Dec 20 Mushroom and Sweet Potato Chili

• fat for frying
• about 1 1/2 pounds mixed mushrooms
• 1 very large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 red bell and 2 poblano peppers, chopped
• 2 tablespoons ground New Mexico chile
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
• water or broth
• 2 dried ancho chiles
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 can pinto beans with their liquid
• 1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• salt to taste

I used a mix of button, tree oyster, and chanterelle mushrooms. I brushed the dirt from the mushrooms, but did not rinse them, since that would just make for soggy fungus. I cut the mushrooms into largish chunks, but ones that were small enough to fit comfortably on a spoon. For example, I cut each button mushroom into about six pieces.

As anyone who has seen Julie and Julia knows, mushrooms won't brown if you crowd the pan, so I was careful to cook them in several small batches. I cooked them in a mixture of about half butter and half olive oil, adding a little more fat between each batch, since mushrooms, being rather spongelike, tend to soak up the fat you fry them in. I wanted the mushrooms in the final dish to have some bite, so once they were browned, I sat them aside and covered them loosely so that the steam coming off them could vent.

I added the onion to the pan and cooked it until it began to caramelize. At that point I added in the garlic and peppers and let it cook a few minutes more. I shut off the heat to reduce the risk of burning the chile, and added in the New Mexico chile, paprika, and cumin. Once that had cooked a bit, I added the tomatoes and remaining spices. I poured the liquid that had collected in the mushroom dish into the pot, but did not yet add the mushrooms. I filled the empty tomato can with water and added that to the pot. I brought everything to a simmer and then set the heat as low as it would go and covered the chili, stirring it infrequently.

I had originally wanted to get some ancho chile powder, but they were completely out at the grocery store. Sometimes when you just don't feel like wandering through the Mission on a long excursion looking for just one ingredient, you have to improvise a bit. Luckily, they did have some reasonable-looking dried whole anchos at the store, so I bought those instead.

While the chili simmered, I stemmed, seeded, and rinsed the two ancho chiles. I put them in a dish, filled it with hot water, and weighted the chiles down to make sure they stayed submerged. After about a half hour of soaking, I drained the chiles and threw them in the blender with some of the liquid from the simmering chili. I pureed that and ran it through a course-meshed strainer to remove any bits of skin. I then added the resulting paste to the chili pot along with the sweet potatoes and let it simmer about another half hour.

Once the sweet potatoes were just about tender, I added the beans and the mushrooms to the pot. I let that simmer a few minutes longer and seasoned it with salt to taste. I could have adjusted the other seasonings as well, potentially adding more ground chile or cumin, but it had a pretty good flavor, so I served it up alongside the beef chili I had made.