Food & Films 2009: Chili Dip

One of my favorite snack foods, something that begs for a beer and a football game, is chili dip. It is terrifically unhealthy and a bit repulsive if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and would just about kill any natural food junkie. Every now and again though, I break down and eat a few dozen chips' worth. And don't regret it a bit.

This photo stinks, and it probably still wouldn't look good even with the best photograph possible, but it's really a delight to devour. The dish has only three ingredients, plus three recommended accoutrements to properly enjoy. Ingredients: cream cheese, a can of chili, and some shredded cheddar. Optional accessories: tortilla chips, football, and beer.

Tackle, Cotton, and I scarfed down the tray you see here in about 5 minutes. This was more or less lunch for us for Food & Films 2009. There really wasn't even time to take a decent shot of the dip fresh from the oven...it was gone that quickly.

My former boss told me she wooed her husband with a similar dish. It involves Fritos, cream cheese, cheddar, Stagg chili, and chopped onion. And is always microwaved, never baked. I'm not sure how the ingredients fit together, but I do know the Fritos are an ingredient, not a dipper.

I urge you to try this dip, or my former boss' variation, the next time you've got a hankerin' for a coronary. You won't be disappointed.


Chili Dip Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 8 oz cream cheese (room temperature)
• 14 oz chili (Amy's Organic Spicy Chili is great!)
• 1 c shredded sharp cheddar

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a 9" x 13" pan. (I always use a disposable aluminum pan, which I don't spray because I don't have to wash it!) Spread the cream cheese over the entire bottom of the pan. This is tricky if you grease the pan, so make sure the cream cheese is thoroughly softened. Next, spread the chili over the cream cheese in an even layer. Then sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top and place in the oven for around 20 minutes or until bubbly and gently browned. Let cool for about 10 minutes. Serve with tortilla chips. Garnish with herbs if you're trying to impress. Won't matter much after the first taste.

Food & Films 2009

January 16, 2009 marked the first annual Food & Films day at G//P headquarters. Tackle was heading back to college on the 19th and we wanted to celebrate the things we love most...both food and films. Planning for the occasion was relatively poor -- as usual. However, it came together nicely. I plan to post details and recipes separately, since there was a lot happening that fateful, frigid Friday (it was 7F, people. Seriously.).

Tackle rolled over to HQ at about 10AM. By that point, I already had a biga going for some rustic white bread. The first order of business was determining how to watch movies AND cook AND eat at the same time. Since we're very smart, we realized we needed to display the films in the kitchen.  This runs contrary to my idealized plan: I'd hoped we'd get everything going on the stove, simmering away, and then slip into the living room to catch a couple of flicks. I don't know if we were overly ambitious or just plain slow, but there was no time to slip away. Instead, we set up Cotton's MacBook and Bose speakers and turned on a very serious film -- My Cousin Vinny.  I decided her screen was too small, so we hooked my Toshiba laptop to the TV in the kitchen. We could see my desktop and windows just fine, but for some reason, the DVD image would not display on the TV. Finally, we just set my computer atop several cases of soda with the nice speakers attached and never looked back.

It was probably about 11AM or so by this point, so we got to work on the cooking. There were three of us -- Cotton, Tackle, and myself (Bizzy stopped by for dinner). Tackle got to work on the bread. I chopped lots of onions and carrots for Cotton and Tackle, and they started cooking. We were working on some braised short ribs and a pork ragu. Those were to be eaten side-by-side at dinner. Some snacks were also in the works to sustain us throughout the day.

In the end, we turned out some homemade bread, homemade tagliatelle, and two different condiments (short ribs and pork ragu) for said tagliatelle. And that was just dinner.  We also deep-fried some frozen poppers, made a chili-cream cheese-cheddar dip, and some pretty amazing Buffalo wings (subscription required) for intra-day nourishment. And did I mention the carnitas and pork rinds? We played My Cousin Vinny and Billy Madison while cooking, and closed the night with a viewing of The Departed and a couple of rounds of Mario Kart on the Wii. It was ridiculously fun and a day I'll never forget. It's awesome cooking and hanging out with Cotton and Tackle (and Bizzy!), doing the things we all love. We gotta do this again next year!

Stayed tuned for more to come on the details of this day.