Shopping didn’t quite work out today, might get to go tomorrow. Instead of whatever idea I had, something with chicken or beef tenderloin or an English pie, I made chili. I was able to send someone out for a few things, and the ingredients got back around 4:30pm. And oh boy, was I glad to see some unfrozen ground beef in a plastic bag as soon as I walked into the kitchen. That's it, front and center in the white, nice and room temparature.

The milk I requested was waiting for me in the coolness of the fridge.

In Iraq, there are two types of peppers. First, you have these jalapeño looking things. They are long, slender, and pale green, with a little bit of spice and the taste of a jalapeño. We call them “jalapeños.” Locals call these “hot peppers”. We also have miniature bell peppers, or “sweet peppers.” Oh, and we have ground black pepper. This is all, and therefore, chili is a challenge.

I started out by picking through and washing the tomatoes. Today was a bad worm day, and I had to toss three or four. In the past I usually just chopped my tomatoes, but today I wanted something different, something more playful in the mouth: I randomly cut. This method works really well with my dull, 82 degree beveled knives. If the knife can’t cut the skin, who cares! Just cut the next tomato, and if it cuts it in half, maybe it can cut it into quarters! After going through about 18 tomatoes, I followed up with 8 petite onions (I got about 10 kg of ridiculously small onions last week), chopped all nice and pretty. Diced some jalapeños, and then chopped some sweet peppers. Got my trusty skillet with one handle that wobbles like a coed who has been hitting the Southern Comfort, and another handle that is ready to break apart any day now. Added canola oil (I’ve tried to replenish the olive oil supply for two weeks now), lowest possible flame setting (medium-high), and went to town. First was the ground beef, 1.5 kg or so, cooked until a chunk or two turned brown. Set that aside, and kept the beef juice in the skillet, then came the onions, ground coriander, chicken stock, jalapeños, paprika, pressed garlic, dry oregano, cumin, chili powder, and some red stuff in a spice container. I can’t tell what it is, but I decided to put it in – it’s chili after all! Got everything looking nice and wet, transferred to a stock pot, added tomatoes and more of the herbs and spices. Cooked for a long while, covered.

In the meantime, I lubed up some whole jalapeños and sweet peppers with tasty canola, and tossed them in the oven to roast. Got the cutting board clean (we only have two very small ones) and started on the biscuits. I tried to make biscuits once before, and I spent too much time combining the butter and kneading. My previous biscuits were dense lumps of floury crap. Oh, how I longed to do better this time. Since I still had no margarine, despite asking for it daily for three weeks, I was forced to use the precious Butter-Flavored Crisco. This Crisco is indeed a special commodity here, and had to be shipped from Amman, Jordan.

Take a moment and let that sink in. This is where I cook, supposedly the hearth of our civilization. Life is so great here, that instead of butter, nay! Instead of margarine, NAY! Instead of lard, I have to stoop to Butter-Flavored Crisco AND it has to be tracked down in another country. I can’t even get the plain Crisco blue container. Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai…blow me.

Ahem. I was quite careful in adding the Butter-Flavored Crisco in tiny little amounts, cut it in so carefully with two knives, and then kneaded it as little as possible, only so that all the flour was picked up by the milk. Pat and spread it about ¾ of an inch thick, and punched circles out with a plastic cup. Oh, it was looking good and I was singing “Cuz now I got the world swinging from my nutz” in my head. It was perfect, had just the right amount of room on the baking sheet as I needed for biscuits too. Dabbed a little Butter-Flavored Criso up top of my boys to give them that tasty, shalac, and then they went to the oven. I’d removed the peppers some time before, so that the air could get itself ready for a baking fiesta.

Back to the stovetop with the chili. In went the ground beef, and three cans of kidney beans that had been simmering on the stove. I nearly killed myself trying to open those cans too. Next time I won’t even attempt the can opener, and will just get one of the broken cinder blocks from out in the street and smash the bastard open. I’ll sift out the pieces of rock, I don’t care. Hmmm, maybe one of the guards could shoot the cans open for me. I’ll try that one before the cinder block. Point blank would probably rip the whole thing apart and I’d loose my beans, but maybe a distance of 10 feet would do it up right? Anyone know what a cheap Iraqi knock-off of a Turkish knock-off of a Chinese knock-off of a Yugoslav knock-off of a Russian AV-47, shooting cheap bullets, will do to a typical tin can full of beans at a variety of distances? Maybe 0’, 10’, 20’, and 30’? 40’ might be a littler far since it is a residential neighborhood. Serious question. This ain’t America I’m cooking in – we can do this sort of thing.

I retouched the herbs and spices, and added a wee amount of cocoa, sugar, molasses, a bottle of green Tabasco, a bottle of red tobasco, the roasted peppers (Iraqi roasted peppers produce about 1/8 of a teaspoon of worthwhile pepper meat), and four more pressed cloves of garlic. Let it cooks a little longer. I was trying to simmer it, but all I could get was a rolling boil.

I extracted my biscuits from the oven, and the little bastards didn’t rise more than 1/8 of an inch! I don’t know what it was, if my baking powder was actually talcum powder, or I needed more flour. Whatever it was, I was sad. The little buggers still had a good taste, and were this imaginary sort of flaky, but maybe next time they’ll work out.

The chili was good. Next time I’ll add red wine to it. Or beer, or perhaps some Jack Daniels. That way, I’ll feel like a champ when I spoon my bowl of chili. What else am I supposed to do with what’s left in the bottle?

Oh, and maybe someone can suggest something for me. I've been cooking a lot of chicken these days, which I like, and so do other people. But as I'm prepping the chickens, and especially after fisting them to flavor the inside of the carcass, I develop a mean itch in my hands (or whatever I've touched the chicken with). And I mean a mean itch. I need some sort of cooking glove. Latex might work, but I'd be damned if I can find latex anything in this country. I am thinking about the future with this, and I'd like a solution I could use down the road if I can survive the itch here, and maybe pick up someplace else like Amman, Dubai or Mogadishu. Latex might work, but do you think that might leave a nasty latex taste on the meat? I know you know what I'm talking about, and no one wants that flavor on their chicken. But what about some other material? I know they have chain-link Michael Jackson gloves for butchers, and Spectra gloves for fisherman, but what about for us allergy prone chumps who don't want to look like child petters and who just want to make a chicken and not get itchy from it? Anyone have this problem??