Guest Article by Tyler

After successfully preparing a delicious dish of Murghi Ni Curry, our second foray into the book 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer was Badam Murghi. Again, I can only guess as to what this might literally translate to, but it is anglicized as “Yogurt-Almond Chicken with a Spinach Sauce”. If you haven’t read the article on the Murghi Ni Curry, take a minute to do so, as I will be making numerous comparisons between the two.

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Guest article by Tyler

Chili is a dish made from chiles that is wonderful to eat when you are chilly.

Chili is one of those dishes that nobody ever agrees on how to cook, so if you’ve ever cooked chili before you are guaranteed to hate this post and be very angry at me for all the mortal sins against southwestern gastronomy that I surely have committed in your eyes.

The reason nobody agrees how to cook it is because it is a dish of low origins. Originally, chili was a Mexican stew made from whatever meat was available, and heavily spiced with local hot chiles to hide the taste of the often spoiled meat. These days, thanks to the wonders of refrigeration, we no longer have to worry about covering up rancid flavors, but the spiciness of the chile peppers is still something that can be appreciated on its own merits.

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In the short lull between the end of October and mid November, I like to have a break from the kitchen to recoup. That means no eight hour kitchen days for at least one week. So I threw together a chimichurri in 10 minutes, marinaded thinly sliced steak overnight, and spent 15 minutes pulling together a plate of fried sweet onions and bell peppers, seared mushrooms with truffle oil, and steak finished on the cast iron griddle. Super easy.

There’s really no single recipe for chimichurri. It can be done with red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar, cilantro or no cilantro, lemon juice or lime juice, olive oil or vegetable oil, etc. Typically there are red pepper flakes, but even that can be substituted out for another spicy ingredient.

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