Chili

Sometimes I feel kind of silly giving you a strict recipe to follow (well, often actually, because I think cooking is such a personal and experimental process). For certain things, like salad or salsa, or in this case, chili, everyone has their own way of making. My friend Diana doesn't eat meat and makes a killer veggie chili. My mom, however, makes a more traditional chili that consists mainly of chunks of beef simmered in spicy liquid until they fall apart. My recipe is kind of a happy medium, I guess. It has lots of ground beef in it, but also lots of beans and tomatoes, and of course lots of spices.

As I said at the beginning, this is how I make chili. Feel free to change this around. If you have some jalapenos (or chipotle in adobo sauce, which is like my favorite thing) sitting around that need to be used up, throw those in. Or if you have an open jar of salsa that no one is finishing fast enough, toss that in too. If you don't like things so spicy, cut down on the spices. If you like more veggies in your chili, you can add some chopped bell peppers (be aware that this will probably make your chili quite a bit sweeter). It's chili, not brain surgery. Go crazy with it.

Also, in this blog you get to see the first pictures I've taken of my Toronto kitchen for this blog. So instead of the lovely commercial range and marble countertops of my parents' kitchen, you can now be treated to my less-lovely Ikea pots and white plastic counters. But the food will be just as delicious.

Beef and Bean Chili

1 medium onion (or half a large onion), diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 pound ground beef
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp chipotle powder
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 can (~19 fl oz) kidney beans, drain off the liquid
1 can (~19 fl oz) black beans, drain off the liquid
1 can (~19 fl oz) crushed tomatoes
juice of 1/2 lime

Saute the onion and garlic until softened and just starting to turn transparent.

FYI, I probably should have used less onion

Add the ground beef, and cook until about halfway cooked.

 Add the spices, and saute until the beef is pretty much fully cooked.

 Add the beans, tomatoes, and lime juice.

For this picture, I used whole canned tomatoes that I chopped into chunks, because that's what I had. If you like chunky chili, you can definitely use this approach.

 Simmer until it reaches your desired thickness.

You can serve this in a bowl and eat it with a spoon, or you can eat it with tortilla chips like I do. Also, I almost always grate some cheddar over the top, because it's delicious. Any leftovers you have can be frozen for later consumption. Or, if you only have a little bit left, make nachos.

-----

Today I'm going to review Yeasayer's Fragrant World, which is their newest album (which was released earlier this summer). Yeasayer is one of my favorite bands, because their sound is so interesting. They blend pop aspects with much more esoteric elements, like afrobeat and intricately layered tracks. Fragrant world is their third studio album, and while it is quite good, it isn't my favorite album of theirs (In case you are interested, my favorite album by them is probably Odd Blood, but All Hour Cymbals has some fantastic tracks as well). Fragrant World is weaker, in my opinion, because their sound has become more straight-forward pop, or maybe more like house music (I'm not sure what words to use to describe the type of music I'm thinking of). Well, this isn't to say that it sounds like anything in the Top 40 (or whatever it's called). I just miss the wonderful excursions into different types of sounds that I'd never heard before.

However, this stylistic shift does mean that almost every track from Fragrant World is a whole lot of fun to dance to. This is the kind of music that could make me actually enjoy clubbing (which I usually avoid like the plague). It's infectious and almost impossible to resist at least tapping your foot along, if not shamelessly dancing along. While Fragrant World is great for this, I just miss some of their more far-out stuff.

While maybe this change will benefit them as a band, making them more accessible to a wider audience, I miss their more experimental roots, and hope that they head back in that direction for their next album.

And here is a taste of some of their music, for those who are interested.
From Fragrant World: Reagan's Skeleton
From All Hour Cymbals (though really this is a studio session for a radio station): Wait for the Summer

Lazy Pasta

Sorry for the random long break in posts. I had been traveling a lot, and subsequently not making my own food. Part of my travels included moving back up to my Toronto apartment. While it's exciting to be back, it does mean I have to say goodbye to my parent's lovely kitchen (with it's marble countertops and it's commercial size range and it's extensive, always stocked pantry).

