Midwestern Cuisine (and Chili con Carne)

What is Midwestern cuisine? Is it even a cuisine, in the proper sense of the word? This is a question that keeps recurring as I continue to live in Dayton, Ohio and learn more about the local culture(s). According to Merriam-Webster, a cuisine is a style of cooking, a manner of preparing food, or the food that is characteristic of a country or region. But what is it that makes something a “cuisine” rather than just food? A little more digging on the all-knowing Interwebs and through some useful books revealed the factors that go into the making of a cuisine: climate, history ingredients, techniques, and economic conditions. In other words, the parameters of a cuisine are shaped by a strong sense of place, terroir as it were, based on the idea that a country or region has a sense of place, culture or way of life that is expressed in the food that its residents make. Not the fancy restaurant food—though sometimes that too—but the food that people make at home.

One meal Dale and I had recently demonstrated to me that all the negative stereotypes people in other parts of the United States have about Midwestern cuisine certainly exist. At a restaurant in Hanover, Indiana that shall remain unnamed, we were served a truly awful meal. Most of the ingredients came from cans or were otherwise commercially processed, the salad bar had very few fresh vegetables, and the bread consisted of Wonder-type bread sprayed with margarine and toasted—with nary a nib of garlic in sight. The chowder had so much flour that its texture resembled day-old sludge. All the food was very bland. The worst part was the bright, Jello- green “key-lime” pie whose filling seemed to be a mix of Jello powder, cream and Cool Whip, with more Cool Whip on top. The iced tea was good and our waitress very friendly, but this meal, which was not cheap, left us wondering why the restaurant had so many glowing reviews on Yelp. Looking around as we picked at our food, I surveyed the patrons of the packed dining room and wondered if they were really happy with the food they were eating. Is this what they thought Midwestern cuisine was all about?

Continuing with my research, I asked my Facebook friends from the Midwest how they thought about Midwestern cuisine and a different set of answers emerged. Yes, there were some references to cream-of-mushroom-soup sauces and Cool Whip, but there was also an emphasis on hearty food with straightforward flavors, one-pot meals like and casseroles that save time and money, fruit-forward desserts like pies and crisps, and an emphasis on regional ingredients like , potatoes, corn, beans, carrots, apples, hearty greens and other vegetables/fruit suited to the local climate. So is Midwestern cuisine just plain country food writ large? That didn’t feel right to me either. Certainly country food is ONE type of Midwestern food but there are so many others that don’t fit into this model.

A useful 2015 article by Aimee Levitt in the Reader (http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/midwest-cuisine-food-cat herine-lambrecht-paul-fehribach-big- jones/Content?oid=19488375) addresses this question of why Midwestern cuisine is so difficult to define. The author cites the diversity of the region’s micro-cuisines, which range from chili to Iowa tenderloin sandwiches, as well as a regional tendency to focus on individual communities’ immigrant roots (think Cincinnati German or Cleveland Polish or Hungarian), as two of the obstacles to defining a regional cuisine in the Midwest. She also notes that unlike, say, in the South, the products Midwesterners used weren’t always local because the railroads that crisscrossed the country from the middle of the 19th century onward made the food of other regions very accessible. Finally, the food of the Midwest was never a mixing of cultures, for example, in the way that Irish corned emerged in 19th-century NYC as an adaptation of Irish meat preparation techniques to a quintessentially Jewish meat: beef brisket. The food of different communities stayed largely distinct. For these reasons, the various food cultures of the Midwest never coalesced into a full-blown cuisine like that of the South or the American Southwest.

But maybe someday this will change as the Midwest grows into a stronger regional identity and Midwesterners imagine a cuisine that is based on fresh, local ingredients adding up to more than the sum of its immigrant parts. I certainly hope so. There is so much potential here to nurture a terroir and create a cuisine that both pays homage to the region’s origins and looks forward to its hopefully dynamic future. With this in mind, I am offering a recipe here for chili con carne. Now bear with me here—I am aware that this is a dish with roots deep in the Tex-Mex border region. But it has been adopted (and perhaps adapted) with a vengeance here in the Midwest. It certainly fits the criteria: a one pot meal, heavy on ground , beans and veggies, topped with cheddar, scallion and sour cream. A hint of cinnamon nods to while a dark beer braise pays homage to this region’s deep German roots. It’s homey, richly flavored and perhaps, in some small way, contributes to the notion of Midwestern cuisine. Or perhaps not. But it’s still delicious.

Chili con Carne with Dark Beer and Dark Chocolate

Ingredients peanut or other neutral vegetable oil 2 lb coarsely ground beef chuck (20% fat) 1 lb ground 2 large lots of garlic cloves 2-3 red, yellow or orange bell peppers 3 poblano peppers one 28oz can diced tomatoes with juice 3 cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (or use a package of dried beans that you have soaked and precooked) 1 bottle dark beer—I use stout but feel free to substitute something you like to drink 2-4 oz very dark chocolate, grated or broken into small pieces—don’t use “baking chocolate,” buy a real bar of chocolate 1 bunch scallion sour cream grated sharp cheddar tortilla chips or

Seasonings: cayenne pepper, ancho chile powder, , coriander, salt, garlic powder, cinnamon,

Step 1 Dice the onions and peppers into large dice. Mince or slice the garlic. Pour a glug of oil into a heavy, high-sided pan or dutch oven and heat on med-high heat until shimmering. Add the garlic, cook a couple of minutes until golden. Then add the rest of the vegetables to the pan and cook until they turn a deep golden or even light brown, about 10 minutes. They will be quite soft. Season with salt to taste

Step 2. When the vegetables are soft and a translucent golden brown, crumble the ground beef and pork into the pan with your hands. Then, using a wooden spoon and serving fork (or two regular forks), mix the meats into the vegetable mixture in the pan, separating it out as you go. The idea here is to have browned meat crumbles rather than big chunks of . Cook until the meat starts to brown, about 10-12 minutes

Step 3 When the meat has begun to brown, begin to add spices in this order: salt, garlic powder, , cumin, and coriander. I like a LOT of cumin—more than you think—and a fair amount of coriander. Add spices to the pan in small-ish amounts, mix through, and taste to determine what tastes “correct” to you. Then add a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and cayenne pepper to taste. Mix through. Taste again.

Step 4 Add the beer into the pan, turn the heat up to high and boil briskly for a few minutes, until some of the liquid has evaporated and you no longer smell alcohol wafting up from the pan. Then add tomatoes, stir through, and cook another couple of minutes to let some the liquid evaporate once more.

QuackHack: if your chili tastes too acidic to you after you add the tomatoes, add a pinch or two of sugar to rebalance the flavors.

Step 5 Put the beans in the pan, stir through. Taste and adjust the seasonings to rebalance.

Step 6 Cook the chili on low heat with the pan cover ajar for at least 30 minutes and up to 90 minutes. You’ll taste a real difference between the “raw” chili at the start and the version that has cooked for a while. Taste every 20 minutes or so to see if the flavors have amalgamated sufficiently. You should not be able to taste a single ingredient by itself—if you do, the chili isn’t done. The chili should be thick and not at-all watery. If it is, raise the heat a bit and take off the lid to evaporate some of the liquid.

Step 7. When the chili is done, stir in the chocolate, cook for a minute and taste. If you want, add more chocolate. Serve in bowls, if you wish top it with sour cream, grated cheddar and chopped scallion. Serve tortilla chips or cornbread on the side