning (I used bacon grease)
salt and black pepper

In a large pot or dutch oven, brown all sides of the meat in oil or grease. Take meat out of the pot and set aside on a large plate.

Add all vegetables except for the cans of tomatoes to the now meaty oil and saute until soft. Add all other ingredients except for the water.

Add the roast back into the pot. Add enough water or broth to make sure the meat is submerged in liquid. Bring pot to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and cover. Cook that way for at least 4 hours, or until the meat easily falls apart with a fork and the house smells really good. For about the last hour or so, turn the heat up to medium high and cook uncovered to ensure all excess liquid cooks off.

You can then either tear all of the meat apart with a fork or serve as a whole roast.

Serve over something hot and starchy and creamy.

Warm & Orange: Beta Sweet Potato Hash

ugh...grooooaaaan....it's cold as...December... outside and I can't afford one of those fancified sun lamps to ward off my near certainly coming seasonal affective disorder....

Solution: Something warm and buttery tasting with lots of colorful veggies co-mingling with breakfast sausages and maple syrup. Breakfast at night, baby!

BETA SWEET POTATO HASH

1 big ol giant sweet potato or two or three little one

I bosc pear (I saved it from going bad! Another victory against trash!

3 carrots

3 garlic cloves

1 yellow onion

1 lb crimini mushrooms

2 yellow bell peppers

2 orange bell peppers

1 package breakfast sausage (I used Applegate Farms Chicken & Sage Breakfast links)

2 tbsp maple syrup

1/3 cup olive oil

salt and black pepper to taste

like a jigger or two of beer

Now, pretty much any way you combine all of these items together, it's probably going to taste good, but here's how I did it:

Boil the whole, unpeeled sweet potato and the whole unpeeled carrots in a large pot of salted water for about 30 minutes or so, or until you're done chopping up all of the other stuff.

Chop up everything else into good sized chunks. Throw the sausages in there whole and smash em around with the spatula a bit. Dump spices on top, pour olive oil on it all, cover with a lid and let cook for about 20 or 30 minutes or so, or until everything cooks down and gets kind of mushy. When it starts to stick to the bottom a bit or gets super hot/not enough moisture/etc, throw in a couple shakes of beer and let cook on medium covered for a little bit more.

Take the sweet potato and carrots out of the boiling water and peel the peel off of the potato. Chop into chunks. Slice carrots and add both to the other pot. Stir it all up and let cook cover for a little while longer, or until it looks hashy.

I served it with buttery scrambled eggs with chives and cream cheese. This was a great idea. I am awesome! I feel warm and alive for at least a moment! Yay! The end.

Bacon Popcorn

Could any two words together be more glorious? Maybe not.

There are several ways this could be down, certainly some better than the way I did it, but I was looking for quick and hot while also preparing a lot of other food, soo.....microwave! And, of course, a few other elements.

First off, the bacon:

I have been baking bacon for several years now and I have pretty much sworn off pan frying bacon forever and ever since, because baking it is so simple and the results are usually much more uniform, which, of course, creates a problem of me eating all of the bacon before I can use it in my recipes, so I recommend always making twice as much bacon as you really need. Which is why this recipe is awesome, because it's basically just an excuse to eat bacon.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lay a pack (about a pound) of bacon in strips onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the bacon looks the way you like it - I like it crispy. About half way through, take the tray out and pour the grease into a cup or bowl and then put the bacon back in the oven to finish. When the bacon is finished, pour the rest of the grease into the cup with the rest of it.

Pop a pack of (preferably) plain popcorn in the microwave - plain microwave popcorn can sometimes be hard to find, but search it out, because I think that artificial buttery flavor clashes with/ruins the awesomeness of the baconess - I found plain at Whole Foods.

::ding::

Then crumble up about half of the bacon and mix it with the bacon grease and mix it all up with the popcorn. Then divide the remaining half between crumbling it on the top of the popcorn and cramming in your mouth. At least that's how I do.

Sunshine Brined Turkey

Although it's not blustery and sucky cold in Chicago yet, I've already begun to crave the light and warmth of my California homeland - the inspiration behind my first brined turkey!

I've always done a version of the basic, cheesecloth wrapped turkey that I found in Food and Wine about seven or eight years ago (an issue I sadly can't find now for the life of me...) with great result, but, you know, turkey could always be moister.

