"San Francisco Firehouse Favorites" - (Super Bowl) Chili Beans

Date I made this recipe:  Sunday, February 3, 2013 – Super Bowl Sunday

San Francisco Firehouse Favorites – Great Recipes by the Bay City’s Famous Firemen Chefs by Tony Calvello, Bruce Harlow, Georgia Sackett & Shirley Sarvis

Published by:  Bonanza Books

© 1965

Recipe:  Chili Beans – p. 142

Well, it’s Super Bowl Sunday and you know what that means, right?  Chili!!!!  (Or Mexican—you should have seen the Mexican food ingredients flying off my grocery store’s shelves.)

This year’s Super Bowl game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers was played in New Orleans, a city with phenomenal food, and so I thought about splitting the difference and featuring foods from the host city instead of one of the team cities.  And yet the books and recipes in my collection featuring New Orleans food were a little highbrow for a football game.  I mean come on, Oyster’s Rockefeller?  No.  Crawfish?  Not in these parts.  And so I scrapped those books for now, reserving them for an event more suited to New Orleans food – Mardi Gras!

So with Plan B in place, I set out to find suitable food from either Baltimore or San Francisco and even that proved to be a challenge until I unearthed this San Francisco Firehouse Favorites from the back of a shelf.  And right there, just when I needed it the most, was a recipe for Chili Beans.  (I was rather bummed it wasn’t Five-Alarm Chili to fit in better with a fire-fighter theme but beggars can’t be choosers).

Now truth be told, I only favored slightly the 49ers for this game but only by a smidgen.  The 49’ers beat my beloved Green Bay Packers to advance to the next round of the playoffs and so that did not make me happy BUT they are part of the NFC Conference and so I suppose I should be loyal to my own conference, right?

On the other hand…the Baltimore Ravens (or Baltimore “Raisins” as one friend’s 7 year-old dubbed them) beat the Evil Empire a/k/a the New England Patriots, the team I love to hate the most to get to the Super Bowl.  For that alone, I salute them.  But I wasn’t sure I could root for them seeing as how they represent the AFC and all and so when the San Francisco cookbook landed in my lap, there it stayed.

Still, I have to tell you that I (and my brother) am a very superstitious football viewer and I felt like I was almost asking for it by favoring one city’s food over another.  And sure enough, San Francisco was in danger of being embarrassed when the third quarter score was Baltimore 28, 49’ers 6.  The 49’ers looked a mess.  My chili clearly was the cause. Oh Lord, what had I done, what had I done?

And then

The lights went out in the Superdome (not to be confused with The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, a popular song in the 70’s and most certainly not with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band – yes, the band’s name is The Band.).  For 35 minutes, players sat on the sidelines, did warm-ups and just generally hung out while Superdome workers and the electric company scrambled to get everyone out of the heart of darkness.  The danged thing, of course, was that commercial ad sponsors thought that – and this is so silly, really – the game would be going on during that 35 minute period and so nobody bought ad time and so there was nothing to watch except the non-game.  This was bad but no use crying about it now.  In case you were unaware, two brothers ended up as the head coach of each of these teams, and conspiracy theorists posited that the San Francisco coach, Jim Harbaugh, “arranged” for the power outage to give his team a chance against his brother, John’s team, the Ravens.  Huh. As far as conspiracy theories go, this is not a bad one because...

…The 49ers took this downtime as an opportunity to get their mojo back and once power was restored, scored touchdown after touchdown until – can you believe it – they pulled within 3 of the Ravens.  Well, this was beyond exciting, folks!  BUT as these things go, the 49ers failed to score in the final minute or so which meant that they failed to go ahead of the Ravens which meant that they lost the game. 

But the chili was saved!