So, since I've just recently moved in, I'm don't really feel up for cooking anything to intensive, so I'm going to tell you my favorite lazy (and cheap) dish. It's something I can easily whip up in less than a half hour, and can feed a lot of people.

This recipe uses a combination of veggies that looked good at the supermarket today, but you can (as usual), use whatever you want. I often use bell peppers, eggplant, asparagus, olives, etc.

Oh, and of course, I forgot to take pictures because I'm a fool. I promise I'll start making more legitimate posts soon.

Veggie Pasta

Makes 3-4 servings

1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 zucchini
4 crimini mushrooms
1/2 pound pasta
1/2 jar tomato sauce (or if you're feeling adventurous, you can make your own. I'll give some guidelines on pasta sauce recipe further down)


Boil ~5 cups water in a large pot. Add a large pinch of salt to the water.

Dice onions, mince the garlic, and chop the zucchini and mushrooms.

Saute the onions in a large skillet until translucent. Then add the minced garlic.

Once the salted water is boiling, add the pasta, and cook for the recommended time (or until it's your favorite texture)

To the sauteed onions and garlic, add the zucchini and mushrooms. Cook until veggies are your desired doneness (I really don't cook the veggies down that much, because I love fresh/crunchy veggies). Add the tomato sauce, and heat through.

When the pasta is done to your liking, strain out the water.

Serve the pasta and the veggie sauce, and if you want, you can top it with some cheese.


Quick Tomato Sauce

This recipe will probably make more sauce than you need for the pasta recipe above, but whatever is left over you can just put in the fridge and use later. And then you'll have delicious home-made sauce and you won't even have to worry about it.

1 16 ounce can of tomatoes (diced or crushed, depending on how chunky you like your sauce. Or if you really like chunky, you could get canned whole ones and mush them up for a bit in the can)
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic minced
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil (or fresh, if you have it)
1/2 tsp red peppers flakes

Saute the onion and garlic in some olive oil in a saucepan.

Add the canned tomatoes, and bring to a simmer. Add the herbs and spices.

Here is where the recipe gets fun. You can make whatever kind of sauce you like. Do you want cheese in your sauce? Add some grated parmesan or romano. Want to make an artichoke sauce? Take a can of artichoke hearts and throw it in. If you happen to have prosciutto, you could totally add it in, and it would be delicious. Basically, now it the time to add whatever makes you think "Mmmm, that tomato sauce looks fantastic".

And you can specialize the spices as well. Do you think that rosemary would be really good in pasta sauce? Go for it! Do you like spicy tomato sauce. Add more pepper flakes, or some chili powder. If you hate spicy food, leave it out, no worries.

However, if you're feeling pretty lazy, you can just stick with tomatoes and herbs. And the one herb that I recommend not leaving out is oregano. That's what makes people think stuff tastes like Italian food (in my experience), and also it's just delicious.


So hopefully this post/recipe will remind you that cooking doesn't really need to be hard and intimidating. It can be really easy to make yourself a good meal with minimal effort when all you really want to be doing is sitting on the couch avoiding unpacking all your stuff.

Ratatouille Redux

Do you like Pixar? What a silly question, of course you do! Everyone likes Pixar! While there are the super famous ones everyone knows about, like Up and Toy Story and whatnot, they've made other good movies that less people have seen, like Ratatouille. And it's a shame that less people have seen this adorable movie, because it's a good Pixar movie with an uplifting message, but mostly because it focuses on delicious food. And that movie is the inspiration for this dish.

Ratatouille is usually a sort of stew-like dish of heart veggies in a tomato sauce, which can be kinda heavy and lack-luster. But this is a more delicate dish that still retains all the delicious flavors of the original.

Also, as a disclaimer, this recipe is blatantly taken from Smitten Kitchen with pretty much no alterations, because Smitten Kitchen is a fantastic source for good recipes. I highly recommend you check it out.

Also, another disclaimer, the pictures accompanying this recipe might be a little misleading, because I made a few adjustments. First, I put in a tomato (because it was about to go bad. If you're in a similar situation, try it out). Also, I ended up with way too much veggie slices, so I made a double layer instead of just one. So don't be discouraged if your dish doesn't look like the photos. It will be just as tasty (and more true to the movie recipe). But then again, if you end up with way to many veggies, like I did, know that this is a viable option (as long as your dish is deep enough).

