Chili with a Chance of Potatoes

As we all know, I lurve me some Top Chef--particularly this season, which has a lot of people who can cook, plus, because they've all done it before (it's an "all-star" season, where all of them were eliminated in their own season but, in most cases, got pretty far, possibly even to the finals, before that), they all know what to expect. We're not seeing as much of the over-the-top stuff as with the Voltaggios and Kevin, but otherwise, there's some talent present.

However.

I've also realized that, in general, other than Top Chef and its spinoffs, I don't like the cooking shows that are competitions. I can tolerate Iron Chef, up to a point, because the chefs are pretty uniformly good. But two of the others--Chopped, and, especially, Worst Cook in America--bug me. Chopped just isn't as interesting as any of the others; rather than eliminate someone for each round, I'd rather see them each do all three rounds and see what the overall scores are. If they knew their scores for each round as they went along, then they'd each know how well they needed to do to win, which would keep it kind of interesting. But the one that bugs me the most (of the ones I've seen--I don't even bother with the cake shows, because they're all a version of fondant plus sculpture, which may be entertaining to watch but sucks to eat) is the Worst Cook show.

Of all the shows of that genre, that's the one that absolutely should not be eliminating someone each week. I do like the idea of having a bunch of terrible cooks, in teams, trying to learn how to cook, but you never really know when someone is going to start to get it. In addition, the whole point of learning to cook, IMHO, is that you have to be able to make a mistake and understand how and why you made it; simply following someone else's directions without truly understanding what you're doing isn't going to provide you with actual cooking skills. So, if I were in charge, I'd keep them all around for at least half of the season, then do a test of some kind and maybe then eliminate some percentage of them--a third, say. Lather, rinse, repeat, then the last third has some more training, and for the final competition, they're each given a selection of ingredients--with some choices they have to make--and they compete that way. THAT would be learning to cook, or a reasonable enough approximation of it, and it even still keeps it a competition of some kind.

But since when has anyone asked my opinion on these things?

I've been working on the biscotti recipe, and it's pretty good. The Meyer lemons really are fun to work with; they have a distinct perfume, and the flavor is very nice. I made a second round this week, using more all-purpose and less whole wheat flour, and adding cranberries and almonds. (I'd intended to use pistachios, because I was sure I had some around, but I couldn't find them yesterday--and then I stumbled across them this morning; too late.) The texture is crumbly but not hard--I think because I've put a bit of butter in them--but that means they can be eaten without dunking them in something, which I actually prefer. The next iteration will have cranberries and pistachios, and I want to do a chocolate hazelnut something, too.

Meanwhile, friend and I tried the chili recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and it was pretty good. We made it with ground venison rather than blade steak; next time I'd probably throw in some wild turkey, too, for different texture. We made a few other chances--black beans rather than pintos; more beans and more tomatos than the recipe called for; added veggies in the form of carrots, celery, and frozen corn--but the basic spicing was the same, and it was pretty tasty. Basically, you toast cut-up anchos, and then puree the anchos and some arbols--all w/ stems and seeds removed--with some chicken broth and . . . something. The spices, I guess, which were cumin, oregano, and cocoa. There's a little molasses in theire, too, as well as an onion and some jalpenos, and garlic. It definitely had a bite to it, but it wasn't overwhelming, and the fact that you puree the chilis means that you don't get a mouthful of one.

We ate it over these potato pancakes I'd made--I grated the last of the farm share potatos, mixed them with salt, pepper, two eggs, and some frozen spinach, and I formed them into patties and baked them on silpats until they were brown and crispy. It was nice to get potato pancakes without all of the grease. They still needed a little somethin-somethin, but the chili ended up being a perfect foil for them. Meanwile, I still have some kale and a head of cabbage to use, so that's the next task; probably not next weekend, though. The current plan has us dashing to Madison for a hockey game on Saturday, then dashing back here on Sunday to attend a hockey game at 11:30 am and then dashing somewhere to watch the Big Football Game between his team and the Bears. It's still not clear whether we're both going to do all of those things, but it's probably safe to say that cooking isn't on that particular agenda.

Anyway. my two remaining tasks today are working out and going out to dinner, and I had better start in on the first one if I'm going to do it before the latter.