And speaking of saving, there is no job more admired in American than fire (or police) and these brave men and women know a whole lot more about saving things than I do.  This book, San Francisco Firehouse Favorites, is enhanced by black and white photos of men (in 1965, it was all men, all the time) in action, putting out fires.  Way too cool for school if you ask me!  (As are the “retro” fire trucks pictured in the book).  These photos remind me of my hometown’s volunteer fire department.  Every 4^th of July, the fire station divides into teams for a water fight in the middle of what we consider to be our Main Street.  It was a 4^th of July tradition dating back to when I was a kid  and it continues today, as does the sounding of the 9:00 fire alarm signaling curfew for young girls and boys -  talk about retro!

Although this chili will not set off any fire alarms, it was darned good but the instructions were a little off.  Instruction one was to cook the beans for 3 hours and this makes sense as you don’t want to break a tooth on a hard bean.  Instruction number two was to cook the chili for 3 more hours (or until beans are tender) and this didn’t make any sense at all.  I don’t want to break a tooth but neither do I want overly-mushy beans.  I think my total elapsed time was about 4 hours or so and that made everything just right.

As to ingredients, I have to admit that “stewed tomatoes” threw me for a loop when I got to the canned vegetable shelves because there were about a million different brands!  (Okay, slight exaggeration.)  When I was a kid, stewed tomatoes were just tomatoes that had been cooked a long time but I guess somewhere along the way, the recipe got all “fancy” because now they come with onions and celery and peppers.  Figuring that a few more ingredients couldn’t hurt, I added a can to my cart.

The “red chili sauce” proved to be a harder nut to crack because I wasn’t sure what it was.  Once again, grocery has grown up right before my very eyes because there were all kinds of variations of a red chili sauce, not one of which was the right size or the right level of heat (which is to say “none!”) for my recipe.  You may recall I mentioned earlier that Mexican food items were flying off the shelves while I was shopping and the chili sauce aisle was decimated.  So I improvised and bought a small can of red tomato sauce and then added cumin and Mexican oregano and garlic and a few more things I had on hand to try to approximate what I failed to purchase.  I think the result was okay but you should probably go with the real deal if you can.  And I’d suggest you not make this recipe on either Super Bowl Sunday or Cinco de Mayo because you’re gonna be in big trouble at the checkout when the item you want is not on the shelf.

And finally, remember that just like the ocean, one should not turn one’s back on a stovetop, especially when cooking greasy items like ground chuck.  Not that I did but fire safety is fire safety folks! 

So to recap Super Bowl XLVII, otherwise known as Super Bowl 47 (I hate when they use Roman Numerals; it messes with my head because I can never remember what the hell “L” stands for):  the Ravens were poised for a near blow-out over the 49ers when the lights went out, not in Georgia.  Meanwhile, back at the chili ranch, Ann started cooking the beans that took three hours to make.  The lights came back on, Ann added the additional chili ingredients, San Francisco started to pull even with the Ravens, Ann checked the chili to make sure the beans were not burning (cook responsibly, people), many commercials were aired after the lights came back on but not during since nobody planned on there being a 35 minutes outage (except maybe the 49ers coach), San Francisco had a chance to pull ahead with minutes left but they didn’t, and San Francisco’s coach was all mad and was yelling for the refs to call “holding” (“was it holding or was it not holding?”) and it was not holding and Ann served her chili, added some cheese (because it’s chili after all), the 49ers lost, the brothers shook hands, the parents were a mess (I mean where DO your loyalties lie at a time like this), the Super Bowl ended, I went back to watching a Law & Order marathon, cleaned my kitchen and called it a day and we are now enjoying leftovers of our San Francisco chili.  Amen.

See you next year!

Chili Beans – makes 8 servings – recipe from Charlie Radford, Engine Company No. 32

1 pound (about 2 cups) dry pinto beans

Water

1 pound ground chuck

1 large onion, chopped

1 small can (1 pound) stewed tomatoes

1 small can (10 ounces) red chili sauce

¼ cup vinegar (Ann’s Note:  It doesn’t say what kind to use so I went with “white” vinegar)

1 tablespoon chili powder

Dash of liquid hot pepper seasoning

Salt and pepper

Cover beans with cold water, cover, bring to a boil, then simmer for 3 hours.  (Add water if necessary.)  In a frying pan, slowly brown ground beef and when crumbly, add onion, and sauté until limp; add to beans along with remaining ingredients except for salt and pepper.  Cover and simmer for three hours or until beans are tender and liquid cooked down to consistency desired.  (Ann’s Note:  three more hours will incinerate your beans, necessitating a call to the fire department.  Don’t do that.  Check after another half hour to an hour then serve.)  (Cook uncovered if necessary to reduce liquid).  Add salt and pepper to taste.  (Some people like me, like to add cheese and maybe even some sour cream.  It’s the Super Bowl – go for broke!)