And this isn't really a disclaimer as much as a bonus: this recipe is vegan! (which I guess shouldn't be surprising since it is composed pretty much solely of veggies)

Pixar Ratatouille

1/2 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup tomato sauce (you can use whatever kind of tomato sauce you want. As usual, I used whatever I had lying around)
1 small eggplant (I used a bunch of little heirloom eggplants that I got from Verrill Farm, because they were so cute)
2 small zucchinis
1 long red bell pepper
3 sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375.

Pour the tomato sauce into the bottom of your baking dish (it should be around 8"x11", but use whatever you have that's around that size). Sprinkle in the onions and garlic and stir in with ~1 tablespoon of olive oil.

Slice all of the veggies as thin as possible (if you're lucky enough to own a mandoline, this is a perfect time to use it).

Arrange these veggie slices on top of the tomato sauce in layers. You can do them in rows, or if you really want to emulate the movie dish, you can make concentric rings with the veggies. Season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with another tablespoon of olive oil. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs by running your fingers down the stem from top to bottom. Sprinkle the thyme leaves over the top of the veggies.

Put in the oven for 45 - 55 minutes. The veggies should still have some structure to them, but they should obviously be cooked.

You can serve this with rice, couscous, crusty toast, or whatever you little heart desires.

-----

Continuing in my theme of reviewing critically acclaimed movies for you guys, today I'm gonna tell you about Searching for Sugarman.

This movie is a documentary about a 1970's musician called Rodriguez. Never heard of him? Not surprising. He was a massive failure in the US, but a huge success in South Africa (he was more popular than Elvis and the Rolling Stones). However, due to political censoring and other various reasons, Rodriguez was a complete enigma to all of his fans in South Africa. No one knew who he was or wehre he was from, or even how he died. There were many conflicting stories about how Rodriguez died, the most gruesome story being that he set himself on fire on stage at a gig. All of this mystery led to some fans starting to investigate the truth about Rodriguez, and they find more than they could ever imagine.

Now, I don't want you to get discouraged by the fact that this movie is a documentary (I know lots of people think that documentaries are boring). It's very visually interesting, (though I wish they utilized more of the original animations they occasionally used to portray Rodriguez from the past) and the soundtrack is lovely (which shouldn't be surprising, since it's composed entirely of Rodriguez' songs).

And, of course, you can't get past the fact that the story that unfolds is so fantastic it is hard to believe. But even when the main mystery is solved ("How did Rodriguez die?"), many more questions remain unanswered.

And one little detail that perfectly encapsulated the continuing enigma of this film is the fact that there is never an image of Rodriguez without sunglasses, except for one scene where you can see his entire face after the main mystery has been solved. I think that's a wonderful visual representation of the mystery of the film.

So if you are interested in 70's music or crazy real life mytseries or just like watching good movies, you should definitely check out Searching for Sugarman.

Banana bread

This blog has yet to showcase one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen: baking. I love making bread, cookies, brownies, tarts, whatever. I love that you can basically do chemistry and get delicious food out of it. Or, as this apron puts it:

Do you ever forget about bananas for a while, and they end up looking like this?

If so, you shouldn't throw them out, you should make banana bread! Once bananas reach this point of brownness, they are bursting with banana flavor and sweetness, and they are basically mush anyway, so you don't need to work hard to make them into mush to make the batter.

This recipe makes 2 loaves of banana bread, so you have a few options once they're done. If you feel like you have more willpower than I do, you can wrap one up and freeze it for later. Or, if you're like me, you can leave them both out and devour them in a matter of days, before they get a chance to go stale. Your choice.

Banana Bread

2 1/2 cups flour (if you want, you can use whole wheat flour, or a mix of whole wheat and all purpose)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 cup butter (softened in the microwave for about 10 seconds, so it's soft but not melted)
2 cups sugar
2 cups mashed bananas (for me, it usually takes about 4 bananas, but it definitely depends on the size of your bananas)
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350. Butter and flour 2 loaf pans. You do this by spreading a thin layer of butter over every surface of the pan that the batter will come in contact in (this means the corners, the edges, everything). Then you take a large pinch of flour and shake it around so that it sticks to all of the greasy parts of the pan (this is always where you can see what part of the pan you missed with the butter). Any extra flour left kicking around in your pans can be put back in the bag (or just dumped in the batter, it doesn't really matter).

