Summertime Chili

Before you get all bent out of shape and ask, "Chili in the summertime? Isn't chili a winter dish," I am here to explain a little something. In my kitchen, there is summer chili, and there is winter chili, and the difference is in the chilies themselves. It is summer chili season, and oh what a season it is. Actually, it's been ridiculously rainy. The grass isn't even brown! Nonetheless, we continue.

Summer chili uses the fresh, ripe chilies that become available up here in the north, in August. Winter chili uses the same chilies, but in their dried, crushed, whole, or powdered forms. Chiles as spice (winter) rather than chilies as vegetables (summer). In either case, you get a "rounder" or "fuller" chili flavor if you put several varieties of chilies in your pot, sweet and hot. I keep no prescribed formulas but this: play around but use good technique.

And here's my current technique: