All American Fall Dinner

I love when it gets cool outside. Why? because then it is time for me to make chili!

Chili is such an American dish.

The main ingredients, beans, tomatoes and chiles, both sweet bell types and dried spicy were all cultivated originally in the Americas.

For my chili, I use black beans, more accurately, black turtle beans, because they are naturally full of antioxidants. A member of the common bean family that has spread through the world to include snap or string beans, shell beans such as the French flagelot and Italian Borlotti, pinto, white, kidney, pink and yellow beans.

Tomatos were also native to Central and South American and have become the most commonly cultivated fruit in the world. Fruit? Vegetable? Eh... It really is a fruit, but we eat it like a vegetable... except for my mother and the Angel... Someday I will look up the picture of the Angel's first tomato.... she ate it straight from the fridge like an apple.... she was 15 months old. Yeah, the diaper rash was wicked.

And crazy is what the Europeans thought the Aztecs were when they saw them eating those tomatoes... See, the conquistadors recognized that the tomato was a member of the deadly nightshade family... along with the eggplant, tobacco, chile peppers and potatoes. But the reality is that the fruit of the tomato is edible.. very edible. I oven roasted some tomatoes by quartering some romas and drizzling them with olive oil, salt and pepper and baking them in the oven until they start to carmelize. The flavor gets sweeter and smokier and are a nice addition to the canned fruit.

The last major ingredient are the chiles. The chile's also a member of those crazy nightshades... but like the tomatos and beans quickly spread throughout the world. We call them peppers, but that was a misnomer that was caused by Columbus... having found chiles when he landed in Santo Domingo, he felt that they must somehow be related to the pepper (piper nigrum, et. al) because of their spiciness. (Also as Columbus had failed to find the gold or other spices that he was tasked to locate, he probably felt that should come home with something that Queen Isabella was hoping to locate!) As sailors began to trade the goods that they found in the New World throughout the Old, these new "peppers" spread. Today, India is the largest producer of chiles (how is that for irony? Columbus searches for India and pepper and finds chiles that are then exported to India who then produces huge numbers of them).

My version of chili includes fresh and dried, mild and spicy peppers.. and because I can't over-spice the chili because of the girls delicate (cough) palates, I ended up adding chili sauce too! My other ingredients include a small amount of finely ground beef (I find that it browns and breaks up better...) onions, a beer (to deglaze the pan after the browning... I like to get all the flavor that I can out of the meat), oregano and then coriander seed and cumin that I grind together in my mortar in pestle.... oh, and my secret ingredient (also of American origin), cocoa powder... it worked for the Aztecs and Maya... it works for me too... Everyone always notices it, but they NEVER know what it is.

Yeah for fall and chili!

A meal fit for a Tsar!

That is what the girls fixed for us last night.

Beef Stroganoff in fact.


So elegant, so tasty... such an old dish...

It turns out that beef braised in sour cream has been a classic part of Russian cuisine since the medieval period. Often the classic dish was flavored with mustard but did not include onions or mushrooms.

In fact, it was not until the fall of Imperial Russia that the dish became popular. It was brought to the U.S. by Russian and Chinese immigrants (where it was a very popular dish) and was served over rice or noodles.

The name Stroganoff is also something of a mystery. We know that Russian dishes are commonly named for the household that the chef worked in rather than the chef himself... So as nearly as we can tell Beef Stroganoff is named after the prominent Russian family.

For my girls, this was one of the first dishes that they learned to make. It gave them pride to be able to tell people that they could make something that sounds so impressive and elegant.

Boston Tea Part, Part Deux

HA!

I am vindicated further....

I was reading an account of the Boston Tea Party in History Bites, by Judith Millidge and discovered the morning after the Tea Party, one of the "revelers", George Hewes (1742-1840, shoemaker, militiaman, privateer), reported that the boxes of tea dumped the previous evening were seen floating in the harbor and boats we dispatched to make sure that the tea sank in order to make it unusable.

Additionally, he fought with another 'patriot' to make sure that the other man did not steal some of the cheap british tea for his own personal use.

Salad? Groovy!

I was finishing up my kid-cooked dinner of hot dogs and buttered macaroni last night. But I needed a little something more. So, after searching the fridge and finding slim pickings (we are cleaning out the fridge and pantry in anticipation of the return to the auld sod), I turned to a childhood favorite.

Salad.

And not just any kind of salad. Chopped iceberg lettuce and the dressing of my choice. In this case, red wine vinaigrette.

As I chewed through my cool crunchy treat, I thought about the lowly iceberg lettuce and wondered if it had ever had any respect?

And the truth is? Not really. Not outside the United States anyway. Within the U.S., iceberg lettuce was the epitome of 1950's, 1960's American culture. Readily available, uncomplicated and bland.

Outside? well kind of the same thing. We all enjoyed it, albeit from a guilty pleasure standpoint. Otherwise, we get to make fun of it.

But here is the thing.

Lettuce is wild!

It's antecedents were full of trouble.

For instance, Herodotus, Father of History, tells a story about Persian kings were serving salads at state dinners in the 5th and 6th century BCE. But when do you serve the salad? At the beginning of the end of the meal? Well, there seemed to have been a debate about it even in the ancient world. The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all believed that salad induced sleep and therefore should be eaten at the end of the meal. But there were others that felt that lettuces stimulated appetites and even male virility (think fast bolting plants and dripping white liquids).

That liquid? Well it is a milky chemical called lactucarium, or lettuce opium. And it is a mild psychotropic, sedative and analgesic. For this reason, the Emperor Domitian would service salads at the beginnings of his state dinners in order to torture his guests as falling asleep in the presence of the Emperor would be the height of rudeness.

And lettuce opium? When reduced it forms a smokable paste that has been used in the U.S. since 1799.

Maybe that is what Leona’s was thinking of when they named their salad the Psychedelic Salad.

Either way, it is groovy, man.

The Boston Tea Party Was a Lie

Yeah,

You heard me!

It was.

Just like George Washington and his cherry tree, this American myth needs to be shot down too.

Turns out the Sons of Liberty were not protesting the tea tax, they were saving their lucrative tea smuggling operation. See some of the Sons, specifically John Hancock, was illegally importing tea from the Dutch East Indies Company, bypassing British Customs and selling the tea in the 13 original colonies. Sweet eh?

Now, there was a tea tax and there was a protest. And it was working. With the illegal tea available at cheaper prices the colonists had all but ceased purchasing tea through legal sources. We win! YEAH!!!!

Except for one little problem.

The British East India Company was not thrilled to have all this extra tea available in their warehouses. So they cut their prices. LOW.... So low, that the price of tea was now below the pre-tax price. How low was that? Lower than Hancock and Co. could afford to import illegal tea for. (and yes, I know that sentence is ungrammatical)

And that is how is the Boston Tea Party came to happen. It didn't occur to stop the British from selling OVER-PRICED tea to the American colonists... It happened to stop the American colonists from buying CUT-RATE-priced tea.

Think of that the next time you want a spot...

Thank Biggie for making me remember that story and enjoy your trip to Bean-town! Maybe you too can be banned from the Freedom Trail.