mike[space] dot net

Okay, as promised yesterday, I decided to cook myself Charlie's chilli today. I've stuck it all together and stuffed it in the oven, and have now only just realised that the cooking time is actually an hour and a half, not 45 minutes!! It's currently 10pm. I'm not blaming anyone but myself, but damn am I hungry!

Chilli Con Carne

Feeds four (can be frozen).
Ingredients -
1 large onion*
500g of beef mince*
mushrooms
red or green peppers
1 tin kidney beans*
1 tin tomatoes*
garlic*
cooking oil (olive or vegetable or sunflower)*
tomato puree*
chilli powder*
dried chillis* (start with 3-5 of these until you know what you like. If you break these up they will add more heat than if left intact -wash your hands after)
red wine (half a glass)
fresh chillis

The asterisk indicates essential items. This is a very flexible and forgiving recipe that will give a slightly different outcome each time that you make it. The chilli aspect of it will vary depending on the combination of fresh and dried chilis and chill powder that is added. If you leave out the chilli element and add Italian spices and herbs and a bay leaf you have a respectable bolognese type sauce.
Don't be frightened to innovate.

Best cooked in a wok.
Cut the onion and fry in oil for five mins, add the meat and brown for ten mins on a medium to low heat with the lid on. Meanwhils chop the mushrooms & peppers, open the tomatoes and rinse the kidney beans.
When the meat is browned add the chilli powder (a light sprinkling over the meat so there is a thin layer), tomato puree, garlic and stir it all in. Put the oven on at about 180C. Cook for another five mins.
Add the remaining ingredients, stir in and cook for five more mins.
Put the whole lot into a ceramic or iron casserole dish with a lid and chuck it in the oven. After 45 mins give it a stir and turn the oven down a little if it seems very dry already and add a small cup of water if necessary.
45 mins later it will be ready, serve with cold lager beer and rice or tacos or on brown toast or any which way.
N.B. You can re-heat and eat this dish several times and the flavours just get better with every re-heating.

A problem that I immediately hit was that I couldn't find dried or fresh chillis in the two supermarkets I went to. So this won't be the authentic Charlie dish unfortunately. The onion slicing was a bit more successful than yesterday, but I am still not convinced that it is working out as well as I used to do. I pretty much followed the description to the letter, but of course had to improvise a little bit when it came to quantities. For the record I've used a tin of plum tomatoes, and tin of tomato puree and a 3rd of a medium tube of puree. I used half a can of the kidney beans (I hate the bloody things, but figured I ought to at least enter into the spirit of things). I may also have messed up the initial cooking of the meat - I hadn't noticed the medium low temperature specification, and was more middly, up until the point that everyone complained about the fact that they felt like they had onions in their eyes. As for the amount of chilli powder, I chucked in a bit extra to compensate for the absence of dried/fresh chillis.

I await the final result with interest ...

UPDATE: hey what do you know, apparently I can cook chilli as well! Could maybe have done with a bit more chillipowder, but it still had enough of a kick to it that it tasted like Chilli ;-) The meat wasn't overcooked inspite of my earlier fears, which was a relief. Thanks Charlie!