"The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" - Coppa (or Salami) & Warm Parslied Potato Salad with Roasted Pepper

 Date I made this recipe:  May 27, 2012

The Zuni Café Cookbook – a compendium of recipes & cooking lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant by Judy Rodgers

Published by:  W. W. Norton

ISBN:  0393020436

Recipe:  Coppa (or Salami) & Warm Parslied Potato Salad with Roasted Peppers – p. 90-91

People, summer isn’t even here yet and here I am “wearing” my summer sloth suit as it has taken me days to get my act together to post this recipe.  I sure don’t have outstanding weather as an excuse as it rained more than it was sunny over Memorial Day weekend.  I don’t know—maybe overall ennui is the cause?  Maybe I’m practicing being listless in the summer heat?  I’m not sure.

At any rate, this didn’t start out to be a Memorial Day recipe post but that’s how it ended up.  In actuality, I looked through this cookbook intending to make something for my 21^st wedding anniversary on May 18^th.  But the 18^th was the day before a major bike ride for my husband and so I made a pasta dish with a beef sauce for him from another cookbook instead so that (hopefully) the protein and carb combination would help with the ride.

Still, The Zuni Café (cookbook) is important to us because when we celebrated our 10^th wedding anniversary in 2001, we went to San Francisco, and as luck would have it, stayed in a hotel next door to The Zuni Café.  At the time, the restaurant hadn’t yet made a name for itself and that was a good thing because I hate it when a place gets popular and turns into a three-ring circus.

I remember two things about the Zuni:  one, that Andy and I have this great photo of us at the bar, raising martini glasses, lit up like Christmas trees after an arduous flight from Minneapolis to SF and two, I had a dish involving sausages and peas (and possibly, or possibly not, seafood). I recall it being divine but sadly, that recipe is not in the cookbook.  No matter as I found many yummy substitutes instead.

Getting back to the flight and subsequent cocktails, we had the unfortunate displeasure to sit in front of a family with maybe three or four little kids, mom and dad and grandma.  One of said children kept kicking my husband’s seats all through the flight.  We finally gave up and moved a few seats over (we were in the dreaded middle row) and were horrified to see the seat being treated like a punching bag after he vacated it.  Little cretin!  And that goes for grandma too, who kept using my seat as a means to get in and out of hers the entire trip.  Let’s say grandma got up quite often and every single time my seat went back and then banged me on the head after she let go of it.  So you can see why a cocktail was in order.

Now, The Zuni Café prides itself on “farm fresh” food and the cookbook includes a lot of homemade recipes for things like (soup) stocks and that is fine if you have the time but I don’t.  I didn’t end up making anything that included those stocks but just so you know they are in there.

What I did make was a non-mayonnaise potato salad that my husband enjoyed; he is not a big fan of mayonnaise or Miracle Whip salads.  (Good thing he didn’t grow up in my house where we used Miracle Whip all the time as Hellman’s was hard for us to find.)  I also loved the fact that it was not all “goopy” with mayonnaise, “goopy” being a term my late friend, Carol, like to toss around when it came to salads or casseroles that were heavy on cheese or mayo.  And in a weird way, this salad tied into our wedding anniversary because when we got married, we went to France and Italy for our honeymoon.  I am also half-Italian.  So you see, don’t you, that this recipe was meant to happen?  Of course you do!

