Booty Kickin' Four Pepper Buffalo Chili

I've mentioned over and over how I'm willing fall to come. A couple of weeks ago I bought some ground buffalo and tucked it away in my fridge, waiting for that first real day of fall. Why? Because for me, it's not really fall until you eat chili. Preferably until you eat chili on the back porch with a beer while wearing an oversized Stanford hoodie. And you can't really eat chili until it is cool and fall-y (or maybe that's just me. I might be neurotic).

Luckily, today that day finally came. This was lucky for many reasons. For one, I got to use my buffalo before it went off. For two, J was driving me nuts about when we could finally have buffalo chili again. For three, fall makes life happy, so when the first real fall day comes, this is lucky for everyone. (Someone should put that last one in a fortune cookie, that was profound). So to celebrate this, the most fabulous day of the year, the day when we can finally pull out our long sleeve shirts, the day when we can drink cider again without being a lush, the day when we can put the scarecrow out on the front stoop, the day when the psycho neighbor begins scheming on how to decapitate and disembowl aforementioned scarecrow on stoop (um, er, I think that bit only applies to people in my neighborhood), I've crafted and created my world famous* buffalo chili. Now, I'm here to share it with you, so that you may live. Because really, you can't have fall if you don't have it. And if you don't have fall then time goes on without you and you'll probably get eaten by the Langoliers. No one wants that. Well maybe we do, depending on who you are.

Booty Kickin' Four Pepper Buffalo Chili


1-2 lbs ground buffalo meat
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 Poblano pepper, seeded and chopped
1 jalapeño or serrano pepper, seeded and chopped (the serrano is much more hardcore spicy, so rock that out if you want it super spicy)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 TB chile powder
1 can mexican diced tomatoes
1 can crushed tomatoes
2/3 cup low sodium beef broth
1/2 TB brown sugar
2 TB of adobo sauce from a can of chipotles in adobo
1 chipolte
1 bay leaf
1 can spicy pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
sea salt, to taste
ground pepper, to taste

In a pot with a lid (big enough to hold all your chili goodness) brown the bufflo, breaking large chunks into smaller ones. (You may find it necessary to add some oil when browning the buffalo, even though this normally makes things greasy and gross, in order to keep that pesky smoke detector at bay, as buffalo is extremely lean and has a tendency to smoke. I like to use about a tablespoon of chili flavored sunflower oil but you could always do it old school with a good glug of canola.) When thoroughly brown and thus all e-coli risk is removed, remove the buffalo from pot, and drain off the excess fat, so it doesn't wind up on your bootay.

Chop up your onions, bell pepper, jalepeno or serrano and poblano pepper. Be sure and remove the seeds of the jalepeño or serrano, unless you want it to really be booty kickin'. Wash your hands. Don't touch your contact lenses in the mean time... not that I can say that from experience or anything.

Now, bring yo' pot back to medium heat, throw in the onions and peppers and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. While the peppers cook, dance around your kitchen with some maracas in hand saying, "Arriba," "Te Queiro" and "No soy el baño," stopping occasionally to scrape the pan from time to time to get any stuck bits of browned meat mixed in with the vegetables. Add garlic, cook for another minute and then add cumin, oregano, coriander and salt and pepper to taste. Let spices cook a minute or so.

Dump the cooked meat back in the pot. Stir in the tomatoes and beef broth, brown sugar adobo sauce, chipotle and bay leaf. Raise heat and bring to a boil. Once boiling, ladle up a big spoon of the chili goodness, taste sauce and adjust salt, pepper and hotness to taste. Lower heat to a slow simmer, cover with a lid and cook for at least 30 minutes. Add beans, continue simmering, covered, for another 10 minutes or until beans are warmed through.

Serve in bowls and garnish with chopped cilantro and sour cream to be festive.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.

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Olé! Chicken Tacos with Spicy Grape Salsa

I love me some Mexican food. It's second only to Thai food in my book. Unfortunately even when you're obsessed with Mexican food there are only so many times you can eat soft tacos before a tortilla with chicken, tomatoes, onions and cheese gets a little dull.

The remedy? Do something totally insane with 'em. And that's what I did. The result? Spicy, sweet, savory beauties in corn tortillas. And the best part? It's super duper mega easy.... and there's enough salsa left for you to nom it with chips for days. So what are you waiting for? Get in the kitchen and make some....

