So sure, it’s always time for chili, but in winter the dish takes on a whole new life and becomes a weekly staple. I started documenting my chili attempts about a year ago, and I’ve settled on a foundation that I’m really happy with. It’s easily extensible, like any good piece of recipe software, and not too fussy. There’s nothing technically complicated here – just a bunch of ingredients. It’s all timing and patience.

This chili serves 2 comfortably, but why not make a double batch and enjoy the miracle of leftovers. Leftover chili is one of the wonders of the culinary world, only improving in flavor on the second day. You could be really crafty and make this potion the night before.

For roux:
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons white flour

For chili:

• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon chile powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 can whole plum tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup tasty red wine
• 2 teaspoons mole paste
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 cups cooked kidney beans, preferably home-cooked
• 2 cups cooked chick peas, preferable home-cooked
• Salt, pepper to taste

1. Make the roux, foo’. In a small saucepan, add the oil and flour over low heat. Whisk continually for for 5-10 minutes until you have a nice, golden brown, heavenly smelling roux. It’ll turn from brown to black very quickly – so be careful. Take the roux off the heat and set it aside. You won’t need it again for a few hours. If you want to skip this step all together, fine. You can always add some corn starch, arrowroot or flour at the end. The roux just adds this really wonderful nutty richness to the whole affair.
2. In a large saucepan, heat up a bit of oil over medium-high heat and add the onion. Keep the onion going for about 10 minutes until it starts to caramelize. Add the garlic and move things around until the garlic is blond – it should just take a minutes or two.
3. Add all of the spices, except the oregano, to the pan and sauté for a few seconds.
4. Add the canned tomatoes and crush them almost to oblivion – I like to leave a few chunks. Some chili traditionalist snobs eschew tomatoes entirely, but I really love the depth (and umami) they add – especially in the absence of any meat.
5. Add the oregano, broth, wine, honey, and mole paste. If you don’t have mole paste, that’s OK. Just skip it. You’ll miss some of the bitterness and sweetness it imparts, but you’ll only have yourself to blame.
6. Don’t forget to season at this point, but this amazing concoction is going to cook down for a few hours, so don’t add too much salt yet.
7. Now for some patience. Turn the heat down to low and get the hell out of the kitchen, returning occasionally give things a good stir and taste. My favorite version of this chili simmers away for about 4 hours. If you don’t have a ton of time, cut the amount of liquid by half. But there’s not a lot of effort involved at this point. Just restraint.
8. Once things have stewed for a bit – usually about 1 and a half to 2 hours – add the beans. Taste again and adjust for seasoning. Continue cooking for a while. Feel free to get substitute happy – this chili works with pretty much any bean in any quantity.
9. The consistency of the chili will start to change – you want it to be pretty thick, but the roux will add additional thickness. About 20 minutes before the chili’s done, stir in the roux.
10. Take the chili off the heat and let it rest for 10 minutes or so before serving. You could eat it all in one sitting, and that would be great. But this devilish brew only gets better as it sits overnight.

For some extra starch action, we sometimes serve this chili over rice or better yet some of Nat’s cornbread. I like mine garnished with some cheddar, or if I’m in a mood, some fresh coriander and a bit of diced onion.

Stewed to Jonny Greenwood – Bodysong

• 1/4 of a baguette or whatever stale, crusty bread you have lying around, diced
• About 25g mushrooms, diced (more if you’re feeling shroomy)
• 2 big cloves of garlic, minced
• A large handful of fresh parsley
• 10g or so of cheese. You know: cheese. Whatever you have on hand. Something hard and Italian or British and mature makes a lot of sense.
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• A few glugs of extra virgin olive oil
• A few tablespoons of water
• 1 egg, beaten
• Salt, pepper to taste

• Dice up your bread. If it’s not stale/crusty enough, pop it in the oven for a few. In a food processor, turn those chunks of bread into crumbs. They don’t have to be microscopic. Even pea-sized crumbs work just fine. Once you have your crumbs the way you like, add in the parsley and process for a few more seconds. Place the mixture in a big bowl and set aside.
• In a frying pan over medium-high heat, get your garlic going in a tablespoon of olive oil. Once the garlic is golden, add the diced mushrooms. Get those fungi frying until almost all of the water is cooked out. Add salt and pepper to taste and then scrape the results into the bowl of breadcrumbs.
• Add the rest of ingredients, except for the egg and water, to the bowl. Mix, taste, and adjust for seasoning.
• Add the beaten egg and enough water so the mix comes together easily when shaped into balls. It doesn’t really matter how large and in charge you make these little wonders – I just wouldn’t make them more than about 5-7cm (2.5 inches or so) across. Place the finished ballz on a lightly oiled baking sheet. You should end up with 6-12, depending on how big your balls are. (Filthy!)
• Bake at 175C for 25-30 minutes, turning once halfway through cooking. They should be nice and golden brown but still a little soft in the middle.

We had these over some pasta and tomato sauce. Delicious starch-on-starch action.

These would be ultra-tasty on a veggie meatball sandwich. As long as you can forget that fact that you’re essentially eating bread on bread.

Rolled (and rocked) to Sonic Youth – EVOL. But really, any Sonic Youth will do.

• 2 cans of peeled roma tomatoes
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• A glug of olive oil
• A glug of red wine
• 1 teaspoon of thyme
• Salt, pepper to taste

1. Preheat your oven to 200C/400F.
2. Empty the 2 cans of tomatoes into a baking dish, along with the garlic cloves and olive oil. Give a sprinkle of salt while you’re at it. Use a little less salt than you would think. Pop that thing in the oven for an hour.
3. Take the baking dish out of the oven. The tomatoes and garlic should be a nice, healthy brown. Mash up the tomatoes and garlic with whatever utensil tickles your fancy. I won’t judge you.
4. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Stir in a glug of wine, and the thyme. Pop it back in the oven for another 15-30 minutes, depending on how thick you want your concoction. It’ll probably start to caramelize a bit around the edges, which is only a good thing.

