Super Bowl Sunday: Chili, of Course!

This is my favorite comfort food, and it's healthy too: Vegetarian Chili made with Black Beans*. I'm having some for dinner tonight. Oh so good.

The cool thing is, I made a huge pot of it, and I'll freeze some. It will be highly convenient come Super Bowl Sunday. Somehow, by the time the weekend comes, we're doing other chores, or visiting friends and family, and I really don't want to be slaving over the stove. So I make up big batches of stuff like this on the weekdays.

I remember (years and years ago) trying the original recipe I had for Black Bean Chili, out of the Cafe Beaujolias Cookbook. It was pretty tasty, but I quickly discovered that, in making giant batches of it in The New Deli kitchen, the recipe would need some tweaking. Some of the deli girls would try to keep stirring the mix as it simmered away, but it was far too easy for the bottom of the pot to scorch. So we started sauteeing the onions and garlic in a separate iron pan, cooking the black beans in a giant pot of hot water, and adding tomato paste last of all, after draining off the excess bean water. Adding the tomato paste was much easier than adding canned tomatoes to the chili and trying to simmer it down.

We all have our favorite chilis, I suppose. I was just reading about adding a square of unsweetened baking chocolate to chili- it's supposed to bring out the chili flavor. I want to try that next! And I suppose I'll have to make some Traditional Chili soon- another favorite in our house...

* Found in From the Land of Milk and Honey, by Jennifer Cote (that's me!)