Chicken Tacos with Spicy Grape Salsa*

3 cups(ish) seedless red grapes
1/2 sweet onion
1 jalapeño pepper (seeded)
1/2 cup cilantro
3/4 of one of those plastic limes full of lime juice
2 normal sized chicken breasts
Taco or Fajita seasoning
1 - 2 Tbsp. Oil (I use red chili pepper oil, you can use olive or canola if you don't wanna by the chili pepper oil)
1 clove garlic (chopped)
1 pkg. of taco shells or corn tortillas

Dump oil into a frying pan. Sprinkle taco / fajita seasoning on chicken breasts. Add chicken and garlic to pan. Get one of your minions to oversee the sautéing so that the chicken doesn't burn and stick to the pan.

While your minion sautés the chicken, put the grapes, onion, jalapeño, cilantro and lime juice in a food processor. Process it up. When it looks like salsa, it's done. Stop processing. Unless you want spicy grape juice instead of spicy grape salsa.

Dump 1/4 cup of it into the frying pan with the chicken. Saute for another 5 minutes. At this point grab a fork and a spatula and shred the chicken.

Once you've done this you're ready to build a taco. Pick up a taco shell or tortilla. Put chicken in it. Put some salsa on top of that. Top with some loverly grapes cut into quarters. Ta da!

*For best results cook while wearing a sombrero. Failure to wear a sombrero could result in fail-tacos. Nobody wants that.

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Takin' it Back to the Old School: Chicken and Broccoli Fettucine with Basil Cream Sauce

Welcome to Takin' it Back to the Old School, the newest (and only) feature section here in the land of corn starch. On this biweekly feature I will feature the recipes that have always been there. Stuff I've been making since I started cooking when I was 12. Old school stuff, if you will.

When I first starting cooking, all I would make is Italian and Italian inspired food. This is probably because I thought you couldn't really foul up pasta. A later encounter with a terrible oregano obsessed boyfriend of my almost sister would teach me otherwise, but I digress. The point is I made a lot of pasta when I was growing up and learning to love to cook. And I got damn good at it. And I developed a few signature dishes that everyone seemed to ask for over the years.

Today's Takin' it Back to the Old School feature is one such dish. It was one of the first dishes I came up with when I started branching out from Ye Olde Standard Spaghetti and Meat Sauce. My momma loved it and thus I was inspired. I ran with it. And I've spent the last 13 years recreating it, tweaking it here and there and eating it and the compliments it gets me up with a spoon. So, without further ado, I present to you...

Chicken and Broccoli Fettucine with Basil Cream Sauce

12 oz. pasta
2 normal sized chicken breasts (chunked)
1 pkg. frozen broccoli
Olive oil and/or butter as needed
Pinch of hot pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 14.5 oz. can chicken broth
1 cup light cream
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 medium to large batch of basil

Boil some water. When it boils throw the pasta in.

Meanwhile, back at the hall of justice, heat the oil and/or butter in pan with the hot pepper and chicken. Cook about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and broccoli. Cook for about 5 more minutes. Add the chicken broth and bring it to a boil. Add the cream and parmesean cheese. Reduce the heat all the way down as low as your stove will go. Seriously. If you overcook light cream you will destroy your sauce and ruin the lives of children and puppies every where. So turn that sauce down. Dowwwwwwwn. Now.

While that simmers cut the basil en chiffonade. This is a fancy word that means cut the basil into teensy little strips. The best way to do this is to stack several basil leaves, roll them up and cut them. After it's all cut up, add the basil, along with some salt and pepper into the sauce. If your sauce seems thin add some (about 1 Tbsp.) cornstarch. Add pasta, stir it all around. Serve it up. Garnish with some more Parmesan cheese and basil strips. Eat.

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Spaghetti with Cheese Stuffed Bacon-Beef Meatballs... or Magic Gris Gris to get into the Pants of that guy You've been Crushing On™

I have to tell you, my hubby loves anything with bacon in it. He would probably eat bacon tirimisu and say it was the best thing ever invented by man or nature. So when I saw something on food network about meatballs made with bacon and stuffed with cheese, I decided it was time to repay him for taking such good care of me while I was a sickeyface. I therefore had to recreate these bacon beef balls of wonder. And because man cannot live on beefy balls alone, I had to pair them with spaghetti and three cheese marinara sauce. Put this cheesy, meaty, bacony, make you sick if you eat very much of it masterpiece together with a frosty beer and dudes are in heaven. They love you forever.

So for those of you with a hubby to thank, a male boss that won't come up off a raise, or a hot dude you've been eyeing and a certain itch that needs scratching, I suggest you try...