In a large bowl (and I mean a large bowl. Use the biggest one you have), mash the bananas with a fork. Depending on their ripeness, this could be pretty easy, or require more effort. Once those mare mashed to a nice mush, add the sugar, butter, and eggs. Mix this all together as well as you can.

Now comes the time where I have to introduce the most important rule of baking (well cooking in general, but baking more often than not): DON'T PANIC! Things will usually look kinda funky in the intermediate steps between start and finish, but you should never think you've messed up. You can always salvage mistakes you make, and most of time it's actually supposed to look like that. For example, at this point in the recipe, my batter looked like this:

It's all lumpy and kinda looks like snot, but that's fine. You haven't made a horrible mistake, it's supposed to look like this (or maybe not, but this is how mine always looks. Maybe a professional baker can make banana bread batter look appetizing, but I can't). So now we move on to the next step, adding the dry ingredients.

Add all the flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon to your current mushy batter. This is another point where you might think something has gone horribly wrong. It will look like you have put in way too much flour, but that is actually the right amount of flour. All the liquid in the bananas and eggs and stuff will soak up that flour in a jiffy. Now, once you add the flour, you don't want to stir it too much. Obviously you want to get everything mixed together, but if you stir the batter with the flour in it for too long, it will get tough when you cook it. So just mix it until it looks kind of homogenous (it will still be lumpy, but that's ok, banana bread batter is allowed to be lumpy).

Now the final step with the batter is to stir in the chocolate chips. After this step, your batter should look like this:

Now, you take this batter and pour it into your prepped loaf pans. Try to split it in half as evenly as possible, but some variation isn't going to ruin it.

Put these pans side by side on the same rack in the preheated oven for 70-80 minutes. This doesn't, however, mean that you get to put the pans in the oven and then leave for the gym for a hour or whatever. You should check the loaves about halfway through the baking process and see if they're baking evenly (well, really they'll just look like pans of batter, but it's good to check). Also, at this point, you'll want to rotate the pans. Ovens always heat unevenly, and you don't want one side of one of your loaves to be cooked and the rest of them uncooked. So you should shuffle them around in the oven. Take the pan that was on the left and put it on the right, and vice versa. Also rotate the pans so that what was the front is now the back.

Once you rotate them, let them cook until they're done. You can tell when they're done by sticking a knife or a toothpick into the center of a loaf and pulling it out. If it comes out clean, it's done. It it comes out with batter stuck to it, it's not done, and you can put it in for like 10 more minutes (it's ok if there's melted chocolate on the knife. That's inevitable).

Now comes the hard part. You should really let the banana bread rest for like 10 minutes before you try to get it out of the pan and eat it. I know it looks and smells delicious, but trust me, it will be so much better to wait.

And for a serving suggestion, try spreading nutella (store-bought or homemade) over a thick slice (this may seem like overkill, since it already has chocolate chips in it, but I don't care, it's delicious).

-----

Today, I'm going to tell you about something that I've always been interested in, but let fall by the wayside until recently: poetry. I love poetry, but for some reason I haven't been reading it too much recently.

This changed when I saw the movie Midnight in Paris (which, on a sidenote, is a cute movie, and Owen Wilson does a fantastic job of channeling Woody Allen's nebbish character). In this movie, the main character briefly meets T S Eliot, and gushes about how much he like Prufrock, which reminded me that I wanted to check out The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. And when I finally did, I was not disappointed. There is a reason it is a classic of the modern age. His portrayal of love and life and the world is so realistic but also so beautiful, you can't help but get sucked into the world he creates. And in amongst this beautiful portrayal of love and life, he has this lingering self doubt ("Do I dare/Disturb the universe?). I think anyone who reads this poem could find something that resonates with them in it.

