i hate learning about cooking!

every now and then i learn lessons in cooking. these lessons are not traditional, like how to cook that with this or how to use this in those, no. it's more like when a child or caveman first touches fire. "youch!" they say, "i won't do that again because it's extremely painful!" tonight is the first time i cooked something truly, extremely painful.

it started with those spices i bought from the spice house. while browsing their site, i decided to grab a can of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, an ingredient i remember seeing in an alton brown chili recipe. yesterday, the spices arrived, and after buying a big hunk of pork i decided tonight would be a perfect chance to pull out my mom's pressure cooker and take a swing at some chili.



for your reference, i used the following ingredients:
-pork
-diced tomatoes
-diced tomatoes with green chiles
-chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
-cannelini beans
-blue corn tortilla chips

when i opened that beautiful can of chipotles in adobo, the smell was amazing. it smelled exactly like you want a manly, spicy, delicious thing to smell. smokey, yet you'd expect it to be sweet. i looked at the chiles and decided they needed to be chopped up a bit. no problem. dumped them all in the pot.

what i didn't know is that these are super spicy little demons. there i was, grinning while the pressure was released and steamy, wonderful smells filled the kitchen. "ha ha, this will be a chili to remember," i might have said (note that i definitely would not have said this). i filled up two mugs, topped with cheddar, and took a bite.



alarms really do go off in spicy chili situations. whether or not five went off for me tonight, i can't be sure, i fell under a spell. the alarms came in the form of signals from your tongue and throat to your brain, shouting "you are about to have a seizure! you will lose consciousness if you continue! you will never eat food again!" i ignored these and declared it to be much spicier than i imagined, but still delicious underneath the heat. another spoon. the pain did not subside, but i am manly, right? another. amy asks me to add rice to spread the spice around and make it more bearable. she downs a few small spoonfuls and declares it still to be too much, giving up. amy, you are smarter than i. for soon enough, on top of the blaze roaring in my mouth, the urge to vomit grabbed a hold of me and has yet to let go even now, nearly an hour later. milk, water, bread, more water. nothing works.

so i decided that maybe i didn't have enough non-chipotles in the chili to balance the spice. i figured i could remedy the situation by rereading that recipe of alton brown's i mentioned earlier. i thumbed to the recipe and the wave of nausea became a tsunami.

among other ingredients, alton listed:

1 chipotle chile in adobo

there must have been 15 chiles in that can that i gleefully plopped into my chili. he even notes that one should not use one whole can.



so now i'm making pancakes. the chili has been pyrexed and tossed into the freezer as a chili base. i will use 1/12th of it for the next time i make chili.

lesson learned.



BRIAN OUT.