Why don’t men cook at home?
No one’s invented a steak that will fit in the toaster.
…AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ahem.
This is in no way meant to be a cooking blog, but as someone who takes photos of every single meal that she makes, I thought I’d write about my more successful incarnations. And so here we have the great chilli con carne:
It may look like I took a photo of this in hall, but if you look carefully, you can see that although the tray and the glass may have been *acquired* from hall, the cutlery certainly is not! And also, there lies my trusty RSC 2009. Now who takes a pen to hall?!
I was going to post a series of photos of my chilli con carne through the ages, but it looks like I didn’t take that many at all, and if you think I am sad enough to go trawling through my Facebook photo history for said elusive photos then
you are mistaken – I only went as far back as
Easter 2010: Part I before giving up.
On reflection, the last time I made this dish was sometime last term, and it must have tasted good enough to steal…because it
did get stolen. I think I’ve almost recovered from that trauma (
in which I missed my very important lectures to sit and stare at the wall for a few hours in rage) so I feel that it would be somewhat therapeutic to share. After all, sharing is caring. And revealing is healing.
Ingredients:
Minced beef
1-2 Onions
Clove of garlic
6 Tomatoes (or a large tin of tomatoes in sauce)
Red or green pepper
215g tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce (important, otherwise you have to make your own chilli sauce!)
Chopped Chilli (optional)
White wine (optional)
Salt
Black pepper
Chilli powder
Rice
Recipe:
1. Chop the onions and garlic into small pieces and fry them until slightly brown.
2. Add the beef; season with salt and pepper and fry until cooked. I tend to use a third or half of a 500g pack. Normally it’s enough to last me for two meals!
3. Chop up the pepper and chuck that in, along with the tomatoes and the kidney beans.
4. Pour in half a cup of white wine – I didn’t use white wine in any of my other attempts, and must say that the wine does bring a new level to the flavour. If you don’t want to use alcohol, half a cup of water will do.
5. Add chilli powder or chopped up chilli at your discretion.
6. Let the mysterious mush simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, or longer, if possible – the longer you cook this, the more flavour will seep into the beef.
7. Once the sauce has reduced to your satisfaction, serve with rice!
If you don’t have the chilli sauce then you can either buy pre-made sauce, or make your own from a combination of: tomato puree, water, sugar, chilli powder, paprika, salt, cumin, garlic powder, black pepper, coriander, oregano, onion powder, basil, and thyme...as it says on the back of my tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce. So yeah, buy the
kidney beans in chilli sauce. From Tesco.
Finally, you may notice that I haven’t been very specific with the quantities of ingredients used – that’s because I tend to make it up on the spot so have never actually taken note of the ratios. This may or may not be a good thing...I’ll leave this up to you to decide.
Enjoy! ^_^
Following on from the corporate theme, I was told this pearl of ‘wisdom’ sometime last term during my job application phase when I would freak out on a daily basis and run to various people for advice. Being in a vulnerable state of panic at the time, I drank in everything that I was told – not once did I question any bit of advice I received. After all, these were people who already had job offers, right? Of course they held some secret elixir of knowledge, some golden key that would unlock the gates of employment-dom for me. Uhm, yeah. About that…