Another poet that comes to mind when I think of Eliot is W H Auden (I'm not sure why I think of him, but I do. It's like how my mind associates Hemingway and Melville. But I digress). My favorite poem of Auden's is As I Walked Out One Evening. It, too, deals with love, but in a more detached way. Auden describes lovers sitting down by the river, professing their love forever. However, Auden points out that forever is a very, very, VERY long time, and they are making promises that they cannot keep. A pair of stanzas that sum up the feel of the poem perfectly are:

The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
O let not time deceive you,
You cannot conquer time.

Auden understands that human love cannot outlast forever, because forever will outlast all of humanity's existence. Everything we know will fall apart before time ends. And while this may seem like a bleak view, it is told in such a beautiful way, you just have to agree with it (also, it's true).

So go find some poems that you love, and curl up and enjoy the beauty our language can produce.

Homemade Energy Things

So, this title is a bit vague, but I have no idea what to call these things. Basically, they are a bunch of dried fruit and nuts mushed up together into a delicious whole.

I like to pretend that they're healthy, because they're vegan and made of fruit and nuts, but in all honesty, they're incredibly high calorie (since they are packed with sugar and some fat from the nuts). So think of them as an energy bar (like a Larabar, which is definitely my favorite kind of energy bar, but whatever). But these are great snacks to pack for a hike or something like that. Or you can just sit on the couch at home and eat them like candy. Your choice.

Really, these could be made with a combination of your favorite stuff, or whatever stuff you have taking up space in the pantry (which is pretty much how I came up with this recipe). I do however think that some fruits work better than others. I almost always make mine with a base of figs or dates (they seem substantial enough to hold these things together without being too sweet or overpowering. But that might just be me).

Dried Fruit and Nut Balls

1/3 cup walnuts
1/3 cup hazelnuts
1/2 cup dates (pitted)
4 dried pineapple rings
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried cranberries

~1/2 cup dried coconut (unsweetened)

Put all the dried fruit and nuts (except the coconut) into a food processor. Blend until it forms a mass (it's not going to particularly homogenous, but it will definitely stick to itself).

Now comes the messy part. Take this paste-like mass and form it into balls. I usually make them about 1 inch in diameter. But make them whatever shape or size you want). Take these balls and roll them in the coconut to coat.

Store these in a tupperware container in the fridge

------

Movie time! So, I'm assuming if you spend any time on the internet and are interested at movies at all, you've probably heard of Moonrise Kingdom. But that's not going to stop me from joining in with the masses and saying that it's fantastic!

The basic plot layout is deceptively simple: a boy and a girl run away from camp and home, respectively, to be together. But it is done in Wes Anderson's typical style (though, to admit, I've only ever seen 2 other Wes Anderson movies, but after this I want to watch them all). The humor is very straight forward and blunt, and occasionally a little dark, but always hilarious. One of my favorite characters is Edward Norton's scout master, who vainly struggles to control his pack of rowdy khaki scouts (essentially boyscouts). He's incredibly compassionate and tries to do the right thing, but is, in reality, pretty much useless.

Along with the fantastic humor and the wonderful characters, the visuals are perfect. It's set in Maine in the 60's, and the visuals perfectly capture a nostalgia for a beautiful, kind of pastoral, past for coastal Maine. All the costumes are wonderfully vintage, and the choice to film it in a way that looks like it's from the 60's was brilliant.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that this movie has a ridiculous list of awesome actors in it (Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman), and the new young talent doesn't disappoint either.

Fun with Alcohol

I absolutely love making (and drinking, obviously) fancy cocktails. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I peruse the cocktail menu and see if anything jumps out at me.

However, it can get very expensive to get fancy cocktails at fancy restaurants. So, I took it upon myself to learn to recreate these fancy cocktails at home. First I started with things like what I've decided to call a Dark and Stormy Daiquiri (recipe below), which is delicious, but only has a few basic ingredients. But then I decided to take it a step further, and make my own flavored alcohols.

I can often be a kind of food/alcohol snob, and therefore think that, often, flavored alcohol is pretty gross (Like that gross Smirnoff vodka that comes in technicolor bottles that everyone in college dorms thinks is delicious. I disagree). But I do like the idea of flavored alcohol, if it's done well, so I figured I try to make my own, because it didn't seem that hard. And, as it turned out, it's not.

