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It's Getting Hot in Here: A Chili Challenge
By Ivy Knight
A lot of people get hung up on authenticity and history when it comes to classic dishes and in some cases this is called for, but in some others it just isn't. When it comes to chili and cornbread, two staples of the North American kitchen since Al Swearengen started pouring shots at The Gem in Deadwood, almost every cook has a recipe loose somewhere in their memory banks. Every carnivorous cook starts building a chili with meat, chiles, onion and garlic - those ingredients can be agreed on. While a bunch of idiots are actually debating over the inclusion of beans or tomatoes, the rest of us just throw them in the pot. Beer, cumin, cinnamon, coffee and oregano are all somewhat traditional ingredients to toss in as well. Then we all have garnishes like shredded cheese, sour cream, maybe some cilantro or scallion. Pretty straightforward stuff.
So, with this in mind I wasn't expecting what happened a few weeks ago.
After the deranged bacchanal that was the sausage party, my chef Anthony Rose, offered the use of The Drake Hotel's Lounge to host the next competition provided... it be all about chili. Sounded fine to me, chili contains meat and chefs love meat. So once again I asked Kevin Brauch to emcee and Anastasia to shake her burlesque booty and started sending out the invitations. I wanted competitors from Toronto's kitchens, but this time I wanted cooks and sous chefs to get a chance to show what they were made of. So, no head chefs were allowed to compete.
The first chef to RSVP as a competitor was Jesse Vallins (Chef de Cuisine) from Trevor Kitchen and Bar, he'd missed the sausage party and was ready for a battle. Then came Andrew Capone (Entre-Metier) and Curt Martin (Sous Chef) from Cory Vitiello's Harbord Room. Soon Adam Bishop (Tournant) and Andrew Pitch (day Saucier) from Canoe got in the game, along with Alexandra Feswick (sous chef) and Anthony Malone (garde manger) from the Ancaster Old Mill. Ossington's newest hot spot, Levack Block, sent their young cook, William Chafe, while David Chrystian's Chez Victor sent Mario Paz (Chef de Partie). Finally, at the Drake, day Sous Chef Caleb Rowe teamed up with night Sous Chef Kevin Gilmour. That was where I drew the line and decided seven chilis and cornbreads would be enough to have to taste in one night. As it happened, this group of competitors included three different gangs of Drake cooks, two current Drake employees and a number of former employees who had moved on to Chez Victor and the Harbord Room.
For judges I invited pastry chefs, no one craves salt and meat in the kitchen more than the people in pastry. They are immersed in chocolate, buttercream, coconut flakes and sugar every minute of their working life. I can't tell you the number of times a flour-y hand has reached out to me, its owner pleading for a piece of bacon, a sausage, a French fry. They are pitiful. So I thought they could get their fill of meat for once and I invited Dufflet Rosenberg (Dufflet), Sarah Bell (Soma), Karen Vineberg (One), David Chow (The Drake), Stephanie Pick (Queen of Tarts) and Morag Cleevely (Yummy Stuff). They all agreed to act as judges, while a few other pastry chefs like Tracey Freeman from Millie's and George Brown and former pastry chefs, Maria Cheung (Canoe) and Renée Bellefeuille (JK Wine Bar), just came to get loaded and hit on all the guys.
They, along with the rest of us, were able to get loaded for free thanks to Kevin Brauch's posse of brewer buddies. And we were to the boys from Mill Street, Creemore, Great Lakes, Cameron's and Steam Whistle who provided the (local, artisanal) cold ones.
"The beer was excellent" Dufflet Rosenberg told me, "We enjoyed the evening and Kevin was great. I'm not sure pastry chefs are the best drinkers though, we seemed to be nursing one beer each."
As our industry-only guests arrived they were given a tasting spoon to keep with them for the evening and then were sent off in the direction of our competing restaurants. Every cook had a different take on what chili was to them so the chilis were all distinctly unique from each other, as were the cornbreads. The Harbord Room made a beef brisket and chorizo chili with black beans and ancho chile, then they added double-smoked Berkshire bacon, jalapenos and fresh corn to their cornbread. The cornbread was incredible and went perfectly with their super beefy chili, which was being dished out by Andrew Capone - sporting about a dozen hickies. What a classy guy.
Chez Victor's Mario Paz, who cooked at the Drake before heading to Chez Victor, brought an elk chili spiced with ancho, chipotle and pasilla peppers and a cornbread made with pumpkin and poblano then garnished with a sumac and cilantro oil. When asked how he came up with his contribution, he said "I knew that I wanted to do elk, and also that I wanted to use a lot of the spices that I grew up with. The base for my chili was a replica of my mom's sauce for her tamales. A lot of the fine tuning was done as it came together. I started my competition chili the Saturday before the competition, but I did a trial run for staff meal the week before that. The recipe for my cornbread came from a website that was just about desserts. They had a very sweet cake-like cornbread, that I adjusted to make more savoury, adding poblano peppers and roasted shallots."
This combo to me was the equivalent of seeing the first red maple leaf at the end of the summer. The pumpkin in the cornbread and the strong flavour of the elk meat, was my first taste of the cool fall weather to come.
The new kid on the block this summer, Levack Block, kept it simple and traditional with a chili that included flank steak, bacon, black beans and kidney beans, Wellington Ale, chipotle, cocoa and cinnamon. William Chafe's cornbread included basil, scallion, roasted peppers and cheddar. "I tried a couple of batches of chili early in the week and started the one for the competition the morning of. For the corn bread I found a recipe online and modified it after trying it earlier in the week."
William's chili was the simplest of the lot, nice but lacking in complexity because he cooked it that day.
The cooks from Canoe put hominy in their cornbread and braised beef brisket from Cumbrae Farms with Mill Street's Coffee Porter for their chili, which they garnished with lime crème fraiche, cilantro sprouts and shaved 70% Peruvian chocolate from Lindt. I asked Adam "Pink" Bishop when they started their chili, "Well, we're closed on the weekends at Canoe. We decided we weren't going to do our chili the day of the competition, Monday, so we started this fucker on Friday."
Aside from a bit of a heavy hand with the salt this was an incredible chili, elevated to Canoe's level. A few scoffed at the use of chocolate as a garnish, but it really worked.
Out-of-towners, Ancaster Old Mill, put some Jack Daniel's in their braised shortrib chili which they garnished with cilantro and sour cream.
"We wanted to stay fairly traditional and tried several recipes, ranging from my father's tried and true to Heston Blumenthal's 3 day chili, before we actually came up with the competition chili. What we came up with was something in between the two." Sous Chef Alexandra Feswick told me. It's not surprising that she referenced Blumenthal's chili as her Head Chef, Jeff Crump, helped do the recipe testing for it while staging at the Fat Duck. Their chili was delicious and meaty but not really a chili to me. It had more of a combination chili-stew texture to it.
"We had some ideas about how the perfect chili should come together, but you never know until it's done. In my opinion, no one chili can be like another, " she explained, "every batch is different."
Their cornbread was certainly different, "The cornbread recipe came mostly from Heston. Like the chili we went over some different recipes and ended up modifying Heston's to have whole chunks of corn, brown butter and pieces of braised pork belly." She explained. The cornbread they came up with was one of the best I've ever tasted, it made my top three of all time.
Jesse Vallins also used shortribs for his chili, then added bacon and beans (pinto, black and navy). He put cheddar and scallions in his rustic cornbread and had an array of garnishes for his chili including tequila sour cream and bacon-flavoured toothpicks. Jesse's blew me away, it was a great traditional chili. His flavours were simple but dead on, it was my pick for the night.
The Drake's bean-free chili, with Cumbrae's flatiron steak, pork butt, Mill Street Wit Beer, coke (Not the kind you think!) and a combination of nine different chiles, was served with a blue corn and blueberry cornbread. Their chili was very traditional and the spiciest of the lot while their cornbread was a modern twist on an old favourite and was so successful that I made it my cornbread pick.
"I love the fact that the Drake's is all meat, a carnivore's delight." Said Jeremy Day, a cornbread fanatic and owner of Café Taste.
Everyone tasted and drank and then they started to slump: trying to eat seven different chilis and cornbreads in one evening is a lot for a body to handle. So, Anastasia came out and did a little number that included a pink baby doll dress and red sequined and tasseled pasties that she swung first in one direction, then in the other. While the crowd roared I talked to Chris Goddard from Steamwhistle, he had tasted everything very thoroughly and had some comments, "Trevor Kitchen was a bit on the thin side but the meat was spectacular. The smoked bacon was a delicious addition and added a natural smoky flavour to it. He also had the tequila sour cream, I wasn't sure how I was going to like it but it surprised the hell out of me, in a good way. I would definitely eat at his place. I thought the Harbord Room had a very good combo with their chili and cornbread. Chez Victor did a good job with the spicing, you got the heat and loved every minute of it but it didn't overpower the experience. The Drake's cornbread was very innovative, we really liked it."
Tracey Freeman, pastry chef at Millie's and instructor at George Brown, agreed with my assessment of our judges. "When you said that pastry chefs crave salt the most, I thought it was only me. I never used to eat salty things before working with sweets and now - whoa - I crave salt all the time."
It was time to get the judges to make their picks and the crowd to make theirs. While Kevin tallied the votes with some help from the brewers, Anastasia got ready for her final performance (which involved a costume made of balloons filled with glitter and a very sharp needle!) I got the final list from the judges and it was time to give out some prizes. Now, my prizes are usually pretty lame but this time around, thanks to the generosity of Henry of Pelham, Yummy Stuff, Billy's Best Bottles, The Drake, Dufflet's and me (I contributed whoopee cushions and pornos) we had some great swag bags, which Kevin described as "not quite Academy Awards bling, more like the Gemini's, but really good bags nonetheless."
CHILI AND CORNBREAD FINALISTS
THE DRAKE HOTEL, JULY 2008
JUDGES CHOICE AWARDS
CHILI:
1. Canoe (Adam, Andrew)
2. Chez Victor (Mario)
CORNBREAD:
1. Harbord Room (Curt, Andrew)
2. LeVack Block (Will)
PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARDS
CHILI:
1. Canoe (Adam, Andrew)
2. Harbord Room (Curt, Andrew)
CORNBREAD
1. Harbord Room (Curt, Andrew)
2. Ancaster/Old Mill (Alex, Anthony)
I was surprised that my two picks didn't place, but that's the point of this whole thing. You don't vote based on a set of criteria, you vote with your individual likes and dislikes. There's no way to predict the favourites; everyone is voting with their own idea of what a good chili and cornbread should be. That night the people wanted traditional cornbread and non-traditional chilis.
So, to the cooks out there, thanks for competing and I hope you're ready to seriously kick some ass at one of the upcoming competitions. Stay tuned...
[Photo credit: Leslie Vineberg.]
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