Spaghetti with Cheese Stuffed Bacon-Beef Meatballs... or Magic Gris Gris to get into the Pants of that guy You've been Crushing On™

• 8 to 10 slices applewood smoked bacon
• 1 pound ground beef (for optimum results don't use the healthy stuff that us chicks like. Dudes can sense that sort of thing and you won't score.)
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 package onion soup mix
• 1/2 cup italian season bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon coarse black pepper
• 2 1/2 tablespoons beef stock
• 8 to 10 mozzarella balls marinated in olive oil and italian seasonings

Preheat yo' oven to 400 degrees.
Arrange the bacon slices on a sheet pan or handy dandy bacon microwaver. Put in the oven or microwave and cook until crisp, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the bacon from the pan to a cutting board and chop it up.

Get a bowl and mix together the beef, Worcestershire, onion soup mix, bread crumbs, black pepper, stock and the chopped bacon. Don't mix it too much or you'll get e. coli under your nails.
Grab a mozzerella ball and a wad of meat. Make a little nest in your palm with the meat and set the ball in it like an egg. Then carefully mold the beef up around the ball. The mozzerella should be totally enclosed in the meat and the whole meatball should be just bigger than a golf ball. Repeat process until you run out of meat or cheese.
At this point put two pots on the stove. Fill one with some sort of yummy marinara sauce and simmer it over medium heat. Fill the other with water and bring it to a boil. When the water starts boiling put spaghetti in it. At the same time put meatballs in the oven on a cookie sheet on the middle rack. Let both of those things go for about 12-15 minutes.
Drain the spaghetti, take the meatballs out of the oven. Put the spaghetti in a bowl. Put a dollop of butter on it for good measure. Ladle marinara sauce over. Pile some meatballs on top of that. Ladle some more marinara sauce on top. Sprinkle with parmesean cheese. Serve with prosecco to be classy or a big frothy beer if you're hoping to make your target dude happy.

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Badger badger badger mushroom sooooup

I told you I had been willing it to be fall. And nothing says fall like warm, creamy mushroom soup to me.... well except maybe pumpkin pie and apple cider and buffalo chili, but whatever. I was in the mood for mushrooms. Partly because I've been craving them ever since I came back from Italy where I ate mushroom pizza every day and partly because, like I said they seem like fall and I'm willing it to be fall. Circular logic? Probably. I don't care.

Anyway since opening a can of soup is for losers, I decided to create a mushroomy masterpiece. I thought criminis and rice. And then I thought butter and white wine (what can I say, I'm an attorney) and I was inspired. I began creating and as I started cooking I couldn't help but be reminded of an addictively annoying little jingle. Thus I dubbed my masterpiece....
Badger badger badger mushroom sooooup

• 1 pound crimini mushrooms, cleaned and chopped
  
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
  
• 1/2 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
  
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp water
• 1/2 cup wild rice
• 1/2 cup brown rice

Cook rice like normal - stick it in the rice cooker, put it on the stove, whatever you do. Meanwhile, coarsely chop mushrooms and lemon juice in the food processor. Pause to sing badger, badger for a while. You can play the youtube video instead if your singing voice is no good.

Melt butter in a soup pot, add white wine and sauté mushrooms, thyme and bay leaf for 10-15 minutes, or until the mushrooms no longer seep juice. Add salt, pepper, cream and broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. During this time dance around the kitchen and sing, "Ooooh, it's a snaaaaake!"

When you're done with that add cornstarch! and simmer for 10 more minutes, stirring and singing badger badger badger constantly. I mean it. If you don't sing while you stir this soup will fail. It'll probably even cause your house to catch on fire.... with you in it.

Dump the cooked rice in and let it simmer for another 5 or so minutes.

Pour soup into bowls. Garnish with parsley, fresh ground pepper, nothing or as J suggests, french fried onions. Om nom nom.

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Chicken Noodle Soup of Major Healing Power

Swine flu up in this beyotch.

As it turns out your lovely blog-host and favourite redhead is sick as a porcupine on methamphetamine. Yep. I even had to spend part of my labor day weekend in the swine flu quarantine ward of the hospital. Awesome.