As always, this is just a sort of outline of how you could go about making your own flavored liquor. Everyone has different tastes, so go crazy with flavor combinations that excite you. However, some foods don't lend themselves to much to infusing (I tried to make my roommate apple-spice vodka, but that failed miserably and just tasted like vodka). So I would advise using particularly aromatic or strongly flavored things (like oranges, berries, herbs, etc). But feel free to experiment. Maybe you'll succeed where I failed.

Here I'll tell you how I made my orange-anise whiskey, because it is the favorite one I've made so far.

Orange Anise Whiskey

1 bottle whiskey (I wouldn't splurge on top shelf stuff here, but also don't get swill, because no amount of flavorings can make that taste good)

1 orange

1 tsp anise seeds

Using a vegetable peeler, zest the entire orange, taking care to get just the orange part of the peel, and none of the white pith underneath (it's bitter and won't make your whiskey delicious and orangey).

I find that it's easier to make this all work if you transfer the whiskey to a large tupperware, but if you think you can get away with just plopping stuff in the bottle, go for it.

Add the orange zest and the anise seeds. Let them sit for 3-4 days (though letting it sit longer wont hurt), and strain out the orange zest and anise seeds. If you have it in a tupperware, return to the original bottle.

I enjoy drinking this straight, or with some ice (my friend says it tastes like Christmas).

Other flavor combinations that would be good are:

Cucmber-lime gin (I have made this and it's delicious. Just zest 2 limes, peel and slice one cucumber, and infuse for a few days)

Blackberry-anise gin (I haven't made this, but it sounds fantastic and it's next in line to be made)

Rosemary or thyme gin (This would be a good thing to use in this recipe. Gin tends to pair fantastically with herbs like this)

Christmas-spice whiskey (Taking my friend's description of my whiskey as inspiration, I want to try to make one with stuff like cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice and maybe anise, because anise is delicious)

Ginger rum (Again, I haven't made this yet, but I want to try, because it would be perfect in the Dark and Stormy Daiquiri.) 

Speaking of which, I haven't given you that recipe yet, so here you go:

Dark and Stormy Daiquiri

1 part dark rum (I like to experiment with new and interesting types of rum, though my current favorite is Old Monk)
1.5 parts lime juice
a dash to 1 part ginger syrup (it really depends on how sweet you want it to be)

To make ginger syrup, take equal parts sugar and water. In a small saucepan, heat the sugar and water until all the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat, and add 2-3 slices of fresh ginger, and let steep for 5-10 minutes (the longer it sits, the stronger it gets).

Shake all ingredients with ice, and serve in a glass. Garnish with a slice of lime.

-----

Music again this time (if you don't like it, boo hoo). Foals, one of my favorite bands, has recently released a "mixtape" album (emulating an old cassete mix tape). It sounds kinda random (and really, it is), so I was pretty dubious. But upon checking it out, I was pleasantly surprised. This 10 minute 'sample' is has a really cool collection of music that you might not think would work together (like afropop and techno).

Chili-Lime Beef Jerky

All the posts on this blog so far may have been slightly misleading. It's all been focused on produce and whatnot, which belies a massive part of my diet: meat. This isn't to say that I feel the need to eat meat with every meal (I love having just a salad or something like a roasted veggie panini, mmmmm), but I will never deny my love of meat. Sausages (I'm part German, so I have to like sausages), steak, pork chops, grilled chicken, lamb curry, everything.

But I don't make myself meat that often (when I'm not at home with my parents), because whenever I go the butcher shop, I feel like I'm on a strict deadline to use up this meat before it goes bad. So often, to quell my meat cravings and not have to worry about it going bad, I'll make myself some beef jerky.

I've always loved beef jerky ever since I first picked up a random packet in a gas station. But making jerky at home is so much tastier and more cost effective than buying it in a store. And you can make it in whatever flavor you want, as opposed to the limited "plain", "peppered", and "teriyaki" that you can get in the store (though that doesn't mean I don't love making teriyaki jerky).

And while it doesn't have preservatives and therefore won't store as long as the store-bought version, that has never been a problem for me.

