Comfort Foods and Indulgences

There must be as many ways to make chili as there are shades of Sherwin-Williams paints. There’s no right or wrong way to make chili. It’s all about what pleases your taste buds. And, I’m always willing to give a new twist to a pot of chili.

Dennis Weimann, News Director/Anchor of Lakeland News at Lakeland Public Television sent me an email the other day and shared a chili recipe he had developed. He was planning to make a pot that day. Maybe he’s getting ready for the next United Way Chili Cook-off in Bemidji. I examined the list of ingredients. First, I noticed it had beans and meat. That’s important to me. I can eat a chili with beans and meat or with beans only. I don’t mean to make any of my Texas friends shudder, but I just can’t call it chili if there is only meat with no beans in the pot.

As my eyes moved further down the list of ingredients, I began to see a side of Dennis Weimann that amazed me. I had no idea he was a spice guy. A chili head. A lover of heat.

Pizza is local. A guy from Cincinnati traveling in Italy will thumb his nose at the pizza because it’s not what he used to eat in Ohio when he was going through puberty. Italians are no different. I know Romans who make rude gestures when they talk about the pizza from Naples.

“The crust is too thick — and then it falls apart in the middle. It is without structure.”

I’ve eaten a lot of pizza in Naples; I’ve downed an obscene number of pies at Baffetto in Rome; I’ve had Sicilian pizza in Sicily, Pugliese pizza in Puglia and Ligurian pizza in Liguria (excellent, by the way) and pizza, at its best, is totally local, which means to say it reflects the personality and the groceries of its neighborhood.

Obviously I’m not referring here to pizza chains, which produce cookie-cutter pies of no interest. Nor am I referring to take-out pizza, which is an abomination. Take-out pizza absorbs the taste and smell of the cardboard it travels in. By the time it arrives you may as well just eat the box. No, I’m talking about real pizza.

With its classic Provençal flavors, this dish puts you in the heart of Provençe. Featuring herbes de Provençe, one of my favorite herb combinations, it's one of the easiest ways to bring the flavors of southern France into your kitchen. The Provençal herbs consist of a mixture of savory, fennel, basil, thyme, and lavender. Provençal dishes are known for their earthy, rich flavors beginning with quality olive oil and fresh ingredients. Extra-virgin olive oil is perfect for this recipe for its fruity flavor, reminiscent of the sweet air of the Mediterranean coast. And fennel, the classic Provencal vegetable, lends its sweet aroma and licorice taste to brighten the dish.

If there ever was an easy one-pot meal, this recipe is it. It's as simple as spatchcocking a Cornish hen, marinating it in lemon juice and herbs, and then roasting it on a bed of garlic, onion, fennel, and red bell pepper. The spatchcocking technique is basically removing the back bone, breaking and removing the breast bone, cutting off the wing tips, and laying the bird flat. This method makes for all around browned skin and faster cooking time. As the hen roasts, the vegetables underneath soften, mellow, and meld with its drippings while the meat reaches succulent tenderness. This recipe can also be made with additional Cornish hens or chicken.

Oh.

No, really, oh. Oh as in “Oh my, these brownies”  and “Oh damn, these brownies.”  Oh as “Oh I can’t believe this recipe is so amazing” and “Oh there goes any bit of self control I had.”

Get the picture?

You can roll your eyes a bit when you say “Oh”.  It helps.

Even though I don’t claim to have the world’s largest sweet tooth and go for salty over sweet most days, I can’t help but claim this brownie recipe as one of the best I’ve ever tasted. Because to me, brownies seem like the perfect treat in theory. Chocolately, studded with fun things like nuts or fruit, small and compact and enough to satisfy thanks to their rich nature. But sometimes, well, you can’t help but feel let down sometimes when you bite into a brownie that’s dry, too moist or not moist enough, tastes like a mix or worse, doesn’t resemble a brownie at all.