Step 11: Open a Heineken

August 8, 2020 12:12 PM

“I had gotten into cooking. I just loved food and hated going out to restaurants all the time, so I taught myself how to cook by reading books and practicing, just like you do on an instrument. I could cook most of the great French dishes—because I really liked French cooking—and all the black American dishes. But my favorite was a chili dish I called Miles's South Side Chicago Chili Mack. I served it with spaghetti, grated cheese, and oyster crackers."

--Miles Davis, on his famous chili recipe

Via Kottke, which also links burger recipes from Hemingway, Dean Martin, and Sinatra from the archives.

posted by youarenothere (34 comments total)

I bet this is great, although you missed the opportunity to add a "suet" tag to this post. ;)
posted by jeremias at 12:20 PM on August 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

I like suet as much as the next man, but that looks like it's going to have a couple of inches of grease floating on the top when it's done. Maybe you use the crackers to mop it up before you tuck in...
posted by pipeski at 12:30 PM on August 8, 2020

More so than the amount of fat here, I'm really surprised that this is only 6 servings! Quite a heavy meal!
posted by stripesandplaid at 12:39 PM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

1 tsp. chili powder. .
1 drop red wine vinegar. . .
3 lb. spaghetti. . .

It's neat to know about this. I doubt I would find it satisfying.
posted by eotvos at 12:41 PM on August 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

As a Texan, I fear it might require a spectral analysis to detect 1 tsp of chili powder in this particular recipe. I expect the result is not unlike waving a closed spice container at the pot and whispering "chili powder"...
posted by jim in austin at 1:15 PM on August 8, 2020 [30 favorites]

I've thought for a long time that being a really good cook and being an excellent musician go hand in hand because cooking requires exquisite timing, so much more manual dexterity than people seem to realize, and also the ability to hold in your mind a sense of how the whole thing is evolving and adjust very fine details of what you're doing in accordance with that global conception, not to mention quite a bit more humility than musicians require since people then consume your work of art and it's gone forever, and most people cannot remember in detail what it was even like.
posted by jamjam at 1:34 PM on August 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

since people then consume your work of art and it's gone forever, and most people cannot remember in detail what it was even like.

I feel like that’s what makes it so special! Also, people usually remember the occasion well if not the specifics of the food. :)
posted by Gymnopedist at 1:41 PM on August 8, 2020

The quarter-pound of suet is there so you don't have to play the "butter notes."
posted by transitional procedures at 1:47 PM on August 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Probably Bill Evans invented the recipe
posted by thelonius at 2:00 PM on August 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

From the alternative recipe:

1/2 jar of mustard

Now we're talking.
posted by zompist at 2:29 PM on August 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

So is someone going to try this and tell us how it is, or what
posted by potrzebie at 2:31 PM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Probably Bill Evans invented the recipe

Substitute Heineken for liberal dashes of heroin.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:40 PM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

liberal dashes of heroin.

Evans wound up as mostly a cokehead, which I always found to be incongruous. HIs music seems so peaceful and contemplative, not really very gakked-out like.
posted by thelonius at 3:02 PM on August 8, 2020

jamjam: "people then consume your work of art and it's gone forever, and most people cannot remember in detail what it was even like."

If you make chili right, it'll be back and there'll be plenty to remind people of what it was like.
posted by chavenet at 3:04 PM on August 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yeah, 1 tsp chili isn’t going to cut it but y’all are forgetting

7. Add more seasonings to taste, if desired.

posted by sjswitzer at 3:07 PM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have a sneaking suspicion that both of those recipes may be a couple of Miles' notorious whoppers...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:10 PM on August 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

Minus most of the suet, this seems like it would be enjoyable comfort food. Not at all what I would call chili or chili mac, but very much in the tradition of midwest (and mid-century) food.

But the quantity of suet in the first recipe ("Melt suet in large heavy pot until liquid fat is about an inch high") seems like either someone's idea of joke or there is a missing step somewhere along the way where the extra fat is poured off.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:50 PM on August 8, 2020

It sounds good, but I stopped at the part about 1" of liquid fat. I could feel my arteries slam shut.
posted by dfm500 at 4:27 PM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

4 oz. of suet is going to render considerably less than 4 oz. of liquid fat, especially if the suet isn't shredded first. Even an ounce will be a lot (since there's two pounds of meat going in as well), but like a lot of the details in this recipe (half a pound of spaghetti per serving?) the "inch of oil" sounds kinda questionable.

About the only thing I don't find questionable is the use of seasonings. Americans, at least in the northern parts of the country, were really light-handed with anything other than salt and pepper before the 1980s.
posted by ardgedee at 4:54 PM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

If I consume that much fat, I will be feeling kind of blue afterwards.
posted by AugustWest at 5:13 PM on August 8, 2020 [12 favorites]

Definitely. And not in a silent way.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:20 PM on August 8, 2020 [22 favorites]

Yeah, that one drop of vinegar is the note that seems out of place but then you are improvising on it and end up in some other place entirely.
posted by joeyh at 5:23 PM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Kind of Bleh
posted by hal9k at 6:49 PM on August 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

being a really good cook and being an excellent musician go hand in hand

I cook a lot, and I've tried my hand at a number of instruments over the years. I've consistently received same feedback for both, respectively: please more and please stop.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:30 PM on August 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Kind of Bleh

I'm going to look away from you while you make that joke.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:03 PM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

"Don't play the butter notes."

I heard that same story but in this version he said "Don't play the tonic."
posted by hypnogogue at 11:22 PM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

In my experience, when cooks say things like "about an inch" or "dice into half-inch pieces" etc., they're always going by the measurement of a mental ruler with miniature inches on it.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:56 AM on August 9, 2020

Chill out about the fat, people, it's not that crazy... 1/4lb of suet is the equivalent of a stick of butter, not a totally unreasonable amount for a recipe that will feed, well, I'd guess 10. In a pot large enough for this much chili, it would be a lot less than 1/2" deep. Also, 2lb of ground meat today will generally have more than 1/4lb of fat mixed in, unless you get the extra lean stuff. Maybe ground beef and pork were just leaner back then?
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 7:49 AM on August 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

This sounds delicious and I would totally make and/or eat it, but "1 drop red wine vinegar" reminded me of the cookbooks aimed at white housewives I found in my mom's basement last year with recipes for gigantic casseroles and stews which could call for a pinch of paprika or a single dash of black pepper. Wouldn't want your salmon bake to be too spicy!
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:01 AM on August 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

kleinsteradikaleminderheit - I was about to snark about American beef; 1/4lb in 2lbs of ground beef sounds like a lot, but that's only 1/8th or 12.5%.

Unless you're adding a 1/4lb of 100% fat to an already fatty 2lbs of ground beef?

After looking it up, Canadian ground beef, by regulatory labeling, is up to 30% fat, lean ground beef is up to 17% and extra lean up to 10%.

It's possible that old-timey cattle were a lot leaner than today's production varieties. Makes sense they'd add suet, leaf lard is delicious (moreso than other skeletal fat deposits - but you are what you eat; grass fed tastes so much better than cheap corn fed).

I remember in grad school eating cheap ground beef of always having to pour off the tallow. These days I have a decent source for grass fed extra lean sirloin. Price per gram of actual protein is roughly 10-15% more than the cheap regular cattle lot ground beef (excepting sales on the cheap stuff - ground beef freezes and defrosts great in 2 portion aliquotes), and taste so so so much better.

But those cheap calories from the fat.
posted by porpoise at 6:12 PM on August 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

@jim_in_austin

I fear it might require a spectral analysis to detect 1 tsp of chili powder in this particular recipe. I expect the result is not unlike waving a closed spice container at the pot and whispering "chili powder"...

The recipe has some help for that:

7. Add more seasonings to taste, if desired.

I think about 4 Tbsp good chili powder ought to bring it somewhere withing hailing distance of being "chili." It already has a fuckton of garlic powder (I wonder if she really meant "garlic salt?") and about half as much cumin as it needs. Though I'd crush the seeds myself.

@jamjam:

... quite a bit more humility than musicians require since people then consume your work of art and it's gone forever, and most people cannot remember in detail what it was even like.

This is also what it was like for musicians until very recently, and in fact how it still is for most musicians, who don't get good recordings made of their playing.

@Dip_Flash:

But the quantity of suet in the first recipe ("Melt suet in large heavy pot until liquid fat is about an inch high") seems like either someone's idea of joke or there is a missing step somewhere along the way where the extra fat is poured off.

Not necessarily. A quarter pound of suet is less than the fat in a half-cup of oil, and I can point at a very good pomodoro sauce recipe which uses a half-cup of olive oil (to caramelize 2 onions and garlic, about a whole bulb's worth) which winds up with 2 x 28oz cans Roma tomatoes. It rich sauce, but not greasy. I do think the contemporary cook would want olive oil in place of the suet if attempting this recipe. The notion that a quarter pound of suet would leave an inch-deep layer in a decent-sized pot (one for making chili with 2# of meat for example) is nonsense. This is not a recipe that was proofread by a food editor.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:51 AM on August 10, 2020

I think about 4 Tbsp good chili powder ought to bring it somewhere withing hailing distance of being "chili."

Yes, but going from 1 to 12 tsp is way beyond "adding to taste". Credible recipes tend to specify amounts pretty close to what most people would consider a normal range, not ludicrously far below it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:22 AM on August 10, 2020

Doubly so for "1 drop red wine vinegar"...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:46 AM on August 10, 2020

But my favorite was a chili dish I called Miles's South Side Chicago Chili Mack. I served it with spaghetti, grated cheese, and oyster crackers.

As a Cincinnatian, this recipe sounds pretty damn close to a four-way with beans - just needs a bit more cloves and cinnamon. If it was good enough for Miles Davis, maybe the rest of the country can give it a rest about whining THAT'S NOT CHILIIIIIIIII whenever the topic of Cincinnati chili comes up.
posted by mostly vowels at 4:18 PM on August 12, 2020