Hello friends,
As promised, my kitchen was a laboratory yesterday.
I started w/ roasting, skinning, dicing and tasting several peppers. The Poblano was very flavorful in an earthy way. The Anaheim was mild but had little flavor, same w/ the yellow chilis. The red bell was fruity, sweet and had that distinct bell pepper favor but sweeter and more mild than greens. The yellow and orange bells were slightly sweeter but less flavorful.
I toasted, stemmed and seeded my dry chilis. The Ancho tased similar to the Poblanos obviously because they are Poblanos. The Guajillos and New Mexicans were each subtly different in ways that are difficult to describe. Surprisisngly to me, they had very little heat. I wonder how much variation there is among chilis of the same variety. In other words, even though I found the chilis in these packages to be mild, might I bump into a package where they are significantly more hot? If that's the case, I'll need to taste each package of chilis I purchase before adding to recipes.
For the smoked turkey stock, I started w/ 32 oz of turkey stock I had in the freezer from Thanksgiving. I added two more cartons of store bought turkey stock. To that I added two smoked turkey winds, a smoked drumstick and a some smoked turkey tails. I brought to a boil and lowered to a simmer for three hours. I removed the turkey pieces and allowed to cool, meanwhile keeping the stock on low simmer. I reserved three cups of stock for the chilis. I removed the meat from the bones, sorted out pieces of fat and skin and added the meat back into the stock.
I cut up the steamed & seeded chilis into strips and put them in sauce pan w/ the stock, brought to boil and turned to heat down to low. Mean while I cubed my smoked turkey breast, roasted and diced 2 onions and a small head of garlic.
I placed the chilis and stock in blender w/ the garlic, some ground coriander and cumin. According to my base recipe, I toasted 8 corn tortillas, to them up and added them to the blender as a thickener. I also added the leaves a bunch of fresh sage. They were pureed along w/ the chilis and garlic in the stock and added to the stock w/ the turkey I removed from the parts. After simmering for 30 mins I tasted the stock w/ chilis and turkey. I was surprised at how good it tasted. I would have been very happy to serve it as it was. The dried chilis added such nice complex earthy flavor that complemented the smoked turkey very well.
After adding the cubbed breast meat and diced fresh roasted chilis and onion, I continued w/ my tinkering. I added more coriander, cumin and rubbed sage, two cans of fire roasted diced tomatoes and several cans of Great Northern beans and simmer for 30 mins. I was surprised that the addition of the tomatoes seemed to accentuate the flavor of the garlic. At that point I realized it needed some more heat so I added two chipotle chilis in adobo which was exactly what it needed. I was also surprised how the flavors became more subtle and mild as it sat in the cast iron Dutch oven on a very low simmer for two hours.
I served w/ toasted corn tortilla strips, and sour cream, shredded cheese and sliced jalapeños on the side. Everyone was very please, including myself.
I look forward to my next batch of chili. I will be adding more chilis and less tomatoes. I'll also keep the meat in larger chunks so after it breaks down w/ cooking we'll still have something to bite into.
I wonder how different the flavor would be if instead of soaking the chilis and pureeing them, I ground them into a powder? Also, I had read many comments in other places where folks said they didn't like smoked meat in chili. Seeing how well the chilis complemented to smoked meat I can't imagine not liking it. I'm certainly planning on smoking some beef specifically for my next batch of chili.
Thanks much everyone!
JD
