The weather is cooling off and football season is warming up! Because our university team is ranked near the top this year every game matters, and they’re all nail-biters. This weekend brings the season’s most anticipated and exciting game, OU vs Texas. It’s a great rivalry, a grudge match for the schools, and every year both cancel classes the day beforehand so that students can drive to Dallas and watch the pageantry and festivities in the Cotton Bowl, surrounded by the Texas State Fair. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s a wild, wild adrenaline ride. But, sports attract too much attention and praise, relative to the pitiful amount given to academia and research. The coaches make so much money, making me painfully aware of how broke our academic departments are. It makes me wonder if the priorities aren’t a bit twisted. On the other hand, we all know what may happen if the University withdraws financial support from its sports programs. The TV revenues will drop, and the schools will have lower profits, resulting in even greater struggles for scientific research. Having failed to solve this pressing problem of the universe, I go back to food. 😉 … Ohhh, and I almost forgot: GO SOONERS!
Football food. Several classic options come to mind: hamburgers, grilled sausages, hot-dogs, one-pot type meals like… chili! Once chili was mentioned, we reached a delightful agreement. I modified a turkey version from The Gourmet Cookbook, to showcase the colors of our team, crimson and cream. It was like throwing a 98-yard touch down pass!
CRIMSON AND CREAM TURKEY CHILI
(adapted from Gourmet)
2 chipotle chilis in Adobe sauce (canned)
1/2 cup water
2 cans ( 15 oz each) diced fire roasted tomatoes
2 Tbs olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1 Tbs ground cumin
2 pounds ground turkey (dark meat or a 50/50 mix of dark & white)
1 cup chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1 red bell pepper, roasted, chopped
1 – 2 minced serrano peppers
1 Tbs cornmeal
1/2 can of white beans, rinsed (about 8 ounces)
fresh cilantro leaves, minced
Puree the canned chipotle beans with the water in a blender or small food processor, Reserve.
Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan, ad the shallot, saute for a couple of minutes, add the cumin, mix well and cook for another minute. Add the ground turkey, increase the heat, and cook stirring often, until browned, about 8 minutes.
Add the chipotle puree, the canned tomatoes, chicken stock, bay leaf, oregano, and salt, and simmer without a lid for 1 hour. If the level of liquid drops below the surface of the meat, add more water. Add the red bell pepper, serrano chiles, and cornmeal, and continue simmering gently for another 30 minutes.
Stir the white beans into the mixture, discard the bay leaf, taste, adjust seasoning, and right before serving add as much cilantro as you like. Serve with sour cream, sliced green onions, and shredded cheese on the side.
ENJOY!
to print the recipe, click here
Compared to our default recipe for chili, this one is much easier to prepare, and – I cannot believe I’ll be saying this – I like it even better! It has beans in it, which would normally turn me off, I rather have my chili with meat and peppers only, in a tomato-base stew. But, in this case, the beans added creaminess and flavor, perfect alongside the delicate turkey meat. Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce are simply too tasty. If you haven’t cooked with them yet, grab some on your next stop at the grocery store and you will be going back for more…
Hope you are all having a great weekend, football or not on your menu… 😉
ONE YEAR AGO: Taking a break from the nano-kitchen
TWO YEARS AGO: Chocolate Chip Cookies
Bewitching Kitchen 
My son is a freshman at OU this year, but he is in the College of Fine Arts, so at least he got to come home for a long weekend. We live in TX now, but we are all Yankees in our hearts.
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How cool, you have a son here in town! I am sure he is enjoying the break, the weather here turned pretty bad all of a sudden, it’s raining hard….
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What a lovely presentation, I do love your table dishes 😀 Synchronicity! I made a chili yesterday, only mine had lean ground beef in it, but other than that remarkably similar even down to the imported smoky chipotle chilis that I managed to find from Steenbergs online (though not in adobe sauce – mmm that sounds tasty). I used black eye beans that I soaked for ages and cooked, and I put a courgette in too, and handfuls of chopped parsley, coriander and oregano from the garden and some home grown fresh chlili off the windowsill plant. Chillis are so funny, they fruit and then they flower again, so you have both fruit and flowers at the same time. Only thing is Sally, I made way too much, so after chili for two nights I have put the rest in the freezer. Enjoy the game! Autumn damp and chills are setting in here and we are thinking of putting the heating on xx Joanna
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So you had chili too! What a coincidence! The original recipe in Gourmet made double amount, way too much just for the two of us, so this batch was enough for a very substantial dinner and two light lunches. Perfect!