The final result is oh-so-very rich with tomato-y goodness. Stir in some chili flakes for a kick or even a teaspoon of lemon juice for some extra tang. Really fantastic on whatever starch you want to grace with its presence.

Concentrated with Jana Hunter – There’s No Home

• 1-2 tablespoons of Chinese mushroom sauce. (This is that pseudo-oyster sauce you find at the good markets.)
• 2 limes, juiced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1-2 tablespoons of chili sauce/sriracha
• 1 teaspoon of dark sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of water

1. Yes. You mix it all together.

The result is a dressing chocked full of umami. Slightly sweet, slightly spicy, mega-savory. We brushed this on some seared aubergines and courgettes to top a salad. Versatile as a marinade, dressing, sauce, what have you.

Marinated with The Dodos – Visiter

Yotam O. was kind enough to conjure up a vegetarian main for the two veggies of the bunch to prepare. Following the Ottolenghi spirit, it’s a simple yet divine dish of baked aubergine wedges with yoghurt sauce and pomegranate. Now, aubergine and yoghurt – fine, we’ve done that before. But, the addition of pomegranate is visionary.

• 2 medium aubergines, cut into wedges. Cut them in half horizontally, and then slice up the wedges out of the two halves.
• A mixture of nice, fruity extra-virgin olive oil and some lighter olive oil. About 3 parts of the nice stuff to 1 part of the cheap stuff.
• Some yoghurt sauce. Figure it out. (Yoghurt, garlic, oil, lemon, herbs…you can’t go wrong.)
• 1 pomegranate, seeded
• Salt + pepper, of course.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.
2. Arrange the aubergine wedges on a baking sheet and brush them very liberally with olive oil. Sprinkle on a hearty dose of salt and pepper.
3. Pop those puppies in the oven. It’ll take a while. So make yourself some yogurt sauce and set it aside. While your at it, get those pesky pomegranate seeds out.
4. Check your aubergine after 20 minutes or so, but it’ll probably take 30-40 minutes depending on the chunkiness of your wedges. They should be a healthy, dark brown. Give those beauties a little squeeze with your fingers to see if they’re properly done. They should feel pretty mushy.
5. Plate em up with some of the yoghurt sauce and pomegranate seeds. So very, very good.

We also prepared a cucumber + onion salad, bulghur wheat with caramelized onion and feta, and some crazy raspberry and passion fruit mess. All delicious.

• 2 long peppers (Poblano if you can find them – not so easy in London town.)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons flour
• Salt to taste
• Enough semi-hard, melt-y cheese (like Monterey Jack) to stuff the peppers. Do the math, genius.

1. Roast the peppers over an open flame until the skins are uniformly blackened and smelling heavenly.
2. Place those burnt things in a paper bag and let them steam for a few minutes. Like 5 minutes, OK? When they’re cool enough to touch, peel em. Leave the stems intact.
3. Separate the eggs, and give your arms a workout whisking the whites until they are firm. For you bakers, you want soft peaks. Fold in the yolks, flour, and salt.
4. To prepare the chiles, make a slit near where the seeds live, running down the pepper, big enough to get your pretty little hands in there and remove the seeds. Don’t touch the stem, wise guy – you’ll want it to turn the peppers in the oil and keep things happy and leak-free.
5. Stuff the peppers with an ample amount of cheese and shut that slit you made with some toothpicks
6. Get some vegetable oil going in a frying pan. Shallow-fry is the operative word. No need to deep-fry these plumpers. You want the oil to be almost smoking.
7. Dredge the peppers in the batter and transfer them over to the oil. They only need a minute or two on each side and they’ll be a deep golden brown (thank you, egg).
8. We always let them sit on a plate covered in paper towels for a minute or two, but hey, you live your own fatty life.

There are a million variations (we counted – there were exactly 1 million), but a lot of the gorgeousness of this dish comes from the simplicity. Serve it with some homemade refritos, and a side of Mexican rice. La vida gordo.

Stuffed with: The Decemberists – Picaresque

• Skip the egg.
• Add a dash of tumeric to the white sauce base.
• Skip the breadcrumbs and add a nice layer of cheese to the top.
• Our version ends up using a bit more cheese. Around 16 oz. I’ve had the best luck with medium to mature cheddar. Too mature and the sauce can go all grainy.

This is so rich we can only eat it once every 2 or 3 months. It hurts so good.

Julia Moskin waxes historic and ultra-cheesy in her NYT piece. “The moral of the story: When in doubt, add more cheese.” Amen, sister.

Shredded to: Chisel – Set You Free.

• half medium shallot, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon ginger, minced
• 1 chile (or whatever), minced
• 1 can coconut milk
• 4 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• juice of 1 lime
• salt to taste

1. In a small saucepan, saute the shallot, garlic, ginger, and chile until golden.
2. Add the coconut milk, peanut butter, soy, and sugar and bring to a simmer. (For maximum mixing pleasure, use a whisk.)
3. Simmer away for like 20 minutes or so, mixing frequently. Taste as you go and adjust salt/sweet/spicy magical combo to your liking
4. Off the heat, stir in the lime juice.

Tonight we ate this with some broiled cauliflower (because they were out of broccoli at the grocery) and fried tofu.

We make a mega-spicy version of this to bathe spring rolls in.

Documented while rocking: My Bloody Valentine – Loveless