[You were probably wondering when I’d get back to posting about food. Here you go.]
When I was cooking for myself, chili was my standard Sunday dinner menu item. It was cheap and provided leftovers for lunch. Chili was also adaptable to whatever meat or beans I had on hand. (Yes, Texans, I usually made chili with beans when I lived in Dallas. Deal with it.) These days I don’t make chili very often. Julian prefers the Texas all-meat-all-the-time recipe. However, every so often we make Cincinnati chili.
The Cincinnati variant of chili has a unique set of ingredients and structure. The recipe in the latest edition of Joy of Cooking includes allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and unsweetened chocolate. All well and good; however, the Joy recipe calls for boiling the ground meat. We do not boil hamburger in this home. I wound up browning the meat and adding the spices, onion, garlic, and tomato sauce. That was left to simmer. As dinnertime approached, I grated cheese, cooked up some spaghetti, and chopped some more onion. I also microwaved some canned red beans.
For an authentic five-way Cincinnati chili, one ladles chili on top of the spaghetti, tops that with beans, then sprinkles the top with onion and cheese. Some versions also put oyster crackers on top, but that’s something we never have in the house. A fine weekend dinner.
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