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Turkey chile?
TURKEY??
Texas is gonna win. And it’s your fault.
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Even my chili blasphemy did not prevent OU from crushing them… 55 x 17
not bad…. not bad….
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I have resisted that book for ages as I have a series of Gourmet from 86-2006 and I always wonder how many recipes are duplicated if any in the The Gourmet Cookbook. That chili sounds good to me.
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maybe you could take a look at the index? Sometimes in amazon.com they let you peek inside some pages and they cover the index. Well, it’s huge… I guess I would lose my patience on page 3 😉
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This sounds perfect for a fall day and a football game.
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Very good, even if Fall weather hasn’t arrived yet – or has it? 😉
Temperatures just dropped a lot and rain is falling…
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Love the name of the chili. 🙂 Have a great football weekend. This looks like the perfect food for game day. We’re heading back to our old “home” town this weekend. Chili is one of the things Mr. N is looking forward to the most – a little sandwich place there serves his favorite. 🙂
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Game was great, couldn’t have been better…
Have a great weekend, and a nice trip home!
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I agree that too much importance is placed on college athletics, much to the detriment of academics and research.To me, the recruitment and retention of quality faculty is more important than the recruitment of athletes. Do Harvard, Yale, etc. even have football teams?
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LOL, Cindy, my daughter and husband are Ivy alums, and yes, Harvard, Yale and the other Ivies have football teams, but they only count to the Ivies and no one else. It’s most amusing to me.
It’s probably a coincidence, but neither of them likes chili, either, though Sally’s version does look delightful.
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They do have football teams, but let’s say they don’t win that often 😉
I guess Texas plays OSU next – they will be hungry for victory, I hope your team will take care of them
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well, my reply went under Marcia’s – WordPress is a bit convoluted with the “conversations”
Marcia, this version turned out pretty good – the original recipe was for a “green” chile, using tomatillos and green bell peppers. I prefer a red version, so modified accordingly
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Sally, they mostly play one another, so somebody does win. LOL
I happen to be in love with tomatillos, and will eat almost anything with good salsa verde piled upon it. You can have my green peppers, though. 😉
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Oh that’s super spicy. Looks just great!
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I was surprised to realize there was no chili powder in the recipe, but the chipotle peppers and the serrano bring more than enough heat. It mellowed down quite a bit in the fridge.
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Sally, I love that you are into football – this is big sport in the US, yes? Is it the top spectator sport? I’m really liking this turkey version of chili and the fact that you’ve added some delicious white beans too. So hearty and fall perfect. And you know I’m in for the chipotle! Love the title of your post!!
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Love college football – the professional football I’m not too wild about, used to root for the Packers because their colors are green and yellow (colors of Brazil), and I was very fond of their quarterback, Brett Favre.
I think football is indeed the top watching sport here – I don’t care for baseball (find it boring and uninteresting), love soccer of course, but only watch the World Cup games now. Probably my favorite sport to watch these days is golf, though. Wish I had learned the to play the game earlier in my life. Now I must just be a certified hacker til the end of times 😉
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Looks like that I will have to give it a try!!! Even though my team is getting close to yours! ROLL TIDE!!!!!!!!!! Miss you in the forum!
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Hello there, Ruth!
got your second comment and went ahead and deleted the typo for you… 😉
ROLL TIDE INDEED!!!!!
exciting games ahead for our teams… I already filed my fingernails real short, just in case 😉
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Watching football and eating chilli just goes together! And I love to read all the various ways people make their chili. I seem to always change my recipe around depending on what I’ve recently read!
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Chili is so user-friendly! I used to be partial to one recipe, but I guess I was missing out on lots of tasty stuff
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Celebratory chili! Looks delicious! Good luck to your team! 🙂
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Team is doing great… this weekend’s game should be a lot less stressful… we shall see… we shall see… 😉
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divino!
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