RED CHILE, with a side of decisions

[Roving Frangy reporter's dispatch from l'Ètat Unis] El Toro Market in Santa Ana is the place to shop for Latin American goods in Orange County. "Quien no conoce El Toro no conoce Santa Ana"—it says so right on the market. It's one of the few carnicerías where you can get a suckling pig (lechón—order a day in advance) and you can buy a whole pork leg there pretty much any day of the week. They have great piles of luffa for the shower, too, and mine was getting pretty ratty, so I made the trip into town. Once there, there was no way that I could leave the store without an assortment of dried red chile, which were just beautiful—not the crumbly-dry ones you usually find—these were still a little meaty! I bought a handful of Puyas to go with Pasillas and New Mexicos. Here's a pic (with my new luffa in the background!).

The drive home was time to contemplate what to do with them. My first idea was to work out a new form for "messicani," a thin slice of fatty pork shoulder sprinkled with mixture of grated parmiggiano, peperoncino, and salt and rolled tightly around a wooden skewer and cooked over an open grill. Although it's name means "Mexican," this is a specialty from the Adriatic coast of Puglia in Italy, and it's actually pretty unlikely that there is any real Mexican connection at all for this tasty version of meat on a stick. My thoughts were to re-invent messicani with some authentic Mexican flavors…

…but then I got home, and Adri says, "Oh, you're making chile. That's great! We'll have it tomorrow for lunch."

Okay, I'm making chile, which to us means a stew based on chile and meat. Sounds straightforward enough—but there are decisions to make:
1) Meat or no meat? Don't even think about vegetarian when it comes to chile. Yes, veggie chile can be made, but it's new age and totally lame. And don't even think about improvising with the addition of zucchini, corn (unless it's hominy), bell peppers, carrots, or even tomatoes. Veggies have their place, and it's outside of this stew (onion is the exception).
2) What kind of meat? Red chile is complemented by robust meaty flavors best, so poultry and even pork aren't under consideration. Lamb would be great, as would mutton or venison, but a beef chuck roast is what I can find at the supermarket, and this works great for chile.
3) Ground meat or chunks? If you're making a Texas-style chili (with a final "i"), you'd be starting out with powdered dry chiles, canned tomatoes, and stock, and you'd probably want to use ground beef. In making the chile base from whole dried chiles, the liquid is water (I suppose you could use stock, but I don't see it adding significantly to the flavor), and tomatoes would be kind of an unwelcome guest. This is a different kind of chile (with a final "e"), and meat chunks work best.
4) Beans or no beans? Completely subjective. Classically, the red chile would be beanless and served with a large quantity of beans on the side. That's fine. Feel free to do just that. But I'm putting my beans in my chile. Just because.

Okay, that's settled. Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Yes—lunch is tomorrow, but chile is better if it has a chance to flavor-meld. Some dishes need individual ingredients to assert their identities, but not chile. The first phase of work is relaxed, and it concludes with a trip to the gym.

I start by pulling off the stems from the chiles and opening them to give a quick inspection—any moldies should be tossed. Soaking in lots of cold water for about an hour reconstitutes the chiles and softens any dirt clods, which then dislodge and settle out to the bottom. After the chiles are softened they should be opened and relieved of their cores and seeds, which would only add bitterness. The chiles can then go into a pan with almost enough water to cover, and cooked (covered) for a half hour or so with some additional spices—I use whole cumin seed and whole dried oregano. Then I turn off the fire and go for a spin and then to the supermarket to buy the meat and the beans.

Back now, and the work is somewhat more intense because two things are done at the same time. First thing to do (and this doesn't count in the two things) is to pick over the beans (I'm going with small red beans) and get them soaking in cold water.

There's a lot more in a chuck roast than what should be in the chile, but it would be a shame to lose the flavors from the other parts. I maximize and capture those flavors by trimming the fat and rendering it down in a Dutch oven. Then I sauté all the bones and gristle and then remove the bones and crispy bits and pieces but leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Now I can brown up the edible parts of the chuck roast (after a liberal sprinkling with salt) in the fat like (gigantic) steaks. The fire needs to be high enough to keep the moisture seeping out of the meat from building in the pan (then you'll be boiling your food instead of browning it) but not so high to scorch the fond (glaze), which I want to extract for its intensely meaty flavor.

While the rendering/sautéing/browning is going on, the whole stewed chiles need to be converted into a chile base. This involves two kitchen gadgets—perhaps the kind of thing eschewed by Karen, but I'm going to call for them anyways. The general idea here is to spin the chiles with their cooking liquid in a food processor (or a blender) until smooth except for the bits of skin. I'm using the same Regal La Machine that Adri and I have had since our grad school days (and cooking with Karen in our tiny Chicago apartment!), and it takes three batches to process it all. The next part is to remove the chile skin by running it through a food mill. I put the food mill over the deep pot that I'll be using to finish the chile, because from here on it will be just adding stuff to this chile base.

As the meat pieces become fully brown, I pull them from the Dutch oven, cut them into bite-sized chunks, and dump them into the chile pot. Then I pour off all the fat from the Dutch oven and deglaze with just enough water, and after a bit of boiling extraction time, I strain that into the chile pot.

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I put the bones in a pot with plenty of water and bring that to a boil and add the soaked beans. No, they don't have to be fully inflated—they can finish hydrating in the cooking pot. These will have to cook until they are just tender (pull a bean out to taste occasionally), and they (beans, not bones) will go into the chile pot.

Here's something you weren't expecting. I clean two heads of garlic and chop them into a fine mince (that's a lot of garlic), then sauté this in olive oil until just cooked, and this goes into the pot. Then one chopped red onion. And salt—maybe not quite all the way to taste but almost. A nice splash of sherry vinegar adds brightness here and accentuates the salt.

The pot now has chile base, meat (and meat deglazement), beans, garlic, onion, vinegar, and salt. Simple, and yet not a simple dish at all. Nothing else is to be added, although the meat still needs to cook to tenderness. Since lunch is tomorrow, I bring the pot up to a simmer, cover, and turn off the heat. It can stay on the stove overnight.

About an hour before lunch, I bring the pot up to a simmer and leave it there for about 45 minutes and then turn off the fire. It will stay hot throughout lunch. I hope there are leftovers.