This past week, I had an idea for a tweak for my mole pork chorizo chili. I didn't really know how it would turn out, but I decided to try it. The idea really started a couple weeks ago when I made a batch of chili and I decided to add a little extra chopped red and green bell peppers, more than I usually add. It turns out that the peppers I picked up were exceptionally large. And so I wondered what the impact would be if I put the extra in the chili. It turned out to be very nice. And that got me thinking about the chorizo and what would happen if I put it in extra -- quite a bit extra.
When I do an experiment like this, I don't do it with the weekly menu offerings. What I give out for orders is never an experiment. So for this I told two of my grown kids and their spouses who live here in the city that I was going to try a tweak on the recipe and asked if they wanted to be the guinea pigs. They were happy to do so.
I went ahead and picked up extra chorizo. I set out all my ingredients, carefully prepped and measured. I opened the chorizo and piled it high and only then did I realize how much meat I was going to be putting into this. It was a lot. But meat is good, right?
Well, I began the process of cooking all the meat with a little oil and then adding the onions and peppers and spices and all the other ingredients, and so on and so on. It was easy to see that the chili had a lot more meat than usual. The color was different. The texture was different as I could tell when I stirred it in the very deep pot in which I cook this recipe.
Finally at the end, the chili was ready to simmer for a long time. I covered it and turned the heat down low. After a while I came back to the pot and grabbed a spoon. Carefully I scooped a little out, let it cool for a minute or so, and then tasted it. It was definitely different. It was heavier. It was different. I came back a while later after it had simmered longer and did it again. I couldn't quite figure out what I thought of it. So finally when it was done simmering, I portioned out a small bowl-full. I sat down in front of my computer and scrolled a couple news stories of the day as I methodically ate it all up. I had another small bowl. And after that second bowl, I could tell I felt the heaviness not only in the chili but in me as well. This was definitely a different experience eating what I had just made compared to my standard recipe.
The next person that tried it said, "Wow, that's a mouthful of meat." Another said, "I love it!". A third said, "It tastes different." The fourth isn't as much a fan of chili and I don't think tried any of it.
In the end, I decided quite definitively that the extra meat didn't work. Meat is good, but it threw the balance too far to one side. It was still good chili, no doubt, and it had great flavor, but it was too heavy now, not just in texture and feel, but in the flavor balance.
This underscores just how important balance of flavors is. And when you have a recipe that is really balanced, it's not always a good idea to try to make it even more perfect. Am I glad I experimented with that tweak? Certainly so. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, now I know another way NOT to make this chili. And knowing how NOT to do something is sometimes just as important as knowing how to do something.
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