chicken chili recipe

We hosted Sunday dinner tonight, as a ploy to get Ralph and Lori over. I made the chicken chili (it's not really chili) that my grandmother brought for Christmas Eve dinner, since it was tasty and I got the recipe from her and hadn't used it yet. And we warmed up a loaf of insanely crusty bread, probably spalled a good ten percent of its mass all over the counter trying to cut it.

We chatted, and played DDR. Oh, our downstairs neighbors slipped a note under our door, in response to one Dee left them. She said sorry about the stomping on your ceiling at 3:30 that morning, please call us if we're being loud, oh and by the way I'm having a DDR party next week. They said oh hell the guy pounding up through the floor was our asshole buddy, pay no attention, dance all you want.

The recipe, as written:
Chicken Chili (serves 2 -- but I just added)

8 oz. chopped onion (1 2/3 c.)
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. oil (I use olive)
8 oz. boneless chix breasts
15 oz. can white beans
1/2 jalapeno (I have jar of sliced -- to taste)
1/2 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. cumin
14 oz. can crushed/diced tomatoes
1 lime -- 1 TBsp chopped cilantro
1 cup corn kernels
4 TBsp. plain yogurt
freshly ground pepper

1- In oil heat + cook onion + garlic until begins to brown
2- Cube chicken
3- Drain beans
4- Add chix to pan
5- Add jalapenos, coriander, cumin, tomatoes, beans
6- Squeeze 1/2 lime into chili
7- Stir in corn
8- Season with pepper
Cook slowly
Serve w/ yogurt, lime wedges, chopped red onion + chopped cilantro

P.S. You may notice I omitted several of the additions.

[eub comments: ingredients -- I used Thai green chili paste instead of jalapeno (bonus galangal!), some crushed AND some diced tomatoes, only 75% of the listed amount of lime juice, and no cilantro, couldn't find any. cooking -- I juggled timing a bit. staged tomato, beans, and lime: part early, part late. corn at end. note that "serves 2" means with leftovers.]

Nicholas Basbanes, _A Gentle Madness_

This is the gift I mentioned, a book about book fiends. It had some intriging incidents and characters. Its weakness is the author's apparent need to fit every bit of his research into the book, even the bits that petered out two paragraphs long or with no story to them. And I personally got rather tired of the parade of rich people collecting what is popular to collect, the "high spots".

But it had some great bits. The murdering monk Don Vincente, who said "Every man must die sooner or later, but good books must be conserved." The Count Fortsas auction of books "unknown to bibliographers", including curious philosophical disputations and scurrilous memoirs such as My Campaigns in the Low Countries, with the List, Day by Day, of the Fortresses That I Have Lifted to the White Arm, by the grandfather of the princesse de Ligne, which she ordered her agent to "Buy, I conjure you, at any price" -- the entirety of which was a hoax. The National Yiddish Book Center, which rescues Yiddish books thrown out by younger people who can't read the language. Stephen Blumberg, who stole spectacularly from libraries but was not detected for years, who preferred to live in a cocoon of Victorian interiors nabbed from houses condemned and scheduled for demolition.

Anyone know a good book about Petrarch and Boccaccio's classicist adventures? Or 15c publishing in Venice?

(On my page of notes I also wrote the lone word "samelsurium", which is a word only by courtesy. It does appear to be a word in German, or perhaps a misspelling. Babelfish can't translate.)