Opium is for Pansies

Here’s one of the things that amazes me about cooking: if you get a recipe right, you can turn something you don’t particularly like into a ticket to ecstasy.

This happened to me over and over while I was writing my cookbook. For example, I decided to make BBQ beans. I like BBQ beans fairly well, but it’s not a favorite dish, and I’m always keenly aware of the risk that I will end up lying awake at 3 in the morning, watching the sheets flap every thirty seconds. When I made my first mess of beans, in a 2-quart dish, I ended up eating the whole batch. I could not stop. They weren’t just good; they had a marvelous complexity, like a nice Cuban cigar. First you get the obvious beany taste. Then the bacon hits you. Then the hot mustard starts drifting up into your sinuses. After that, the black pepper settles in the back of your throat, and you relive the pleasure of eating the beans, over and over.

I made these things for friends, and the same thing happened. They’d tell someone to try them, and that person would say, “I don’t really care for them.” And the friend would say, “No, TRY them.”

I always knew I was finished with research when I had to throw food away to keep from eating it. If it’s that good, the recipe is a success.

I’m thinking about this because I made chili today.

I’ve always liked chili, but it has never been a top-ten food for me. I probably eat it twice a year. The chili they serve in restaurants is no good, and the canned stuff is like dog food. But I have my own recipe now, and I keep adjusting it to make it better.

Today I tried a new ingredient: black cardamom. I opened a pod, ground the seeds, and dumped them into the pot. Oh, boy. Talk about good. These little seeds react beautifully with anything containing tomatoes or red peppers. I can’t explain it. The taste is smoky, peppery, aromatic…there is nothing else like it except green cardamom. Which isn’t REALLY like it.

I hate to say this, but the TV show Cheers is one reason I did this. There was an episode in which Sam Malone tried to beat the bloody Marys made at Gary’s Old Towne Tavern, and he found out the secret ingredient was black cardamom. I very much doubt the writers really knew what black cardamom tasted like, but once I had some on hand, I had to make a virgin Mary and give it a try. It was excellent. My chili has tomatoes in it, so the next move was obvious. I also use this spice in wing sauce. It has extraordinary potential.

I finished my second bowl of chili fifteen minutes ago, and I’m still riding the wave. It’s like a drug.

I can’t move.

I am starting to think I’m better at cooking than anything else I do. But I don’t know what to do with it. It’s not a great business tool. Restaurants run on marketing, not great food. And they have low profit margins, and they’re a ton of work.

I can’t use this gift purely to benefit myself, because if I do, I will explode next month. Most days I eat something really pathetic–like a small serving of oatmeal–for breakfast, and for lunch I have something equally sad, like some kind of fried meat and two boring vegetables. I usually have a couple of good meals every week, but I can’t eat much more than that. I make one pizza a week. That, I cannot forgo.

I did something horrible last week. I made pineapple upside-down cake with banana nut bread instead of crappy yellow cake, and I added Barbancourt rum to the sauce. Then I had Bluebell banana pudding ice cream on the side. I nearly fainted from pleasure. I had to throw out maybe five pounds of food, just to be safe from it. I think a milder rum like Flor de Cana might have been a better choice, but anyway, it was a true shock and awe experience. Very rich, which is a bad thing, when it’s so good you can’t quit eating.

A fabulously rich person who has made peace with his or her fear of death should hire me as a personal chef. I should send Michael Moore an email.

Some people have criticized my chili. It’s one of those foods that attract fanatics and zealots, so if you do anything remotely creative, they fill their diapers and start screeching. Offhand, I can think of three things the Puritans hate: beans, ground meat, and tomatoes. So naturally, I named my chili “Totally Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili,” and I included tomatoes, ketchup, two kinds of ground meat, and kidney beans. You know, I really don’t care what’s in “real” chili. This stuff rocks my world, and I’m not alone. The Chili SS are so blind, there is no possibility they could allow themselves to enjoy my chili, so I write them off. They’re like the “brew to style” homebrewers who spit up blood if you can’t tell them which creaky, dusty, boring German beer you’re slavishly imitating. Some people make themselves impossible to please.

I think I’m coming down now. At least I won’t have the munchies.