Grilled cheese panini and chili

Cooking can get you what you need in life. That’s more or less the underlying message of a couple of cookbooks I’ve been reading lately, starting with Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year.” Unlike most cookbooks where you skip the forward and skim through the recipes, this is a book you read, almost as much as it is a cookbook. It follows the longtime Gourmet magazine editor’s journey of recovery in the kitchen after Condé Nast abruptly pulled the plug on that bastion of all things food-related.

It’s one of those books that make me pause frequently while reading because it resonates perhaps a bit too much. Any journalist who has been herded en masse into a cold dark conference room to hear the latest grim news that presages mass job losses can relate. But it’s also a very hopeful book, with the power of cooking pulling her out of the darkest hours. She’s saved by the rhythmic comfort of cooking, the rituals of gathering the best of the season and translating it into simply good food. It makes me want to play hooky and go on a shopping tour of all the food purveyors of the city.

Reichl’s cookbook is filled with lush photography of the country and food. My only nit: the gimmick of tweets quoted at the beginning of each entry gets old about half way through her “year,” but it’s a small gripe about an otherwise great book. If you try this cookbook and want to learn more about how Reichl turned into the kind of cook she is, her memoir “Tender at the Bone” is an entertaining read as well. 

Reichl’s approach to cooking doesn’t begrudge effort, but it isn’t exacting about detail or ingredients. The recipes enable flexibility to cook with what’s at hand to achieve the food you want to eat. That’s appropriate for these two recipes I tried first, chosen because I had the ingredients more or less on hand on one of those no-way-in-hell-am-I-going-outside recent weekends.

The diva of grilled cheese

Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year”

Ingredients

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 garlic cloves, minced

4 green onions chopped fine, or the white parts of a small leek

2 large shallots, chopped fine

1½ cups grated cheddar, divided (use the tastiest you can find)

4 slices sourdough bread

Butter and mayonnaise

Method

Mix together the chopped onion, shallots and garlic. (Basically she suggests chopping up whatever oniony items you’ve got handy.) Add all but 2 tablespoons of the cheese and toss mixture together.

Spread one side of each piece of bread with butter. (OK, so there was no softened butter in my stone-cold house, so I used aioli. I know how to cheat.) Spread mayonnaise thinly on the outside of the bread to help keep it from sticking to the grill. Divide the cheese mixture in half and put on two slices of bread. Top with remaining bread slices. Press a tablespoon of grated cheese firmly onto the tops of the sandwiches. Place on heated griddle (or in a panini press, as I did) and grill about four minutes a side until the cheese is “softly melted,” as she so wonderfully puts it.

Rating: Makes two ooey-gooey cheese sandwiches. Much as I loved the combination of Campbell’s tomato soup and Velveeta grilled cheese sammies as a child, this is a version worth growing up for. The best touch is what happens to that layer of cheese on the outside, which turns into a golden brown layer that's become part of the bread. Dave’s take: “I guess unemployment is good for something.” 

 

Basic chili

Adapted from “My Kitchen Year,” by Ruth Reichl. She includes a recipe for making your own chili powder, but I didn’t have those ingredients on hand so I can’t vouch for the element she feels is key. I was just congratulating myself on having fresh oregano growing in the basement and some of the summer’s tomatoes in the freezer since I was out of canned.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 medium onions, diced

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves, chopped if they’re large

1 tablespoon chili powder, divided

1 teaspoon cumin

1 pound ground beef (she used bison; I used some nice lean meat from Hilltop)

3 chipotle chiles in adobe sauce

28 ounces of canned tomatoes

1 12-ounce bottle of dark beer

1 cup chicken stock

1½ cup cooked black beans

2 ounces dark chocolate, optional

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, optional

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until tender. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add oregano, 2 teaspoons chili powder, cumin and salt and pepper. Add ground beef and cook until no longer pink, stirring to break up the chunks. Puree the chipotle chiles. Add to pot along with tomatoes and remaining chili powder. Add beer and broth. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add beans, and chocolate and balsamic vinegar, if using, and simmer for another 10 minutes to let flavors meld.

Rating: It’s a decent chili, which I’d say serves about 6. Perhaps not the best I’ve ever made, but it was reasonably tasty. The original recipe calls for even more chipotles, but that was all I had in the house, and I think any more adobe would have overwhelmed the flavor. If I try it again, I think I’d opt for more chili powder and slightly less chipotle.

If you want to see her chili powder recipe, click here.