::: Daniel and Boris cook Chili :::


Daniel and Boris cook Chili
Since our trademark "topsoil chili" and related concoctions that unite the sacred "six B" ingredients are among our favorite dishes, it was a sure thing that we had to try Marcus J Ranum's recipe for disaster. Someone who describes a chili like Marcus does is clearly well versed in the finer arts of putting a slab of beef to decent use.
What the "six B" are, you askin? Well, the six sacred ingredients are: Beef. Bacon. Beans. Beer. Barlic. Bonions. If you throw generous amounts of these six ingredients together and spice the mixture up with some ground chile, chances are the resulting chili will be pretty edible. The fact that Marcus, almost in heresy, dared to leave out no less than two of the six ingredients made us both suspicious and wondering, so there was no way around trying it out. For this attempt, we decided to follow Marcus' recipe as close as feasible. The one substantial change we had to make was the quantities - there were only two of us, and reading Marcus' BOM (bill of materials) it sure sounds like he's about to feed a crowd. We also want to note that Marcus seems to have forgotten to add salt. No, we ain't fond of overly salted chili either, but cooking it without any salt at all seems a bit too fundamentalistic to us. An oversight, most likely. Also, we'd recommend that you deviate slightly from Marcus' original in your choice of chile powder. Ground New Mexico Red, spiced up with some Cayenne already works fine, but you get an even better and more complex taste if you throw in some ground Guajillo or Ancho, and add some nutmeg and a dash of crunched Yerba Buena. These minor deviations were the only run-time modifications we made to Marcus' Open Source Chili With Attitude (MOSCWA). We are happy to report that the resulting chili turned out to be pretty damn edible. Adding the raspberry jam scared the kidney beans out of us, but we are pleased to note that, when moderately measured and liberally counter-balanced with a healthy dose of Guinness and chile mixture, the raspberry taste pretty much vanishes and only a reminescing lingering note of it is left in the final dish. All in all, something we'll cook again. Nice one, Marcus! (back to overview)