How to please your spanish In-Laws

While I do consider myself to be a cook, having had people pay to eat my food in a restaurant gives me that right, I am not a chef. I have never trained as a cook and actually my personal cooking manta is “invent, invent, invent”. I am a hack, a proud food-loving hack who can joyfully spend an entire Saturday morning at the market mulling over the fruits and vegetables, eyeing the fishmonger’s wares, and creating and discarding menu after menu as my options change and ingredients are found or forgotten. I am fortunate enough to have a willing audience at home, a pareja that has evolved into quite a foodie and a familia política that will trustingly and enthusiastically eat just about everything I put in front of them. The only problem with this is that it is sometimes hard to feel vindicated for spending an entire day making homemade raviolis, pierogis, or marinating a duck, when they would likely be just as thrilled and complimentary about a ten minute throw-together chicken pot pie. In fact, for the first meal that I prepared for my suegros (parents in-law), I was prepared to go all the way, mentally sculpting delicate rosebuds from radishes and hand-sculpting vichyssoise bowls out of entire blocks of ice. Therefore, I was taken aback when Enrique informed me that one of his father’s very favorite foods in the world was none other than, chili con carne – in all of its Tex-Mex glory. So, while this blog is purportedly dedicated to the pursuit of Spanish wines, restaurants, culture, and grub, I have decided in the spirit of intercultural communication to include (for my Spanish friends) a 20 minute recipe for fool’em chili. I should point out that, is chili better when you cook it all day, add 17 spices, hand cook the beans, use real tomato sauce, and butcher the cow yourself? Probably, except for the part about the cow. But for a delicious (cheap) and exotic meal (in Spain) with under 5 minutes prep time, who cares?

Ingredients
2 cloves garlic
1-1.5 pounds ground beef
1 jar or around 300 grams tomato sauce (I use organic, I find it tastes less industrial)
1-2 Tbs.olive oil
1 onion (I am allergic so in my house we omit them, well, I omit them)
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 jar or around 450 grams cooked kidney beans or red beans or a mixture of the two
2 tbsp. cumin more or less
Cayenne pepper (add a little bit at a time to taste, it gets spicy quickly
any other chili spices, I like Chayote
salt (I sometimes use garlic salt)
pepper
1 tsp. oregano
diced zucchini, red pepper, green pepper, celery (all are optional but I like to add a lot of veggies)
cheddar cheese
sour cream
chives (if you want to be really fancy and garnish, again, I am allergic)

Heat olive oil and add the garlic and onions. Sautee until tender and add the ground beef to brown. Season with oregano, salt and pepper. Once the beef is browned, add the diced cubes of vegetables and cook the whole mixture on high for about 5 minutes. Add the cans of diced tomatoes, the tomato sauce, and another can or a bit less of water depending on how thick you like it. Add the rest of the spices and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 10 more minutes. Rinse and drain the beans and add them at the very end. Cook just long enough to heat the beans through and throw in some more spices for good measure. Garnish with cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream or plain yoghurt. Was supposed to serve 8, but there were 5 of us and we all had huge second helpings and then groaned that we ate too much. I was also planning on including a photo, but we ate it all before I had a chance.