Is mole (moe lay) chili?

Where we live the country is hilly

And people might think that it’s silly

With no burger nor bean

Whether it’s red or it’s green

To call my recipe chili.

Synopsis:  I’m a family practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In May 2010, I left my position of 23 years, and honoring my non-compete clause, traveled for a year doing locum tenens work.  In June of 2011 I joined up with the Community Health Center, which provides care for the underserved.  I’m now working part-time, which, for a doctor, means 54 hours a week.

I made my second foray into competitive cooking today at the clinic’s annual chili cook-off.

My first experience came while still working at the Clinic Formerly Known As Mine.   I had a dynamite recipe, inherited from my mother; it brings consistent accolades when I serve it to guests.  But in accepting corporate sponsorship, I accepted the mandate to make the product heart healthy.  Perhaps my sponsors didn’t mean vegan.  I definitely do not qualify as a vegan.  But I decided to make a vegan chili.

I considered the basic recipe, and after a couple of false starts, decided on ground roasted pumpkin seeds as the substrate.  Once a week over a twelve week summer, I produced another batch, each time fine tuning the mixture of spices.

Simple arithmetic scales a recipe easily; if I put 12 cloves of garlic into a recipe that produces 4 quarts, I need to use 120 cloves of garlic if the rules say I need to produce 10 gallons.  I did the math, I prepped the ingredients, and on the day of competition I arrived early.  With the help of a friend and my wife, we cooked for four hours.  The chili came out absolutely delicious.

The contest awarded a total of 30 prizes to a total of 27 competitors. I won none.  Of the 10 gallons of chili I made, we brought home 9.

In the end, I decided that entering a vegan chili in an Iowa chili cook-off made as much sense as bringing a knife to a gun fight.  Even if every bunch of hungry firemen and ER staff we gave the leftovers to loved it.

The tastes of cocoa and tomato disappear and a distinctive savor that the Mexicans call mole (pronounced moe lay), replaces them both.  Finding the correct balance is very difficult.  My mother got a recipe out of the newspaper, and in an uncharacteristic move, followed it to the letter, nailing a culinary conundrum the first time out.

I took the recipe to college and refined it.  I adapted it from chicken to hamburger, and eventually to deer, elk, and aoudad.  I decided that the meat didn’t matter with a sauce that good.

Which brings up the question:  What is chili?  Growing up it meant browned ground beef, canned tomato, and beans.  When we lived in New Mexico, it usually included meat, rarely tomatoes, never beans, but always chiles, whether green or red. 

This time I used dark meat of turkey as the base; I would rate the result as exquisite.

I wanted to win the contest but I didn’t want the prize, a gift certificate to a faux Mexican food chain.  Bethany and I know we don’t like their food because we ate what drug reps gave us. 

Five cooks entered the contest.  I didn’t place in the top three.  I suspect I came in last.

I came away a trifle disappointed, but I really liked having one of my favorite dishes as a hot lunch. 

Enjoying your own cooking ranks as more important than a prize in a chili cook-off.

Maybe I would have won if I had used beef instead of turkey.  Maybe I would have won if my entry had less heat. 

Maybe mole isn’t really chili.

Next year I might try doing a Pueblo Indian-style beef red chile, something that I’ll work on this summer, with chunked chuck and cascabel chiles.

If I win, I hope I like the prize.

Chicken Mole

3 pound chicken, cut up

Olive or corn oil

1 large green pepper, chopped coarse

1 large onion, chopped medium

28 oz can crushed tomatoes

12 ounce can tomato paste

7 rounded teaspoons cocoa

2 ½ tablespoons ground cumin

Ground chile, chile molido puro, powdered chile, jalapenos, or crushed red pepper; the inherent heat will dictate the amount.  I use 2 ½ tablespoons of a medium hot ground chile.

Garlic to taste

Water as needed.

In a heavy pot, brown the chicken and remove.  Sautee the pepper and onion.  Add tomato paste and crushed tomatoes, thin with ½ cup water, and add cocoa.  (The balance can be so close that scavenging the fugitive bits of tomato paste left in the can make the difference between success and failure; the result should taste neither of tomato nor cocoa).  Press in the garlic.  Add the cumin and the chile, stir in ½ cup water, add the chicken.  Bake covered at 350 degrees for 90 minutes.  Serve with soft corn tortillas and/or rice.  Serves six.

First night call since December and I had to take it in-house

 

The question came up for debate:

To work or not to work late.

       A mistake in the roster

       A dilemma did foster  

In the morning I walked out at eight.

Synopsis:  I’m a family practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  On sabbatical to avoid burnout, while my non-compete clause ticks away I’m having adventures, visiting family and friends, and working in out-of-the-way places.  After a six-week assignment in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States, I’m working on the North Island of New Zealand.  I’ve just finished my first night call since December.

At the end of my clinic day in Snell’s Beach I drove back to Wellsford.  Despite cognitive dissonance about who had call for the evening with my name on the roster and another doc on the computer template, I couldn’t face another forty-minute drive and made it look like I took the night’s assignment graciously. 

