Pantry Cooking Week 3, Chili-Quin-Corne

I know what you’re thinking.  She doesn’t know how to spell Chili Con Carne!  Don’t worry, I do.  Chili-Quin-Corne is the brain-child of my brilliant husband and daughters.  Sometimes they like to invent things in the kitchen, and sometimes the things they invent are delicious.  Chili-Quin-Corne!  It has become a standby for the times I don’t feel like “cooking”.  To be sure, it uses only one ingredient that requires actual cooking, and that, really, is just boiling water.  The big upside to this meal though, is that it is a great way to stretch one can of chili to feed four people without cooking more beans.  If you’re like me, you never remember you were going to soak and cook beans until it’s too late.  My last batch of home canned pintos came out burned and a few seals failed, so we don’t have any pre-cooked beans on hand right now.

The directions for this one are pretty simple.  Cook one cup of quinoa according to package directions. (Roughly 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa, boil, reduce heat and steam for 10 minutes or so.)  Now add one can of chili, and one can of corn.  Heat thoroughly and serve topped with shredded cheese and sour cream or plain Greek yogurt.

I suppose rice would stretch the chili too, but quinoa has it beat for nutrition and cooks quicker than white rice.  Brown rice might approach the nutritional value of quinoa, but takes too long to cook to be useful in a quick-dinner recipe.  As for the corn, I believe it improves just about anything to which it is added.

I wish there were more to it, and I could look like some sort of genius, but it is really just this simple.  And, alas, I am only of slightly above average intelligence.  Oh, how I wish there were a tongue-in-cheek font.

Have a good weekend! Mine will doubtless be unproductive as I am in the middle of an excellent novel, The Women At Pine Creek, by Allis McKay, from which I have had to tear myself in order to finish this post begun on Wednesday.

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