On Sunday (not Monday, Memorial Day), we shopped for the ingredients and then we bought two pre-made onion and gorgonzola burgers from Whole Foods to grill (sticking with the theme!).  All was well when Andy fired up the grill but all was not well when he finished as a major thunderstorm rolled through Minneapolis at warp speed and it was raining cats and dogs by the time he got inside, burgers intact – whew!

So we sat down, had dinner, and just as we were finishing, the power went off and damn it all, it stayed off for hours, causing us to miss Mad Men.  I hate when that happens!  Thankfully, Comcast On Demand had it available when power was restored the next morning! 

On a side note, I told Andy that I am totally enamored with charring peppers on our gas stove top.  Not that I’m going to turn into a pyro, but there is something about watching a pepper almost go up in flames that is fascinating to me!  Oh, and the result is great as well.

So here you go!  This recipe should work well with any number of entrees and is pretty easy to put together. 

PS—This is yet another book I purchased at Arc’s Value Village Thift Store for something like $6.99.

Coppa (or Salami) & Warm Parslied Potato Salad with Roasted Peppers – about 4 servings

Generous 1 pound peeled yellow-fleshed potatoes cut into irregular 1-inch chunks or a little smaller

Salt

About 1 tablespoon tightly packed, coarsely chopped, fresh flat-leaf parsley

About 4-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

About 2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar

Freshly cracked black pepper

About 4 ounces coppa, sliced 1/16 inch thick or salami

1 large or 2 small red or green peppers (about 12 ounces total), roasted or charred, peeled, and cut or torn into wide strips

12 oil-cured meaty black olives, such as Nyons

Ann’s Notes:  Salami was easier to find so I used that instead of coppa.  But know that all salamis are not alike and so if you have the chance to taste test first, go with one that is a little milder in taste so that it doesn’t overpower the rest of the ingredients.  I also used about 1.5 tablespoons of white wine vinegar and came close to almost having a taste that was just a tad too tart on my hands.  I suggest adding 1 tablespoon first and then seeing if it is to your liking.  And I only needed one gargantuan red pepper (do they grow anything smaller?) for this recipe.

Place the potatoes in a 2- to 4-quart saucepan and add cold water to cover.  Salt the water very liberally, stir to dissolve, and taste – the water should taste a little too salty. (The author uses a generous 1-1/2 teaspoons sea salt per quart of water.)  Bring to a simmer, uncovered.  Cook at a bare simmer, stirring once or twice, until the potatoes are tender and the edges are starting to soften, usually about 6 minutes.  Drain well.

As soon as they have stopped steaming, transfer the potatoes to a wide bowl.  Using a rubber spatula, fold in the parsley and enough olive oil to coat well.  The edges will break down a little, shedding potato into the oil.  Cover with plastic wrap and leave for a few minutes so the parsley perfumes the oil and softens.

Fold in the vinegar and black pepper, both to taste.

Arrange the slices of coppa (or salami) and the strips of roasted pepper on plates or a platter, and mound the juicy potatoes and the olives to one side.  (Or, if you are Ann, combine everything into one bowl and serve.  With just me and Andy at home, we are less concerned with presentation and more concerned with eating, already!)

"I Never Forget A Meal" - Classic Bolognese Meat Sauce

Date I made this recipe: September 25, 2011

I Never Forget a Meal by Michael Tucker
Published by: Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0-316-85625-8
Recipe: Classic Bolognese Meat Sauce – p. 44-45

One of my favorite TV commercials is one where a couple of animals are watching TV in someone’s house, (Well that’s narrowing it down, isn’t it?) and one of them is using the remote, changing channels, saying something like “Nope, nope, seen it, seen it…” (Try as I might, I could not find this commercial on the internet. Drats.)

That’s about how I felt about all the cookbooks I pulled off the shelf since, oh say, August. “Nope, nope, not quite right, seen it….”

I don’t know why I was so indecisive (except I have a lot on my plate, and I don’t mean my dinner plate), but I must have let The Picnic Cookbook (by Nika Hazelton) sit for weeks before deciding that nothing in the book tripped my trigger. Frost warnings were sounding by the time I put it back on the shelf.