The anticipated chickenpox outbreak had arrived, the pharmacy (in Kiwi, the “chemist’s”) had closed, but I rooted through the after-hours drug dispensary and found a surprise supply of acyclovir.

Nitrous oxide and my yoyo tricks convinced a recalcitrant child to hold still to have a cast applied. 

As always, most of the evening’s pathology came from tobacco, alcohol and the immutable law that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

But I got the chance to quiz the people on life in New Zealand.

Agriculture supports the nation.  Farming divides into dairy and “dry stock” (sheep, cattle and deer).  An average dairy operation runs 300 head.  With one cutting of hay per year most farmers don’t know what grasses nourish their herds.  Deer produce almost as much revenue from antler velvet as they do from meat.  Wapiti (North American for elk) cross readily with English red deer and cannot jump a two meter (six-foot seven-inch) fence.

At eight, the end of the scheduled patients, I got a tour of the clinic’s emergency room, crash cart, defibrillator, lights, locks, dispensary, and alarm system.  The other doc, who had stayed to do documentation, left.  The nurse stayed longer than she had to.

I didn’t ask permission to give clinical information, but from 8:45 till 10:15 I took care of a Maori patient accompanied by family.  I got the gratification of hands-on patient care I usually delegate to the nurse.  I called an expert at a hospital an hour away, who gave me courage to use drugs in doses I’m not used to.  I found more medication in the dispensary, avoiding ambulance and hospitalization. 

I learned that the Maori language has changed in the memory of most Maori.  Some on the Maori channel speak classical Maori, a language richer in nuance than modern Maori, which is losing dialect variation.  The urge to absorb one’s enemies’ life-force and mana (a complex Maori word meaning strength, honor, and social standing) drove Maori head-hunting and cannibalism.  Traditional Maori tattooing was done with a chisel, not a needle, and went deep; any expression of pain would diminish one’s mana.

I finished with a new word in Maori, aye, meaning yes.

By the time I locked the door and turned out the lights I felt rumpled.  I stepped out downstairs into perfect temperature and smelled the early autumn and gazed at the stars. 

Fatigue didn’t slow the bouncing waves of the day’s human tragicomedy, and I didn’t have Bethany’s comfort and listening ear.  In a new bed, alone with my vigilance, shallow sleep danced with the day’s memories.

When the eastern sky lightened I dressed and snacked and read Thursday’s newspaper.  At 8:00 I gave handover (Kiwi for check-out) to the doctor coming on call, and at 8:05 I trundled out of Wellsford and onto the road back to Leigh, winding through hills greener than poetry, listening to the morning news breaking up in the valley’s radio shadows.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning: muzzleloading in Ponca State Park

You know, I said with a grunt,

Some just think it’s a stunt,

    With no scope for a sight

    And a load that is light

And a rifle that loads from the front

I went out to Ponca State Park this morning for their annual Outdoor Expo.  Because I’d been so busy in the past I hadn’t attended before, but this year when the Hawkeye Rifle and Pistol Club asked for volunteers, I couldn’t say no.  And I didn’t want to.

Back in February of 1988, my new partner at the time, John, picked up a flyer off his desk and said, “Did you see how long the muzzleloader deer season is in Iowa?  It’s almost three weeks long.”  He put down the flyer and he picked up an identically sized catalogue.  “And did you see how much muzzleloaders are at Comb’s?  They’re $99!” (Comb’s Authorized Liquidators has since changed ownership four times and to the best of my knowledge is out of business.  But they were fun while they lasted.)

For twenty dollars less I bought the kit, mail order.  One of my best stories to tell a live audience is my “take-it-apart-put-it-together” saga of Me and the Ten Failed Muzzleloader Kits.  If you ever meet me and ask for it, I’ll tell the story but it has a lot of visuals that don’t translate to the written page.  In July of that year I bought an actual front-stuffing rifle from Thompson; it served me well for fifteen years until the stock cracked under horrendous weather conditions.  The manufacturer stood behind their product when they didn’t have to, and that’s another very long story.

That summer John and I learned how to shoot and maintain our new rifles.  Over the next five years at least one of us took a crippled deer each year. 

As time passed I acquired a flint-lock, two Civil War era reproductions, modern in-line front loading weapons, and a bunch of spare parts.  I have taken deer and elk for meat. 

I naturally fit in as a volunteer at the Club’s muzzleloader booth.

We kept the loads light, about 40 grains of a black powder substitute propelling round balls with a greased linen patch.  Nobody complained about the recoil.  Several people shot very well.  Lots of folk didn’t know how to aim without a telescopic sight. 

One volunteer gatekeeper, four loaders, and four coaches kept the crowd moving.  It was a good mix of ages, ethnicities, genders and experiences.   A lot of women fired a gun for the first time. 

 At some point I found myself both loading and coaching.  After a few shots my loading went very fast. 

We took a break while three mountain man re-enactors gave a great flintlock demonstration.  One fellow got a shot off every twenty seconds.  Another man dressed correctly for 1760 used a historically accurate “trade musket” loaded with a handful of powder, leaves from the ground for a first wad, a handful of gravel as a charge, and more leaves for a top wad.  He pointed out that with flint and powder he could still have a weapon with whatever he found lying around.