Last week the New York Times had a great article on 101 Super Summer Salads, and Katrina and I tried #2.  It was easy, healthy, tasty, and refreshing; and it’s going in my recipe file.  Since tomatoes and peaches are in season, you might want to try it.  It’s as simple as this:

Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.

  During the Free Will Baptist Convention in Cincinnati, I occupied some of my time tracking down chili parlors.  There are about 180 of them in the city, and many of them were started by Greek immigrants in the early-to-mid 1900s.  Cincinnati chili has a secret ingredient.  Depending on the recipe, it has a bit of chocolate, cinnamon, and/or nutmeg to enhance the flavor.  It’s typically served on a small plate over a heaping pile of spaghetti, and, if you get it “five-way”, it’s covered with beans, onions, and a mountain of shredded cheddar cheese.

Two of these restaurants have morphed into big chains—Skyline and Gold Star.  They’re hard to beat.  But here are four great mom-and-pop chili parlors that I enjoyed, and if you’re going to be in Cincinnati you might want to check them out.

My favorite was Pleasant Ridge Chili at 6032 Montgomery Road.  Part of the charm was the ambiance.  This is a storefront parlor, not in the finest part of town — an old-time, 1960s café with canopy-covered booths, small tables squeezed down the middle, a counter at the front, and a juke box in the corner.  It was started by an old Greek fellow who still works there.  He told me he emigrated from Greece in the early 1940s and about six years later opened this restaurant with his own chili recipe.  His grandson now runs it.  I thought it was just great.

Camp Washington Chili is also a single-shop outfit, and it, too, was started by a Greek immigrant in the 1940s.  But the building is new, clean, and spacious; and the walls are lined with reviews from local and national magazines.  The chili didn’t seem to have as much of that unique, quaint Cincinnati taste, the noodles are a little thicker, the sauce was a little oilier, and the beans were pintos, not kidneys.  Jeff Nichols and I enjoyed it very much, but it probably wasn’t my favorite.

Blue Ash Chili has two locations, and I stopped at one near the interstate just north of the city.  This chili was great; not much different from Skyline, but their open air patio gave me the option of dining outside, which is always my favorite (weather permitting).  On the downside, I thought the chili had too little sauce and too much cheese.

Empress Chili is often rated the best by CinnChili aficionados.  I stopped there as I was leaving Cincinnati, but by that time I was just about chili-ed out.  But it was piping hot with that wonderful distinctive flavor, arranged in perfect proportions on a larger plate, and it probably deserves its applause.  If I’d had it earlier in the trip, I would have rated it the finest.

This little excursion into taste-testing and restaurant-reviewing took a toll, but someone has to do the research.  And although it’s going to be a long time before I want to look at another plate of Cincinnati chili, I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to taste a bit of meaty Midwestern, five-way, Greek-inspired Americana. 

PS – Tomorrow’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship is also about food, in a way.  The subject is the Fruit of the Spirit, in Galatians 5:22-23.  You’re invited to join us at 8:45 or 10:15.

  My favorite desserts are berries… anything to do with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries.  Last Saturday my daughter Grace and I picked up some fresh strawberries at the Farmer’s Market; and in the afternoon I noticed a simple Crème Anglaise recipe that was published that very day in the New York Times.  I tried it out on Katrina, and we both liked it.  It’s simple, elegant, and delicious.  Here’s all you do.

Put about 3/4 cup of almonds in the food processor and chop them into chunks.  Brown them up in a sauce pan, then add a cup of milk, a cup of cream, about 1/2 cup of sugar, and four egg yolks. 

Stir with a wire whisk — that calls for patience — maybe 10 minutes or so until the sauce thickens up some, making sure the mixture doesn’t boil.

Pour the hot sauce through a strainer to remove the almonds (save them for another dessert), chill, and ladle the crème over any bowl of any kind of berries.  You could serve this to the royal family and be berry happy to to it.

For the exact recipe and even a video showing how to do this, click here.  

Since we’re all economizing during the recession, I thought I’d give you my own recipe for beans and cornbread.  Well, beans….  I’ll deal with cornbread later.  I grew up on beans and cornbread; it was a staple of mountain living.  Our beans of choice were “October” beans, which resembled the Cranberry beans found in stories today, but I’m not sure they’re the same.

There are a couple of easy ways to fix dried beans.  All you need is some water or broth, maybe an onion, salt and pepper, and some country ham.  I usually get one of the little cheap packets that’s says “Country Ham for Ham Biscuits.”

1. If you use a crock pot, soak the beans overnight, then drain them and dump them into the pot with the chopped onion and the ham cut into pieces.  Cover liberally with water or broth, and add salt, pepper, and whatever spices you want.  Cook all day on low.  When you get home for supper, the whole house will smell like a kitchen in the mountains.
 
2. If you use a regular pot or Dutch oven, sauté the onions (along with any other veggies you’d like, like chopped celery or shredded carrots), turn off the stove, add the beans, and cover with soaking water.  Let it all sit there for several hours.  The bring the mixture to a hard boil for five minutes, turn down to simmer, and let it cook (low and slow) several more hours until the beans are tender.  Add the ham or any herbs or spices you’d like during the simmering time.  You can then serve the dish as “soup beans” or drain the beans (reserving the liquid as vegetable broth) and serve them as a side dish.

It’s simple, cheap, healthy, and good.

PS – Changing the subject, there are interesting reports in today’s news about the debate between the brilliant Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, and the militant atheist Christopher Hitchens.  You can find links to it here and here.

Because of Katrina’s MS, I’m the chief cook and bottle-washer in the family, and there are two or three chef bloggers I follow.  One is Dorie Greenspan, and yesterday she had a cheap, healthy, and quick recipe she developed for readers of Parade Magazine.  We tried it for supper (I halved the recipe), and it was great, so I’m passing it on to you.

Tuna and White Bean ‘Waldorf Salad’

Two 6-oz. cans chunk tuna, drained and flaked
Two 15-oz. cans cannellini beans, drained, rinsed, and dried
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 red apple, cored and diced
1 small red onion, finely chopped
3 Tbsp chopped cilantro
One 12-oz. pack silken tofu, drained
1/2 cup light mayonnaise
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tsp curry powder
Salt and pepper, to taste
Salad greens

Toss the tuna, beans, celery, apple, onion, and cilantro together in a bowl. Puree the remaining ingredients—except the greens—in a blender or food processor.  Mix the tuna salad and dressing together, season with salt and pepper, and spoon over greens.

Serves 6. Per serving: 330 calories, 31g carbs, 27g protein, 11g fat, 30mg cholesterol.

For several years, ever since Katrina’s MS sidelined her from most kitchen duties, I’ve been the chief cook and bottle-washer.  I’m always looking for great recipes, and I’ve just found one for the world’s best hot chocolate.  Tonight I even served it to a guest as a dessert.  The recipe came from the blog of a Paris chef named David Lebovitz, and it’s based on a recipe given to him by Michael Lewis of the Wittamer Chocolate Shop in Brussels, where David once worked.

It’s very rich, but simple to make.  Take a high quality bar of milk chocolate (30-40 percent chocolate) and 8 ounces of bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (that’s a whole box), and chop it up.  I used the food processor. 

Heat a quart of milk on the stove and slowly stir the chocolate into the milk until it melts.  Add a pinch of salt (which is very important to bringing out the flavor) and about  a half-teaspoon of cinnamon.  Use a hand-blender or whisk to froth it up some. 

Serve very warm and, if you like, top each steaming cup with whipped cream.  It makes for a cup of true Belgium hot chocolate, just as you’d have in the finest shop in Brussels.

Enjoy!