Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

Shopping for this meal was nearly a nightmare! It called for a dutch oven and I didn't have one. The magazine had an article rating dutch ovens, so I figured I'd go buy one and then buy ingredients for dinner. The Best Buy choice was a $40 one from Target, only the Super Target I went to didn't carry it (or any dutch oven). I walked over to Linens 'n Things only to find a poor selection, only sets of pots sold together. Sears had two or three dutch ovens, but none that had been rated at all. Maybe I needed to rethink dinner? I decided to try the Bed, Bath and Beyond which would be on my way to Whole Foods anyway. I found two models available for sale as a single piece, the All-Clad and the Calphalon One. The All-Clad model was so pretty on the inside and was a recommended model, but it was $235. The other was just $99 and recommended with reservations. The only reservation was in regards to cooking fries where it got two out of three stars, stew and rice got it 3 out of 3. I doubt I'll ever be making fries, and the Calphalon One model had handles that were easier to hold, so I bought that one. I was happy that I made a very informed decision and didn't feel like I had settled.

I only had to ask for help at Whole Foods once when I couldn't figure out which chile was the Anaheim. The one in the magazine was black and white, and even looking at the colored pictures on the display, it wasn't obvious. But I got them, along with the jalapeno and poblano chiles.

I decided to time how long it took to make the chili. Jay asked if the recipe had an estimated cooking time, and I said "No, that's why I like it." (It would be so awful to see it say 1 hour, but have it take 2 or 3!) Well, we titled this chili "Four Hour Chili". It took two hours to prepare and two hours to cook. Additional pain was from cutting all the chiles (next time I'll use gloves). Even ideas off the internet eased the burning only slightly. Plus pulling apart the hot chicken was the other kind of burning to my fingers. Poor fingers! When Jay found out how long it took me to make the chili, he said he'd feel guilty eating it. (and then he went into calculating the cost in terms of money, too... haha!)

The chili was good, and even lasted for two more meals. This worked out well, because I came down with a nasty cold that night and was sick the rest of the week. The house smelled like chili half the week... yum! It was good, but not GREAT. It seemed to lack something... not sure what. I'll surely be making this again and looking forward to easy leftovers.

Lessons learned:
Wear gloves when cutting so many chilis to avoid feeling like your fingers are on fire.
When the recipe says "cut into large pieces" and you see those pieces are heading for the food processor, save time: large means large.

This was also the first time I got to use my stove since September (Thank you Triathlete Kurt for hooking our gas stove back up!!) and the first time I got to use my food processor. Both performed flawlessly!

Kitty enjoyed the box before we reused it for shipping presents!

• The Best White Chili (Cook's Illustrated, February 2007, p.6)