Cookbook Challenge #5: Coney Chili

One of the less-expected parts of being an adult is discovering how different things that you take for granted can be in other parts of the country. Case in point: coneys. I had no idea that Coney Island-style restaurants and the ubiquitous coney dogs are, in fact, a Detroit thing until I visited a friend that moved to the East Coast.

Of course they have diners. Some of these diners also sell hot dogs, but not as often as you think. Good luck getting a nice ladle of beanless chili on top of it.  And you certainly can’t take it for granted that you can get a gyro as well as a coney, because apparently Greek immigrants in other parts of the country don’t open restaurants they way they do here.

Some people look back on the their 20s and get nostalgic about Taco Bell, but for me it was always coneys: cheap, fast, filling, and available at pretty much every major intersection in the metro area. Our friends would congregate there on Sunday mornings for Hangover Helper and a rehashing of the previous night. My 3^rd shift co-workers and I would get beer and coneys at 7 a.m. at National, a perfectly logical thing to do after a long shift. David and I even went to Lafayette Coney Island after our wedding, because it was late and we were hungry and so were our friends.

There’s a lot of contradictory history about coney dogs in Detroit. After way too much time on the Internet, I feel confident saying the following:

1.  Coney dogs as we know them were most likely invented by Greek and Macedonian immigrants in the early 1900s and quickly became the working man’s lunch of choice (see above re: cheap, fast, filling, and readily available).
2. Detroit has the best coney dogs anywhere, despite efforts in Flint, Jackson and Kalamazoo, and also in Indiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, New York, and Texas. People in other states do some weird damn stuff and call it a coney but they’re clearly wrong (when they’re trying to do it right they call it a “Michigan,” a clear and unequivocal acknowledgment of our coney superiority).

While Lafayette is clearly the superior Detroit coney, I understand that different people have different (wrong) opinions about this. It’s all about the chili – just like Mom’s meatloaf, it’s the stuff of strong preferences, what you’re accustomed to, etc. etc., and once you find the one you like the best it’s hard to really consider others fairly.

With all of that in mind, it’s with a little trepidation that I present you with this homemade version of coney chili. In general, I think that anything you can buy in a can should be made at least once from scratch, if for no other reason than for you to concede the contest to the food scientists. My church recently did a Detroit-themed fundraiser lunch and it seemed as good a time as any to bust out the chili cookbook* and dust off a recipe I hadn’t thought of in years. While not quite up to Lafayette standards, it has the advantage of being in my refrigerator and therefore not requiring the putting on of shoes or driving anywhere in order to eat it; and also we can get the really good natural casing hot dogs and some gluten-free buns (not really all that good...). Detroit expats, I urge you to give it a try.

*Yes, I have an entire cookbook of chili recipes, including an Army recipe from 1896 and a buffalo chili recipe that serves 600. Ask me about your next party….

Coney Island Chili

Minimally adapted from The Great American Chili Book by Bill Bridges. I'm going to agree with the Amazon reviewer who said "I'm sure someone else would enjoy this book, just not me." It really is about the formation of the International Chili Society and reads like the social pages of the organization. Still - a whole cookbook of chili recipes! It's staying on the shelf. 

½ cup olive oil
¾ lb 70% lean ground beef
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder (or to taste)
1 ½ tsp sugar
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp paprika
1 ½ tsp cornstarch
¼ cup water

Heat the oil in a large skillet, then add the beef and cook for about 3 minutes. Make sure the meat is broken up very well. Add all the remaining ingredients except the cornstarch and water. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Add a little water if it’s too dry or sticking excessively to the bottom of the pan; you should be able to envision ladling this evenly along a hot dog.

Mix the cornstarch and water and add to the chili mixture. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until thickened.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig! We’re back from a fantastic family vacation and easing slowly (painfully….) back into real life. Where is my ocean view? Where is my room service? Where is my 24-hour taco bar? Not here, alas. This is not the manner to which I’ve become accustomed.

Our family took a week-long cruise along the coast of Baja California, a trip that was originally intended to be a once-in-a-lifetime graduation gift for my husband. There have been some technical difficulties with the thesis project so it’s not *actually* graduation time yet, and we had such a wonderful time that we booked again for next year’s Caribbean version of the same cruise. I guess that means we went on a first-of-several graduation incentive trip. Either way, it was completely fantastic: a lovely and luxurious week on a boat with 1600 nerds, geeks, and creative people of all sorts, the annual JoCo Cruise. If these are your people, you really need to be there.

While I can’t do anything about the snowstorm that smacked us upside the head shortly after we got back, I did feel it was within my power to address our sad lack of a taco bar. We invited friends over (not gonna lie, we’re trying really hard to get them on the cruise with us next year!), cracked open the extremely excellent tequila we carried back from Cabo San Lucas, and did our best version of the Lido Deck Taco Experience.

Not the actual band, but you get the idea.

This recipe comes from Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in theWorld, where it’s called Garlic Shrimp, Yucatan Style. He says that he originally had it near the Gulf of Mexico at a place with mariachi and an outdoor shower. Since shrimp is easier for me to find right now than lobster, this is my homage to the excellent lobster tacos I had in Cabo, at a place with mariachi singing Jimmy Buffett and 2-for-1 margaritas and a breeze off the water balancing out more sunshine than I’m used to lately. I fully expect we’ll do this again on the deck this summer with cold Mexican beer and mariachi on the radio. Bittman claims this feeds 4 people but we could have tripled this recipe and still been fighting over the last of it; scale up as you see fit. 

I Wish I Was in Cabo Garlic Shrimp

¼ cup olive oil
10 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
1 pound shrimp, peeled
Sliced tomatoes, for garnish
Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Put the oil in a skillet large enough to hold the shrimp and turn the heat to medium. Add the garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic turns brown and crisp. This will take about 10 minutes – don’t rush it or the garlic will burn and you’ll be sad. Sprinkle with salt and remove from the pan with a slotted spoon.

Raise the heat to high and add the shrimp, along with a little more salt and some pepper. Cook, turning once or twice, until the shrimp is pink and firm, about 5 minutes. Put the shrimp and oil on a platter, garnish with the garlic, tomatoes, and cilantro, and serve with lots of white rice.