Four-Pot Vegetarian Chili

Plus: Chocolate Chess Pie, Ricotta Pancakes with Pear Compote, and Breakfast at Inga's Bar.

Hey everyone,

Are you feeling antsy about tomorrow? Do you want a big cooking project to keep you sane while the election results are slowly rolling in? Let me introduce you to the vegetarian chili that I made this weekend. Here’s a video to start things off:

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This recipe is inspired by this very strange one that I saw them make on Cook’s Country (part of my PBS cooking-show watching ritual). Actually, I just realized it was on America’s Test Kitchen — it’s confusing because they’re all the same hosts, though on A.T.K. Julia now has bangs.

Anyway, what makes it so strange is that it has SOY SAUCE in it. And pearl barley. And dried porcini mushrooms.

But where I took my own path less traveled was that I decided not to use canned beans and to cook dried beans in THREE SEPARATE POTS with mirepoix + a poblano chili.

Why did I do such a crazy thing? Because I was afeared that using canned beans would just be blah and that cooking the dried beans separately would produce incredible textures and flavors — because I’d be infusing the beans with all that extra bean cooking liquid. And you know what? It paid off.

There were some issues, of course. For starters: I ran out of room in my big giant pot once I added toasted ancho chilies blended with two cans of tomatoes and chilies in Adobo (I doubled the recipe). I had to ladle a bunch out into a separate pot to make this manageable.

But once it cooked down? It had sooooo much flavor. The porcini gives it umami, the toasted dried chilies gives it a fruitiness, the chilies in Adobo give it great heat, and the poblanos give it freshness. I served it up with all kinds of toppings: scallions, onions, cilantro, sour cream, cheddar cheese.

Look at these happy chili eaters:

If you want to make it, I put the recipe in the Instagram video caption or you can find the America’s Test Kitchen version here. You can decide if you want to cook the beans individually but I say it’s worth it.

For dessert last night, I made a chocolate chess pie using Virginia Willis’s recipe on Martha Stewart’s site.

What is a chess pie?

Apparently it gets its name from Southerner’s saying “it’s jess pie” (like “just pie”) and in a way, that makes sense, because it’s a pretty humble creation… this one had an all-butter crust that I proudly shaped and pre-baked myself.

The filling was eggs, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, buttermilk (a key ingredient), and melted chocolate and butter.

(Notice my new Mason Cash mixing bowl… I wanted to be just like the Great British Baking Show bakers!)

The resulting pie was decadent and flaky and had a great caramelized flavor from the dark brown crust. Of course I had to serve it with homemade whipped cream:

On Saturday morning, I whipped up ricotta pancakes (using Genevieve Ko’s recipe) with Meat Hook sausages and a pear compote that I made by sautéing peeled, cored, and sliced pears in butter with brown sugar and cinnamon.

A very brown breakfast, but that’s what made it so good.

And speaking of breakfast, we had breakfast yesterday with our pals Dorie and Damir at Inga’s Bar in Brooklyn Heights:

Their egg sandwich with maple sausage was far out. And their banana bread was insanely good — griddled and warm with chocolate in it and tons of whipped cream on top.

Hey let’s look at some links:

• Patricia Wells is auctioning off her personal collection of kitchen items… pretty incredible and fun to click through (My French Country Home);

• Martha Stewart gives her Netflix doc a “scalding” review (NYT);

• Analyzing Nora Ephron (NYT).

That’s all for today, folks!

Try to stay sane tomorrow…

Your pal,

Adam