Fri, Oct 16 2009

Chili as transitional food

We made a batch of chili yesterday to accommodate a friend who has lots of trouble eating foods that contain any dairy products. Chili is a great dish to work with. To minimize any other problems we also made the chili vegetarian, so we worked with a ready-made product that mimics the texture of browned ground beef. If you're on the cusp of trying a vegetarian diet, chili is perfect to experiment with because there are so many herbs and spices in it that you won't miss the real ground beef. (I say this realizing that some folks use shredded/chopped ground beef or turkey or other meat products.) Curry dishes also lend themselves well to a vegetarian treatment. If you're feeding a "mixed" crowd, the stronger-flavored dishes are your best bet for making carnivores and vegetarians/vegans all have happy taste buds.

I would be happy to share the recipe for chili, but the truth is that there is no recipe. We have favorite things we put into the pot, but we don't measure. It's probably never the same any two times we make it. The best advice I can give you is to choose a recipe you already like and slowly change it to meet the needs of your vegetarian friends/family. I hear that there is a big issue with cocoa powder, because the regulation of foreign matter is not strict. If that isn't a problem for you, add a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder to your chili. It will give it a great undertone of richness that you probably won't get any other way. The other preference we have is lots of canned, diced tomatoes. Just get out a pot and start playing. Eat the experiments in a bowl or layered in haystacks, the way we did last night. Enjoy.

posted at: 11:54 | category: /Food | link to this entry