Papa made not chilli con carne

I was away for the day at a training course, and it was Papa's day off. I wasn't likely to be back in time to cook supper, so Papa decided he would cook, as long as I gave him nice clear instructions.

So over breakfast, I typed a recipe (my style of recipe, of course!) and emailed it to him.

He followed it, and the result was a spectacularly tasty meal.  Maybe I enjoyed it more because I didn't cook it, but I suspect equally because Papa has a very good palate, this was the best non-chilli I've had.

Notes: we call it non or not chilli because it isn't spicy at all, and those that wish it spicier add hot sauce at the table. Tiny and Littl'Un are terrified of spicy heat (to the point that Tiny recently had plain rice in school because he was frightened of the "chilli" that was being served with it...) so I call it this to reassure them.

Here is the recipe as he used it, edited to make it more general.

Heat up a large frying pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. 
Swirl it about to spread. Keep flame medium size.
Add a handful or so of the sofrito mix from the freezer and a small amount of frozen chopped onion and also a little finely chopped garlic fresh or frozen. (Clearly, you can use fresh, but I have all these as time savers, and they made this much simpler for an inexperienced chef!)


Stir and cook until no longer frozen. Scrape to one side, away from flame. Add pack of mince to centre of pan and do not move it until one side of meat is brown, then turn meat and repeat. (We had a pack of 750g beef mince, but 500g would be fine for 4-6 people)

If this seems tricky, brown the meat in the oil first then add the frozen sofrito, onions and garlic to the meat.

Once both sides are brown, gently break up the meat and fry until no pink remains. Mix in the previously fried sofrito, onions and garlic. 
Add the mashed up stewed veg* from the gammon stock and mix well. 
Add a teaspoon of ground cumin and one of paprika. Add 1 tsp salt. Add a heaped teaspoon of Marigold.

Stir well. 

Now add a tin or tetra of chopped tomatoes. Stir well.  Add a splash of red wine or water if you can’t find open red wine. Add a beef stock pot or cube. 

Add the drained and rinsed kidney beans.

Allow to simmer for 15-20 mins or longer if that’s possible.  Cook the rice. (I always only use boil in the bag rice for chilli, but you don't have to!!!)

If it's starting to dry, just add a splash more water while it simmers.

Serve with soured cream, grated cheese and some seasonal steamed veg on the side also.


* I mentioned this stewed veg here recently.  Obviously, if you didn't make a stock recently, you won't have this, but if you do make a stock with some veggies which you then normally chuck away, I recommend mashing them up and either using them in a base like this soon, or freezing for a sort of sofrito or concentrate in the future.  It really boosts the flavour with something many people chuck out.

crackers-on-top lazy pasta bake

I still hadn't quite got my menu-planning mojo working the next day, and also hadn't made it to the shops yet, so i decided to see what we could find locally to make into a meal.  We are very lucky that on the way home from school there is a really nice Greek shop with a deli counter, fresh meat, and fresh bread and pastries.

I asked Littl'Un if she had any suggestions of what she'd like to eat, mainly because she's been going through a phase of not being interested in meals, and taking forever to eat a tiny portion.  I hoped that getting her to suggest something would give her more encouragement to eat better.  She remembered that we had opened a pack of crackers at the weekend, only to find they were all crushed, and she had suggested we could use them as a crunchy topping for a pasta bake.  People who know me will be aware that for some reason, I have an aversion to boiling and draining pasta, so I wondered if I could again adapt Gill Holcombe's brilliant "chuck it all in" pasta bake recipe.

We bought a small pack of happy pork mince, a jar of passata, and a little pot of lovely thick Greek yoghurt at the Greek shop, and then I set to work.

I fried the mince in the much loved oven-proof dish.  Once browned, I then flavoured it with some fennel seeds.  Once the heady aniseed sweetness was apparent, I added some garlic too.  Once that was soft and mellow, I poured in the passata with some stock, and then stirred in the weighed out amount of dry pasta for the family.  This all then came back to the boil quite quickly, and I stirred in the pot of yoghurt.  Littl'Un was in charge of scrunching the broken crackers, in this case a rather battered pack of black pepper and cheddar Ryvita thins, and spreading them on top, and I sprinkled a scant handful of grated cheese on top for extra scrummyness.

I popped this in the oven at 200 degrees and left it for 40 minutes.  After this time, the pasta was cooked, and the top was brown and crisp, and the meat and sauce had made a gooey unctuous filling.

We served this up with some nice green veggies on the side, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it! And Littl'Un was the first to finish her plateful, AND she asked for seconds too!!