Alice's Famous Chili

One afternoon while I was looking through some old books I had stored in the basement, I came across a real gem from my distant past. It was a book called Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook and contained a collection of recipes that Alice May Brock used in her Brooklyn New York establishment made famous by Arlo Guthrie in a song and then later in a movie of the same name directed by Arthur Penn.

The book and the recipes therein were written in the footloose and fancy free spirit that so characterized the times. It was published in 1969 by Random House and was an instant success for a whole generation of hippies and flower children like myself. One recipe that caught my interest was Alice’s Famous Chili which I have produced exactly from the book.

“In half an inch of oil or bacon fat, sauté until soft: 3 chopped onions, 3 chopped green peppers, and 3 large cloves of finely chopped garlic. In another pan brown 1 or 2 pounds of chopped beef. Drain the fat from the beef and add the beef to the onions and peppers ( or add the onions and peppers to the beef). Now add 1 or 2 cans of tomatoes, 1 can of tomato paste, and 2 to 8 tablespoons of chili powder. (You can always add more chili powder later, so start off easy). Add 1 tablespoon of sugar, a sprinkling of salt, pepper and paprika, 2 bay leaves, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of basil and a pinch of cayenne or some hot chili sauce. Simmer all this for at least half an hour until it is good and thick. Then add 1 or 2 cans of kidney beans. Serve this on rice and top it with some chopped raw onions. (Makes 6 to 8 servings.)

While I’m a little leery of using a half an inch of any oil in a recipe, I do want to give this recipe a fair shake. To that end I’ve decided to do a You Tube movie some time soon which will appear on the Danomanno Channel.

FS Chili Recipe

The FS stand for Fast Slow, which is what this chili is all about. It goes together fast and easy, but takes seven plus hours to cook. That’s because this is a crock pot dish.

Ingredients:

1 lb beef stew meat, chopped into small pcs.

1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 6 oz can tomato sauce

1 15 oz. can Red Kidney beans, drained

½ bell pepper, chopped

½ large onion, chopped

1 tsp olive oil

1 pkg Chili mix

Directions:

Set a small or 2 ½ quart crock pot to low.

Place the beef into a freezer for about twenty minutes to firm up the flesh. This will make cutting it into small pieces easier. Remove from the freezer, separate and cut into small pieces. All meat to warm to room temperature then place in a frying pan to which a tsp of olive oil has been added. Cook for a few minutes over medium high heat, stirring enough to brown the meat evenly on all sides. Drain and add to the crock pot.

Chop up the onion and bell pepper into small pieces and add these along with the other ingredients (not the Kidney beans) to the crock pot. Cover and cook for about seven hours. About thirty minutes before the end of the cooking time, rinse and add the kidney beans. Serves 6.

Cooks Notes:

A couple of things to know. One I used a commercial chili mix (in my case McCormick’s Original Chili) because I wanted to keep the preparation simple and fast. Second, the chili is going to look really dark and red when you serve it. Almost like BBQ sauce with lumps. Don’t let this bother you, however, it is a very good tasting blend.

An Experimental Chili Recipe

I decided to go on a chili recipe development craze and came up with this first . It was not too bad. Click anywhere on this text to expand the notes. Experiment number two will be coming shortly.