Heart of Darkness chili

Photo source

Back when my office was a little further uptown, I’d frequently stop in at a popular local lunch spot called Delica for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. On days when it was cold, grey, wet or snowy, I’d opt for their chili, which was a rich cocoa-infused concoction full of tender chunks of stew meat that never failed to satisfy. I’ve since moved offices downtown, but the memory of that chili stayed with me. It was/is, as far as I’m concerned, the Platonic ideal of chili.

I was chuffed to see that the folks at Delica were good enough to include the recipe on their website. So I made it at home (with a few tweaks) and spent the next few days telling anyone who would listen all about the best chili ever. Just try it. It might be the last chili recipe you ever need.

That my lunch #2

Whenever I visit Tres Carnales, there is a constant debate with my lunch mates over which tacos are their best. My favourite is usually whatever kind I order that day. Today it was tacos al pastor: slow-roasted pork, radishes, salsa verde. They were especially good with their new pickled onions (not pictured).

A red sauce joint

Bucatini all'amatriciana has been on my kitchen to-do list ever since I had it in Vancouver a few years ago. A simple tomato sauce where the sweetness of the tomatoes plays off the saltiness of the guanciale (cured pork jowl) and the heat of peperoncini, it's a winning dish with very few ingredients. The snag is that one of those few ingredients, guanciale, was tough to come by in my frozen corner of the world.

Cabbage patch

I should like cabbage. I’m part-German, part-Ukrainian. I should love cabbage. But I don’t. I associate cabbage with sauerkraut, cabbage rolls and kimchi, dishes I’ve never actually tasted because of the olfactory similarities to hot garbage.

Recently, though, I’ve started to realize that maybe it’s not the cabbage itself that’s the issue. Don’t hate the vegetable, hate the method. So, when half a head of Napa cabbage appeared in our fridge one day, I gave it a tentative sniff and decided to give it a shot.

Market Mondays

Last week, D. had a pretty brilliant idea for the seemingly impossible task of making Mondays less crummy: instead of heading home after work to cobble a meal together out of whatever is in the fridge, we would rendezvous with our friend and sort-of neighbour Jessica at the local farmer’s market and pull together a dinner from whatever we find there.

Chop to it

I guess I’m on a bit of a pepper kick (if two posts with dishes involving pepper can be called a kick).

I spotted the original recipe for this on Serious Eats this a day after I stumbled across the downtown location of Cumbrae Meats a week after reading about the latter in the Joe Beef cookbook. I love maple and black pepper and had been craving a good pork chop for a while, so it seemed like synchronicity at work.

Put some pep in your step

How were everyone’s holidays? We had a lovely time. The Christmas season was filled with long walks in the park and an awful lot of good brown liquor. I also spent a fair amount of time leafing through the latest additions to my cookbook arsenal, “The Art of Living According to Joe Beef" and Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home.” It was good.