This was started with the Alton Brown brined turkey recipe, but with a bunch of my own changeups and whatnot - like food jazz - so it's a different thang now - and fricking great!

SUNSHINE BRINED TURKEY

I had an almost 17 pound natural frozen turkey and let it defrost in the fridge for several days.

Instead of using a plastic bag, I brined it in this giant stainless steel pot I have that was large enough to hold the bird and enough of the brine to cover the whole thing.

In another big 'ol pot I mixed:

Two quartered oranges, two quartered lemons, a quartered onion, about a cup of Kosher salt, three teaspoons of poultry seasoning, three teaspoons of cinnamon, three teaspoons of ground black pepper, about a cup (maybe a little less) of brown sugar, about five or six teaspoons of vegetable bouillon (this one) and a bunch (you know - a bunch;) - about a gallon and a half) of water.

After mixing it all up, pour all of the brine into (I put the bird drumsticks up so I could pour the brine into the cavity too) and onto the bird until totally covered. I then covered the pot with its lid and then weighed the lid down with several cans to keep it tightly covered. Keep it like that for at least eight hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove from the brine and rinse with cold water - I just dumped out the brine and added the clean water to the pot to rinse it that way to avoid trying to wrestle a giant bird in my wee sink. Reserve the onions, oranges and lemons for stuffing the bird with

Stick turkey in a roasting pot and stuff with:

The leftover onions, oranges and lemons from the brine. Another lemon and orange or so. Another quartered apple and a quartered raw onion.

Melt two sticks of butta in the microwave with a little bit of poultry seasoning. Once melted, add about a third of a cup of olive oil. Add a large piece of cheesecloth to the bowl of butter and oil, and coat cloth completely, allowing it to completely soak up all of that awesomeness.

Cover the turkey completely with the buttery cheesecloth and stick it in the oven.

Roast for three hours or so.

Remove from oven and let rest for at least a half an hour or so. Remove cheesecloth. Then move the turkey from the roaster to a platter - now this was NOT easy! The turkey was so moist that the wings and legs were falling off with even a little bit of pressure.

Put on the table and watch it disappear. Look how gorgeous it came out! Seriously, I've never seen people go at a turkey like that. Which is, of course, the biggest compliment any cook can get. Enjoy!

A Thanksgiving everyone can equally get down and grub on

I took on an exciting challenge this Thanksgiving - to throw a full on dinner party (only part of the challenge) where everything except for the turkey (obviously), the turkey gravy (still obviously) and the bacon popcorn (should probably become a Thanksgiving staple for us all...) would be vegan (the rest of the challenge). Also in a separate, but more serious challenge, I had to avoid the use of nuts because of allergies.

And you know what - it turned out pretty fricking fabulous. I speak in the past tense, because my Thanksgiving dinner already happened three days ago, ushering in the first annual of my hopefully new family tradition - big ol turkey dinner party the Thursday before Thanksgiving, followed by turkey burgers, sweet potato fries and chillin' on actual Thanksgiving. And also, maybe some scavenging on the Thankgivingses of other on actual Thanksgiving, too.

Perhaps you are looking for a way to satisfy vegans (thanks to the miracle power of vegan buttery sticks), carniwhores and everybody in between, too?

Here's the (super awesome) "Farmer's Market" themed menu I came up with:

Bacon Popcorn
Pumpkin Hummus with chips and red pepper strips

Sunshine Brined Turkey

Savory Veggie Stuffing

Turkey Gravy

Onion Gravy

Oven Roasted Beets with Maple and Brown Sugar

Cranberry & Fruit Bounty Sauce

Cranberry Grapefruit Sauce

Truffled Mashed Potatoes

Brussel Sprouts with Shallots and Fried Onions

Apple Jicima Salad

Rainbow Chard with Lemon and Olive Oil

Spaghetti Squash with Coconut Milk

Chocolate Mousse with Graham Cracker Crumbs

Pumpkin Tart

Bourbon Sweet Potato cupcakes and Chocolate Chip cupcakes

Sparkling Apple Pomegranate Cider

Crispin

No doubt an ambitious menu. I'll admit that even more, given the fact that I didn't quite finish some of the things on time, so we just ate allllllll weekend looonnnngg - just like it's supposed to be, right?