The same held true for the Coastal Living (magazine) Cookbook. So long, summer, maybe next year?

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I pulled two New York cookbooks off the shelf and then just couldn’t make up my mind about what to make. By the time I decided that maybe a cheesecake would be nice, it was 9/15, my bank account was nearly on fumes and, as most of you know, cheese cake ingredients are expensive so there went that.

Also collecting dust was a Mexican cookbook written entirely in Spanish. I can read Spanish but by the time I got around to actually translating one of the recipes, Texas had decided to rejoin Mexico and we’re now back to 49 states. Kidding. Maybe.

So there I was, at my computer, once again staring at my collection waiting for inspiration, and I spied actor/author Michael Tucker’s I Never Forget a Meal.

Ha! I thought. Well I never forget to…um…cook? Clean? Cook and clean?

Needless to say, game on!

First, for those of you who don’t know who Michael Tucker is (and you know who you are), he played the lovable Stuart Markowitz on the TV show, LA Law. LA Law ran from 1986-1994 (was it really that long ago? And yes, I know this dates me), and told the story of an amazing cast of characters working at an LA law firm (thus the title. Isn’t it amazing how that all works?). Michael Tucker, as attorney Stuart Markowitz, was married on TV and in real life to fellow actor Jill Eikenberry who played attorney Ann Kelsey. I loved those two!

But even more loveable than those two were Leland McKenzie (played by actor Richard Dysart) and Douglas Brackman, Jr. (hilariously played by actor Alan Rachins), founding partner and managing partner respectively of McKenzie Brackman law firm.

Every week, the long-winded Douglas Brackman would review the firm’s cases with the rest of the partners, and every time Leland would tell him to “Move along, Douglas.”

Can I tell you how much I love that line? I use it all the time, particularly in business meetings that are going long. Sadly, with the workplace getting younger by the minute, nobody knows what I’m talking about. But I do and am I not the only one who counts?

Okay, so before I move along myself, I must make one other comment and that is about the outfits, particularly the blouses worn by actress Susan Dey, who played attorney Grace Van Owen. All a friend of mine (who love clothes) had to say to me was “I bought a ‘Grace Van Owen’ blouse today” and I knew of what she spoke. One year she even made me a GVO blouse for my birthday (sniffle). Now is that a friend, or what?

So okay, back to Michael (Stuart Markowitz) Tucker, I loved him on the show and I love his books. And I particularly love that he and Jill have a house in Italy (and so he includes a lot of Italian recipes in his books). Or do I? Not long ago, I decided there’s only so much “I have a farm in Africa/villa in Italy/apartment in Paris” that I can stand (and no, I’m not jealous much) so by the third book, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read more. But hooray for us, it took a different path (talking about how he and Jill took care of Jill’s mom—and hat’s off to you for it) and we were all good again. The book I’m “reviewing” here is his first.

Unlike Michael, there are many meals best forgotten and only a few that are memorable. And here they are:

