Recipe 16: Chocolate Chorizo Chili

Chocolate Chorizo Chili

Ladies und Gentlemen.  When you are having a bunch of lady nerds over for the Ladies World Series* (aka, the Downton Abbey season 3 USA premiere), there is no choice but to opt for decadence.   The dowager would have it no other way!  After having an unforgettable dark chocolate and chorizo tapa a few years back at some mysterious tapas restaurant in Manhattan at a friend's birthday party,  I hit up the Googles and came across a Cooking Light recipe I promptly bookmarked.

I've been circling this recipe for a longggg while now, and thought this would be a totally appropriate locale.  Because really - beer, chocolate, spicy hot British man servants?  There really is no recipe more appropriate for this event.  I combed over about three very, very different recipes, pilfered them for things I liked, and decided not to use things I didn't like (Cooking Light, Nigella Lawson via Baking with Bree, Feasting at Home).  What came of this?  Sheer deliciousness, boys and girls.  I've been shockingly positive in the new year, but this may, just may, be the best chili I have ever had, ever.  I kind of want to enter a chili cook-off with it (dudes, if you do, tell me about it!).

A few notes: 
Definitely splurge on the chorizo.  Most grocery stores will have some, but make sure it is the kind that oozes orange oil all over your hands.
Definitely use a chocolate stout.  I think a general stout will work, but if you can find it, roll with it.  It's well worth the extra burst of flavor you get.  Sidebar note, I used a local beer (Night Shift's Taza beer), which had in turn used a local chocolate company's chocolate (Taza) to brew this.  Even better?  It was bottled four days before I cracked it open - this vital information was handwritten on the label.  Yay local!  Holy guacamole.  A beautiful Slumerville marriage just happened in my Le Creuset, and in your mouth. 

*Oscars has the lock on the Ladies Superbowl title.

Chocolate Chorizo Chili

Serves 8