Miscegenation
I first encountered this word in Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father.
“Miscegenation” is the interbreeding of different racial types. Opposition to miscegenation, thereby preserving their race's purity, is a typical theme of white supremacist movements.
Like Obama, chili is a product of miscegenation: the marriage of the Aztec chīlli and Spanish carne that resulted in Chile con Carne, or “chili” for short.
I think we should embrace the introduction of new ingredients to chili in order to elevate the dish. An orthodox chili recipe (“NO beans in Texas chili!”) is just silly.
What makes good chili?
We all have our biases. Childhood, culture, whatever. But I needed to set some goals to creating the best chili I could muster. And here they are.
Melody of chili flavors
Tasty beef (fat is flavor)
Perfectly cooked beans
Deep flavors
Beautiful colors
Ingredients
Chili peppers
Fresh Serrano peppers ….. 2 peppers finely chopped
Gochujang ….. 4 tbs
Fine Gochgaru ….. 1 tbs (you can use any spicy chili powder)
Paprika ….. 1 tbs (get one that has a bright and vibrant color)
Ground beef ….. 2 lbs, get the fattier 15-20% fat
Kidney beans ….. 16 oz
Whole peeled tomato ….. 28 oz can
Tomato paste ….. 6 oz can
Onions diced ….. 2 medium sized
Garlic smashed ….. 5 cloves
Dried oregano ….. 2 tsp
Anchovy ….. 3 filets
Fish sauce ….. 1/2 tsp
Vegemite ….. 1 tsp
Fresh ground cumin ….. 1 tbs
Bayleaf ….. 4 leaves
Chicken stock ….. 1 cup
Cornmeal ….. 2 tbs
Brown sugar ….. 2 tbs
Vinegar ….. 1 tbs
Olive oil ….. 2 tbs
Salt ….. to taste
Black pepper ….. to taste
Garnish
Avocado ….. garnish 1/4 per serving
Cilantro ….. garnish
Shallots ….. garnish
Lime ….. garnish 1/4 squeeze
Instructions
Simmer the beans in water in a separate pan.
You will add the cooked beans to the dutch oven later. This way you can preserve the shape of the bean. You don’t want mushy broken beans.
Soaking beans overnight is best. But canned beans are convenient and will do for me.
Make sure to simmer in salted water to avoid the bean jackets from sliding off.
Heat dutch oven on medium high.
DON’T use high heat! We want to use the heat to transform, create, and infuse flavors. High heat can easily burn the ingredients.
Take the time to enjoy layering all the flavors into this dish. You will be rewarded with a delicious chili, I promise.
In heated olive oil sweat the diced onions for 4 minutes until translucent, then add smashed garlic and heat for 1 more minute.
Now you have a fruity sweet and pungent clear oily base to add flavor.
Layer chili peppers into your base.
Each chili pepper will contribute to the complexity of the flavor.
The heat of the dutch oven surface will further release flavors.
Serrano peppers: fresh spicy bite
Gochujang: super deep mild chili flavors from fermentation of sun-dried chilis
Fine Gochugaru (Korean chili powder): very spicy and fruity flavors from sundried chilis
Paprika: very mild flavor with vibrant red colors
Add other flavors to the base.
These are not major flavors of the dish. But each adds to elevating your dish.
Fresh ground cumin
Dried oregano
Bayleaf
Pepper
Add the tomato paste to the base.
Tomatoes and tomato paste are two different ingredients. (Think grape vs. raisin.)
Tomato paste is made from sun-dried tomatoes. Use tomatoes for freshness and texture. Use tomato paste for flavor.
Make sure the tomato paste comes in contact with the hot surface of the dutch oven. The heat will release more flavor.
Salt to taste.
Deepen the flavor like a chef.
Anchovies
You will not taste the anchovies. We are using it as a flavor enhancer to deepen all the other major ingredients.
Fish sauce
This is a liquid version of anchovies with a higher magnitude of complexity created by natural enzymes. We are adding half a teaspoon to enhance flavor.
Vegemite
This is a yeast extract that is popular from Down Under (My ode to Men at Work). It is acquired taste. Again, we are using it as a flavor enhancer.
Add the ground beef.
Mix with your flavorful base and cook the beef. About 5 minutes.
The goal is to get 1/8 inch pieces of ground beef that is cooked and flavored.
Salt to taste.
Add tomatoes.
Get rid of the liquid from the tomato can. Then crush the tomatoes with your hands. Put into dutch oven.
Add cornmeal.
This will thicken the dish.
Add the beans.
Be careful not to stir too hard. You want to keep the beans intact.
Simmer.
Allow for the flavors to develop with the heat. About 30 minutes.
Add sugar and vinegar to taste.
Salt to taste.
Add chicken stock.
Use the stock to adjust thickness of the dish as you boil.
As you plate add sliced avocado (salted and drizzled in olive oil) on top of the chili.
The avocado fat will enhance the flavor of the beef in the chili.
Garnish with chopped shallots and cilantro.
The crunchy texture of the pungent shallots and fragrant cilantro work wonders to the chili.
Squeeze lime.
Squeeze generously 1/4 lime on the dish.
The acidity of the lime is like sunlight! Without it, the dish will be like driving in the dark without headlights.
Obama’s chili
Having eaten most of my chili in Hawaii, I thought the #1 food with chili was rice. It turns out chili with rice is a Hawaii thing.
Cornbread is the usual suspect on the mainland. I had no idea. Jenny offered to make some. I’m sure it will be amazing.
I was pleasantly surprised (and not surprised) to read that Obama serves his chili recipe since college over white or brown rice. I hope to share mine with him some day.
Hawaii teaches us is that you get some interesting results when you are open to mixing things up. Like loco moco, musubi, misoyaki butterfish, poke bowls, Bruno Mars, and Obama.
Punahou, Honolulu
I imagine an 8th grader with a strange name at the Punahou School in Honolulu discovering the word miscegenation. Once in 1974 and again in 2020.
In 1974, he discovered the word to be pejorative. Then he drew his life’s arch to bend the meaning of the very word and his being. As President he put his body at the center of our nation.
In 2020, I hope my daughter discovers the word. I hope she lives in a world where miscegenation is a complement.
Like the delicious chili I just made for her.
P.S. Below are some facts from Wikipedia.
Laws banning miscegenation
Laws banning "race-mixing" were enforced in certain U.S. states until 1967 (though still on the books in some states until 2000), in Nazi Germany (the Nuremberg Laws) from 1935 until 1945, and in South Africa during the Apartheid era (1949–1985). All these laws primarily banned marriage between persons of different racially or ethnically defined groups, which was termed "amalgamation" or "miscegenation" in the U.S. The laws in Nazi Germany and laws in many U.S. states, as well as laws in South Africa, also banned sexual relations between such individuals.
In the United States, various state laws prohibited marriages between whites and blacks, and in many states, they also prohibited marriages between whites and Native Americans or Asians. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws. Although an "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928, no nationwide law against racially mixed marriages was ever enacted. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that still had them.
The Nazi ban on interracial sexual relations and marriages was enacted in September 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws, the Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre (The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour). The Nuremberg Laws classified Jews as a race, and forbade extramarital sexual relations and marriage between persons classified as "Aryan" and "non-Aryan". Violation of this was condemned as Rassenschande (lit. "race-disgrace") and could be punished by imprisonment (usually followed by deportation to a concentration camp) and even by death.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in South Africa, enacted in 1949, banned intermarriage between different racial groups, including between whites and non-whites. The Immorality Act, enacted in 1950, also made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both laws were repealed in 1985.