Becky had the brilliant idea to have a chili party which included a chili contest and Yankee swap. The party was a complete success with several hearty recipes competing for number one. All in all, an excellent call for a cold January night.

Believe it or not I didn’t already have a recipe in mind. I love to cook chili, but I’ve never put much thought into it. This was the perfect opportunity to get serious about a prize winning chili recipe.

Crystal had a party a few months ago and our friend Sean cooked up a chili and decided to use buffalo meat in it. Sean, with his restaurant kitchen experience, was clearly my biggest threat. I needed to be ready for masterful cooks and exotic ingredients.

Quite coincidentally, our friend Dave gave me a secret weapon. At a party at his house a week before the chili competition, he sent us home with a bunch of boar sausage he got in California from his uncle he went boar hunting with. Now who the hell can compete with f’ing boar?!

The final product included 3 types of meat, beer, chocolate, 8 types of chiles, and maple syrup.

I used a pound and a half of cubed bottom round steak, half a pound of ground lamb, and 3/4 lb of boar sausage. So we had 3 types of meat and 3 textures of meat as well.

I seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, and a splash of Worcestershire then browned it up in a big pot. About mid-brown I added a tablespoon of cumin powder and stirred it up.

After the browning was done, I added close to a liter of Guiness and brought it to a boil. Once everything was boiling, I added 2 tablespoons of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate and let the whole mix reduce.

Now it was chile time. I used a mixture of different types of chiles in order to get a complexity of flavors and types of spiciness. That meant using a mix of fresh and dried chiles and mild, hot, and super hot chiles.

In total I used Ancho, Pasilla, Poblano, Jalepeno, Habanero, Thai Bird, Fresno, and Anaheim peppers. I figured since I was the only competitor living in Boston’s “Latin Quarter” (formerly the barrio), no one else would have the access to such a wide variety of peppers.

I also found a really useful website that helped me identify all the peppers and portion them. Check out the Cooks Thesaurus for both fresh and dried chile information.

To prep the chiles, I put the dried ones in the blender and ground them to a powder. I de-seeded the fresh ones and cut out the membrane from the insides. The fresh ones were diced and sauteed for a few minutes along with the onion and garlic in a mixture that scared the crap out of me it was so spicy. It smelled like liquid dynamite from 3 feet away.

5 cups of chicken stock were added to the sauteed chiles along with two chopped tomatoes and it was all left to boil for 20 minutes. After all the boiling, I pureed everything in a blender and added the two pots together to simmer for a couple hours.

So that took care of the chili, but I was going for gold and had to think of the complete chili experience. To round out the offering, I included cilantro cornbread and a toasted cumin seed crema.

A nice Mexican crema was the perfect topping for the spicy chile (and probably Crystal’s favorite thing ever). I just put 2 tablespoons of cumin seeds into a pan and toasted them until they started changing colors and mixed that into 2 cups of Mexican crema (you can substitute creme fraîche if you don’t live near a Mexican market). Season with salt and pepper and you’re in business.

Cilantro corn bread was just as easy. I just chopped up a bunch of cilantro and put in on top of the corn meal mix on the way into the oven.

Since the cornbread gets cooked right before the chili is served, you can use the corn meal to thicken up the chili depending on the consistency you’re looking for.

With everything cooked up, we were off to Becky’s and ready to win.

Becky’s party was warm relief from the cold outside and we could smell the competition as we entered her apartment. I poured myself a glass of sangria and moved into the kitchen to assess the situation.

The competition was fierce. Will came ready to throw down with green onion and avocado toppings. With so many Californians voting I knew he had an edge.

Crystal and Becky collaborated to cook up another heavy hitter. The girls used chocolate and beer just like I did. What’s more, their recipe sported bacon and all their peppers were sauteed in the bacon fat. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

Now it was time for testing. There were 6 chilis in competition and all of them very different. Will’s tasted Middle Eastern with a rich cinnamon taste. Bacon and chocolate dominated the Crystal/Becky chili and there were two chilis, notably Autumn’s, with that familiar homestyle chili taste that canned chilis always try to imitate, but never can.

Of course I think my chili was the best, but it was also very different from the other offerings. I think I had the only authentic Texas chili which doesn’t include beans or corn or any other stuff. But we weren’t being judged on authenticity here, just pure tastiness.

After everyone was finished eating, except Jen who continued to “test” for some time, it was time to vote.

Voting isn’t as simple as it seems. We had to clarify for Alex that we were not voting according to a chili electoral college, but rather employing the insane one man/one vote system. Next we tallied the votes and announced a winner.

Much to my dismay, Crystal and Becky won the contest with their fabulous bacony chili. They worked hard for their chili and it payed off with props from all the participants and a martini set prize for Crystal.

• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Crapicus

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Field Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.