Not My Brother's Chili

This recipe is a tweaking of my brother's chili recipe. His is very good, but I made some changes to suit my tastes.

Chili - serves 12

London broil - about 3 lb. (buy it on sale and it's cheaper than ground beef)
oil for browning
2 medium onions, diced
2 fifteen-ounce cans diced tomatoes (I use one of fire-roasted and one with green chilies)
2 fifteen-ounce cans of pink beans with sauce (Goya is best)
chili powder
cumin

optional:
chopped bell pepper (red or green)
chiles in adobo sauce
tabasco

Have the butcher slice the London broil in half so that you have two pieces half as thick as the original. Cut the meat into half-inch chunks. The meat will be easier to dice if you put it in the freezer for 20 minutes before you dice it.
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium heat. Cook the onion until transparent (if using the optional bell pepper, cook that as well). Remove from the pot. In SMALL batches, brown the beef. As each small batch is done, remove it from the pot and start the next batch.
When all the beef is browned, return the beef and cooked vegetables to the Dutch oven. Add the canned tomatoes and the beans (don't drain the beans). Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of chili powder and 1 to 2 teaspoons cumin. If using the optional chiles in adobo and tabasco, add them to taste. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 hour. Adjust seasoning and serve.

All of the proportions are flexible. If you like more beans, add more. If you want more tomatoes, add another can.

restaurant review - The Greek Cafe in Middletown

Tonight Craig and I had dinner at the Greek Cafe in Middletown, NY. We've been looking for a good Greek place, hell, ANY Greek place since he moved up here from Long Island. Driving home one evening a few weeks back, we saw a sign for the Greek Cafe. Craig got out his phone and found their number and called to ask if they had skordalia on the menu. When they said "of course!" it was a definite. I checked out the menu online and it looked fantastic. We tried to go last weekend, but they aren't open on Sundays, which is our only day off together. Tonight with the holiday we got a chance.
Craig ordered his beloved skordalia for his appetizer. It's a cold dip made with mashed potato, olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice, served with warm pita bread. It was just great, an overly generous portion. I had the halloumi cheese, which is a Cypriot sheep's milk brined cheese, sliced and fried in olive oil until browned. I had it when I was on an archaeological dig on Cyprus when I was in college, and I loved it so much I tried for 20 years to find the cheese in this country with no luck. Finally about 5 or 6 years ago, they started importing it.
We both ordered the avgolemono soup as a second appetizer - a chicken-lemon-egg soup with rice. Wonderful!
For our entrees, we both chose the pastichio, which is a pasta-meat-cheese concoction, which is the lower picture above. It came with an excellent salad, lightly dressed and perfectly fresh. The portion of the pastichio was so huge that we barely finished a third of it and brought the rest home. We also wanted to save room for dessert - baklava for Craig and galactoboureko for me and Greek coffee for both. Again, the portions were huge (see the top picture) and both were excellent.
Total tab for the meal (half of which came home with us as leftovers) was $57. I believe the place doesn't have a liquor license, but a table near ours brought their own homemade wine with them and sent us over a couple of glasses! The waiter (owner's son) was very nice, service was great, the place is very pretty.
Highly, highly recommended!

Breakfast Frittata

Mowgli requested some easy breakfast items, so I'll be posting a few over the next couple of days.

Frittata - serves 4-6

butter or cooking spray
1 cup chopped broccoli (optional)
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped pepper
1 cup diced cooked meat (sausage, bacon, ham)
6 eggs
2 Tablespoons milk
4 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese


You must use a frying pan that can go into the oven for this! No plastic handles allowed.
Preheat broiler.
Heat frying pan on stove over medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the butter or cooking spray. If using the broccoli, add that first and cook for about 4 minutes. Add the onion and pepper and cook until onions are transparent. Add the cooked meat and cook for another 2 minutes or so until the meat is heated through.
In a bowl, scramble the eggs with the milk and Parmesan cheese. Pour over the vegetable/meat mix. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until the bottom is set up. Transfer the pan to the broiler. Broil for 3 to 5 minutes or until well set. Watch carefully, as it can burn easily.
You can cut the calories by using cooking spray rather than butter, turkey sausage/bacon/ham, and swapping skim milk for whole. Serve with a green salad or fruit salad for a nice brunch.

restaurant review - Spice Aroma in Poughkeepsie

Tonight Craig and I went for dinner at Spice Aroma, the in-hotel restaurant at the Clarion in Poughkeepsie. We were looking for something different for our New Year's dinner, and I stumbled across this Indian/Chinese/American restaurant via Google.
We arrived a bit late in the evening - 9:15, which is late for a restaurant that closes at 10. There were three other parties there, every one of which was Indian. In my book, it's a good sign when you go to an ethnic restaurant and a lot of the patrons are of that ethnicity.
The place smelled fantastic even from the parking lot. We were seated promptly and the waiter asked us about drinks right away. We both had hot tea with lemon, which was excellent. Really excellent, so much so that we asked the waiter what kind of tea it was. It was Lipton's. Color me surprised, because it really was one of the best cups of tea I've ever had. Maybe it was the water.
The menu has a nice selection of foods of varied spiciness. We ordered the bread basket sampler, which included three of the seven different options. We chose a paneer-stuffed bread, a whole wheat bread stuffed with spiced potatoes, and an onion-stuffed bread. I'm not entirely sure which was which, but they were all very tasty.
With all that bread, we didn't order appetizers. For our entrees, I ordered the Tandoori chicken because I'm a total wimp when it comes to spicy foods. Craig ordered the chicken Vindaloo because he watches Red Dwarf and they mention it all the time. We also got an order of the vegetable biryani (a rice dish with assorted vegetables and fruits) to help with the spiciness factor. Along with our food was included white rice and a yogurt sauce.
The Tandoori chicken was wonderful. It came on a VERY sizzling platter with mixed vegetables, four good-sized chunks of chicken (hacked pieces - beware of bone chunks). It was seasoned in a very complex and tasty way without being too spicy for me.
The biryani did have a certain spiciness to it that was nicely offset by the yogurt sauce, which had chopped onions, cilantro, mango chunks, and something I couldn't identify. Creamy, savory, sweet, cooling, and the perfect finishing touch for the spicier elements.
Craig's chicken Vindaloo was very good. I actually tried it, though I made sure to have plenty of white rice and the yogurt sauce to tame the heat. It was very, very good.
Because we had ordered so much food (the menu was just that appealing) we brought lots of leftovers home and didn't have room for dessert. But they have a buffet on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so we're looking forward to checking that out and trying even more of their food.
Oh, and did I mention that with all of that food our bill only came to $43? Yeah, totally recommend this place.