Apparently when you have coughs, a throat full of stinging nettle, aches so bad your hair hurts and a skull so full of yuck that it feels like its gonna crack, coupled with a temp of 104, people freak out, send you to the hospital, and you get quarantined in the swine flu ward. Now, being quarantined I can deal with.... if it weren't coupled with feeling like I'd been run over by a truck and being subjected to an iCarly marathon on the only channel the tv in my room got. As I lay there, suffering, writhing in misery induced by fever and teenybopper tv all I could think is that if I could only get away and eat some of my "Chicken Noodle Soup of Major Healing Power" this could all be over.

It's true. My Chicken Noodle Soup is fantastic. Best tasting chicken soup ever. And it fixes everything. Seriously, it's probably even the cure for HIV. You can patent it if you want. I don't mind. I'm just that nice. Erm, uh, at any rate, I figure what better than to share with you on this lovely sick day than the recipe for my famous.....

Chicken Noodle Soup of Major Healing Power

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 medium carrots, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 2 celery ribs, halved lengthwise, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 4 fresh thyme sprigs
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 quarts chicken stock
• 1 bouillion cube (preferably chicken and garlic)
• 8 ounces dried wide egg noodles
• 1 1/2 cups diced cooked chicken
• Sea Salt
• Black Pepper

Get a big ol' soup pot and put it on medium heat. Drizzle the olive oil in the bottom and add the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, thyme and bay leaf. Cook and stir for about 6 minutes, until the vegetables are softened but not browned. If it's a super chicken soup emergency and you need to move faster skip this step, place the veggies in a tupperware, squirt with buttery spray and a splash of water, cover with cling wrap and microwave 2 minutes.

Pour in the chicken stock, toss in the bouillon cube, and bring the liquid to a boil. Add the chicken and let it simmer together. About 6 or 8 minutes before it's time to eat add the noodles. When the noodles are good and floppy like a noodle shoud be, season with salt and pepper, dump into a bowl and let the healing begin.

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Bourbon Pecan Apple Pie

In recent weeks I've been unemployed... just waiting on my bar results to come in. I've also, recently been willing it to become fall. And I've been craving a good pie. What's a girl to do when she's got time on her hands and craves fall and pie? Turn the air conditioning down real low, light a candy corn scented candle and bake something fallish.

But what to make? Apple pie of course. But not just any apple pie. Nay, I had festive bourbon and needed to use it. Suggestions were made that I drink the bourbon and make ye olde standard apple pie. But I had different ideas.... I decided it was time to combine three of my favourite things into one. *Cue Spice Girls music, Two Three become One.*

Bourbon-Pecan Apple Pie

For Crust

• 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon corn syrup
• 1/4 cup bourbon
• 2 1/2 cups toasted pecan halves
• 1 cup coconut
• 1 cup dates
• 1 pinch cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons almond butter

Stir together first 6 ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil... keep stirring... seriously, you can't stop stirring for until your candy thermometer registers 234° or the world will end. And it will be your fault. So stir, minion, stir.

Remove from heat, and vigorously stir in pecans. Getting pretty good at that stirring by now, huh? Spoon pecan goop onto wax paper. Let stand 20 minutes or until firm. Break praline-coated pecans apart into pieces.

Now... if you feel like cheating you can skip this first part and the first 7 ingredients if you can find ready made bourbon pecan pralines. They're pretty prevalent in the South and you can find them in most candy shops and bulk nut dealers.

Once the pralines have cooled and hardened a bit... or you've procured your store bought pralines smash them all to hell. Really, get a food chopper or rolling pin and smash those suckers to bits. Measure out two cups of the smashed up praline wads and dump them in a bowl.

Add the coconut, cinnamon and almond butter. Run the dates through a food processor so they get all chopped up and gooey. Add them to the bowl. Mix it all together and press into a 9 inch pie pan.

For Filling

• About six apples
• 1 cup dates
• 2 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp cinnamon, divided
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon almond butter
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• bourbon, commensurate with level of alcoholism
• 1 tsp white granulated sugar

Peel, slice and core three of the apples. Puree them, the dates, nutmeg, 2 tsp of the cinnamon, butter and bourbon together until ooey-gooey. Leave it in the blender / food processor for a while and instruct it to wait.

Slice and core the remaining three apples. Pile the majority of these apples up on the crust. Top with the ooey-gooey. Add a few slices of apples on top of that.

Now, mix together almond butter, maple syrup and a bit more bourbon. Dump this into a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in the corner. Use the holey ziploc bag to drizzle this mixture over the pie. Sprinkle with the remaining tsp of cinnamon and white sugar.

Bake for about 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 300 and bake another 30 - 35 minutes. Remove from oven. Observe the beautifulness...

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