The Cluttered Pantry

This not having a summer thing, then jumping straight into depths of cold and misty air as a pretend fall before the real Chicago winter hits is bumming me out.  I actually like cold weather more than hot, but this is just…well, it’s just craptastic.  My only weapon against the doldrums that this kind of weather brings is the 1940′s ten burner Garland stove that is the centerpiece of our kitchen (and for that matter of our home.)

We started down the path of bringing the fall smells and flavors,  and the warmth of the stove, into our home with the Vegetarian Pumpkin Chili, next up was the all day simmering of the largest pot I own filled with the Borscht I just posted about. We’ve had roasted acorn squash (just some butter and brown sugar on them as they cooked) as a side dish to a simple breaded pork chop, and today I made Spaghetti Squash.  To add some real warmth, to what can be a pretty bland dish, I went back to an old recipe that I used to make when we lived in New Mexico.  Then the heat came from Hatch Green Chiles, the Big Jim variety.  If you haven’t had the good fortune to experience this particular pepper (oh that is like a bad version of Peter Piper!) and you like that bead of sweat that starts at your temples when you eat spicy food – seek it out.

I’ve tried growing my own Big Jims here in Chicago, but there just aren’t enough sunny days, and I think the soil is missing something magic that the hard sun baked earth of New Mexico lends to the real thing.  So, for a while we ordering roasted and peeled chiles from a Hatch, NM farm that sells online but when you add in the shipping costs a pound of the green stuff costs more than the finest cuts of beef, so I just can’t justify it anymore.  For our meal tonight I went with poblano peppers, our local produce shop carries them, and they have a good enough heat-to-flavor ratio that I’m willing to make the substitution.

The smell of the poblanos roasting (I just toss them directly on the flame from the stove top) is so intoxicatingly good that Mark came downstairs from the third floor studio to see what magic was happening in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• Spaghetti Squash (split in half, scoop our the seeds place in a pan with about two inches of boiling water -cut side up- and cook with the lid on for about 8 minutes)
• 3 or 4 Green Chiles (roast, peel dice)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups black beans
• 2 crushed cloves of garlic
• 1 cup shredded Chihuahua cheese
• pepper and salt

Method

In either butter or olive oil, saute the peeled green chiles with the garlic and black beans (pre-cooked) toss in the spaghetti squash (you use a fork to scrape the squash after cooking and it comes out in long spaghetti like threads.) add in the cheese and put the pan under a broiler or in your oven until the cheese is bubbly.  We eat this is a main dish, but it works great as a side, and if you add shredded chicken to it it becomes one of those casseroles that belongs at most pot luck events.

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