Oh, and since I apparently have no planning skills, I totally forgot to take pictures until they were all done, so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like in production (though, to be honest, it doesn't look too appetizing. It's just a pile of meat strips covered in spice paste).

Chili-Lime Beef Jerky

.5 pound flank steak

Juice from .5 limes (unless it’s a particularly un-juicy lime, then use the whole lime)

3-4 dashes Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp chili powder

.5 tsp cumin

.5 tsp smoked paprika

Sprinkle of red pepper flakes

Large pinch of sait

~ 1/8 tsp pepper

Heat your oven as low as it will go. 

Trim any excess fat off the flank steak, then, slice it about as thin as you can manage. Don’t be fooled by those “jerky nuggets” you might see in gas stations, jerky needs to be thin in order to dry out properly (also, those things just seem gross). It is also important to slice with the grain of the meat. This is specifically why we are using flank steak for this. It has a nice long grain that, when cut along, creates a fantastically chewy piece of jerky.

Put the beef slices in a bowl. Over these, add all the lime juice, Worcestershire sauce and the spices. Stir to completely coat the meat in spice mix. Let rest for about 10 minutes (or longer, it doesn’t really matter. Just make sure to put it back in the fridge if you let it rest for like a half hour).

After the meat has rested, lay the slices out on a wired rack in a backing sheet. The rack allows for maximum airflow around the jerky, and the pan catches any drips that might occur. 

Place the rack in the oven until the jerky is completely dried (this can take many hours. I often leave jerky to dry overnight) You don’t wan to see any pink, everything should be a deep brown and stiff (but not burnt. If your jerky is cooking, your oven is too hot, and you should prop the door open with a wooden spoon to cool it down some). 

Store in an airtight container (if your jerky is particularly fatty, you might want to layer it in paper towels).

Variations:

There are countless other flavors of jerky you can make. You're only limited by your imagination (and of course appetizing flavor combinations). Also, it's really easy to make two different flavors of jerky at the same time (as long as you can keep straight which is on which pan). Just split up the beef once it's sliced, season differently, and dry them together on separate pans (or, if you like surprises, just put them together haphazard on each pan).

Other variations that I make often are:

Teriyaki - make or buy teriyaki sauce and coat your slices in it, letting sit for about 15 minutes before drying. These might take longer to dry, since they're covered in wet teriyaki sauce, and will also be sticker as a final product.

BBQ - same as the teriyaki ones, but with BBQ sauce

Curry - (Disclaimer: I've never made this before, I just thought of it, and I totally wanna try it). Coat your beef slices in curry powder and lime juice, and dry just like the chili-lime ones.

If you think of any other great variations, tell me so I can try them out. That way I can have a giant selection of jerky to fit my every mood.

-----

Back to music for this post. I want to share some of my favorite bands that I genuinely feel like few people had heard of (and if this makes me sound like a hipster, I don't care. It's not the first time I've been called a hipster, and to be honest, the title kinda fits. So whatever). They range from bands from my friend's high school, to small bands acquaintances of mine have written reviews of for their local paper (gotta love Facebook for getting the most out of those incredibly tenuous friendships).

First, is an indie-folk band called The Novel Ideas. They are a product of Newton South High School, which impresses me, since my high school only every produced kinda crappy punkish bands (not what I'm interested in). The Novel Ideas  encapsulate feelings of innocence and romance and summer in their songs so well, it's a joy to listen to them.

Second comes a band called The Lisps. I learned of them after I saw their show (I'm not sure how to describe it other than just "show") called Futurity. It was about an American Civil War soldier corresponding with Ada Lovelace, trying to create an analytical engine to create world peace. The soundtrack to this show was fantastic, with elaborate steampunk set pieces being used as percussion. They ended the show with this song, Singularity, which is when I fell in love.

Last up comes Spiral Beach, a smallish band from Toronto. I've never seen them live, and definitely want to rectify this situation. From what I've seen and heard, I believe their live shows are amazing. But even without seeing the live experience, I can still say they are a great band. They have no lack of energy, and every song is brimming with attitude. Check out this performance of Raising the Snake at the old location for Sonic Boom.