1. Somewhere in Florida, circa 1968, an Italian restaurant served me Italian Wedding Soup. Whether or not it was actually canned Chickarina Soup (made by Progresso and loved by me) is debatable but at that point, the entire state of Florida became my new, best friend. I would like to note that I was not quite nine at the time.
2. In the early 70’s, we went to San Francisco for a family vacation and stumbled into (and out of) a little Italian bar and restaurant that served us a wonderful four-course meal. I cannot recall what I had but I can recall that my dad was thrilled to be served tripe and that my teetotaler mother had way too much wine. It is one of my brother and my fondest memories.
3. While on our honeymoon in Provence visiting friends, we went to a newly-opened restaurant and were attended to by waiters in formal wear carrying around enormous domed platters of food. At one point, the waiter came up to us and whispered “Your fish is almost ready” and then when it arrived, he and another server counted to three before removing the domes. This has to be one of our favorite honeymoon stories. We had never before seen such behavior from servers and likely never will again. And talk about respect for that fish….
4. Let me just say that the bouef bourgignon at the Schlumpf Museum in France saved my life and possibly my honeymoon and that’s all you need to know about that.
5. All of the food we had on our trip to England in 1994. Eh, what?!
6. The meal I had with my friend, Susan, at Gramercy Tavern, in NYC, one week after I took the Minnesota Bar Exam. I couldn’t tell you for certain what I ate except it was delicious. The lack of certainty is caused, in part, by the most excellent martini I imbibed before dinner…and after…but I digress.
7. Can we talk about Marcus Samuelsson’s newer Harlem restaurant, Red Rooster? We went with another couple this summer and ordered that night’s special—braised and then BBQ’d (if I’m recalling this right) pork butt…or shoulder…for three (or four as it turned out) that came with corn bread and to which we added an order of mac and greens. Prior to that we ordered and shared two appetizers. And then we had dessert. We are now all proud members of the clean-plate club. And major fans of the restaurant. And are probably 10 pounds heavier. Now if I could just have that recipe for the spread that came with the bread….
8. And my number-one all time memorable meal was at Delfina restaurant in San Francisco. It was 2001, I was about to start law school and to celebrate that and our 10th wedding anniversary, my husband and I went to SF. And then we snuck in at Delfina and the rest is part of my culinary history. We started with bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil, followed by pasta with fresh beans, peas and goat cheese, followed by sea bass with an olive tapenade (and to be clear, we are not usually fish fans), followed by (I think) cherry clafoutis for dessert. And wine, lots of great California wine. (We brought back 6 bottles). Ten years later, it still beats out all other competitors.

Now, as to this recipe, Hey Mikey, we liked it! In my family (from Sicily), we do not usually make a Bolognese when marinara sauce with meatballs and sausage on the side will do, but this was good. If I have complaints, they are minor, for instance, faithful readers know that I don’t like when recipes aren’t specific and so when Michael says to “add 6 cups canned tomatoes, drained,” what kind of tomatoes did he mean? Because people, Kowalski’s grocery store had about a bazillion different kinds of tomatoes. You could get whole, diced, petite diced, stewed, tomatoes without salt, tomatoes with salt, tomatoes with basil and other Italian spices, Mexican tomatoes (“You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay…”) and so on and so on (and on and on and on) and so for a minute, I didn’t know what to do.

So I used petite diced but I’m not sure that was the right choice as the sauce was chunkier than I like.

As to the addition of the milk (1 cup milk), well, again, what kind of milk (does whole make a difference?) and furthermore, is it me or shouldn’t this addition have made the sauce creamier, because if so, it still looked rather “liquidy” to me.

Finally, Michael said to “add the wine and cook until evaporated.” Huh? All of the wine evaporated or some of it? Because waiting for all of it to evaporate took a long time, and so to kill time, I added the wine to the sauce and then had some for myself. (Maybe that’s why it took longer than I thought?)

Anyway, at long last it was all done and it was good and tasty (and memorable!) and we served it with rigatoni and called it a day. (And please note that you can serve a hearty sauce like this with something delicate like angel hair pasta but you will be cursing your decision ever after as you will spend more time wiping it off yourself and others than making the sauce in the first place. Go with heartier pasta and you’ll be happy).

Classic Bolognese Meat Sauce – serves 8
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
1 large yellow onion
3 stalks celery with leaves
3 carrots
4 ounces pancetta, finely chopped
1 pound ground chuck
1 pound ground veal (not easy to find in the Twin Cities but Kowalski’s carries it)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 cups dry white wine
1 cup milk
Nutmeg (fresh is preferred but I used dried although sparingly)
6 cups canned tomatoes, drained (see comments above)

Heat the oil and butter in a heavy, deep pot. Finely chop the onion, celery, and carrots and sauté them until just cooked. Add the pancetta and cook for a few more minutes, then the ground chuck and veal, salt and pepper and cook gently until the meat has just lost its color. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Turn the heat down, add the milk and some freshly grated nutmeg. Let the milk evaporate. Add the tomatoes, stir, and let simmer for a few hours, stirring.