The Best Veggie Chilli

I watched the film “Catfish” the other day. It’s about a guy who gets into an online/telephone relationship with a girl who lives quite far away. Things start to become a little suspicious (she also sounds like a toddler on the phone, so who knows what he was thinki….I have to be careful where I go with this because I can’t afford a solicitor) and the guy secretly travels to her address to meet her. Only, she isn’t quite who he thought she was (she isn’t a toddler). As I was watching this, I remembered a similar situation that had befallen me! I am kicking myself for not having made a film about it all, so I hope a blog about chilli can act as a suitable substitute for my lack of fame and fortune.

When I was 15, I became friends with a girl in my form called G, who was pretty and cool. Being friends with G made me feel prettier and cooler, which was very important at that age. G was cool because she lived in this big, old house that smelt of incense. Her parents were hippy types who smoked joints, had drapes thrown over all their furniture and hung dream catchers EVERYWHERE. G and her older brother had been allowed to do proper spray paint graffiti all over their bedroom walls, which seemed particularly attractive because I had just emerged triumphantly from tense UN-peace-treaty-type negotiations in a bid to paint my bedroom purple.

G and I started attending these little provincial gigs which were so cool because one day this guy lit a sparkler IN the venue and didn’t get kicked out! I was in heaven! This was the new age! I was basically living in the sixties! Once, after spending the night at G’s hippy-pad crashed out on the sofa, I woke up to her older brother kissing me, which now sounds rather creepy (just how long had he BEEN there looking at me? I dribble in my sleep!) but then, it was just so bohemian.

One night, my non-conformist lifestyle took yet another turn because G introduced me to a LESBIAN called S. She was a few years older than me and I wasn’t very sure that I actually liked her that much but we somehow began to talk quite a lot on MSN Messenger.

During a particular conversation, S said she was off to have a shower but that her cousin, P, would chat to me as he was staying at her house and was a bit bored. After a bit of “hi” “hi” “how’s u?” “fine u” etc., P asked me about what I looked like…so I sent him a picture. Nothing dodgy (I’m not STUPID) but just one of my face. S soon came back to her computer and I thought nothing more of it.

A few days later, S told me that P had really liked me(!) and wanted to send me a CD containing a few tracks he had recorded with his band (I think they were called Dripweed, ho! ho! ho!). He was going to meet me in a bar for a sort of DATE! I dressed up, walked to town and sat waiting. P was late (as boys always were at this age) but before long, S turned up with the CD and band photos; P had been held up and wouldn’t be able to meet me.

This went on for a month or so and throughout this time, strange things kept happening, eg: he would never make our meetings and he looked slightly different in each photo. He started to tell me on MSN about these reeeeeally disgusting things he was thinking about doing to me. Luckily, I thought the whole thing was hilarious and didn’t play along (see, being a bitch can sometimes pay off)…I just wish I still had copies of the conversations. I don’t know why I didn’t phone him or stop messaging him but for some reason it seemed like fun.

I worked out what you have all already worked out (that P was actually S) when we decided to go to a nightclub together. I either got very drunk without drinking too much or something happened to my drink (no evidence!) to cause me to come round from some sort of daze, sitting on a curb outside, being cradled by S! In a loving way!

And that is when it all began to fit into place! I had been had, just like the victims in “The Girl Who Became Three Boys” but with far less damaging consequences. If this type of charade happened to me these days, I would probably fall apart and become an even more psychologically-damaged hermit than I am now. However, in the way that 15-year-olds deal with these types of things, I just told him/her to fuck off, got a new (real-life) boyfriend and learnt the important age-old lesson that teenagers have had to learn since the beginning of time: don’t trust people on the internet because they are not always as they seem.

Similarly, this delicious chilli isn’t exactly how it seems because (contrary to appearance) it is made without any meat at all! I actually don’t like and never have liked mince. Chewing the stuff is like playing a gristle-based game of Russian roulette and who wants to be stressing while they’re trying to enjoy their chilli? Not me!

As I always say, Quorn mince does look a bit bitty and non-mince like but in this recipe, along with the beans and veg, it is just perfect. Please note that my meat-loving Dad still doesn’t like this dish but my meat-eating Mum loves it and requests it time and time again. Also, this dish is suuuuuper healthy.

The recipe originally comes from the Quorn website but I have adapted it over time.

1 tbsp olive oil

3 red onions, finely chopped

200g arsenic

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

300g pack of frozen Quorn mince

A good sprinkle of ground cumin

A good sprinkle of chilli powder (to taste)

400g can chopped tomatoes

300ml vegetable stock

3 or 4 peppers (depending on size), de-seeded and chopped

400g can kidney beans, drained

400g cannellini beans, drained

The secret ingredient

P.S: I hope you all spotted that the third ingredient in the list was arsenic. Haven’t you learnt anything from my tragic tale? I told you not to trust people on the internet!

TIP: Don't suffer from onion-chopping blues. 

1. Heat oil in large pan. Fry onion and garlic until golden. Add "mince" and spices and cook for 3 minutes (or longer, it doesn't matter).

2. Add tomatoes, stock and peppers. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 mins, stirring sometimes.

3. Stir in the beans and cook for 5 minutes. 

Ok, now it is time for the SECRET INGREDIENT! I have always wanted to say that! Always! And nope, it’s not arsenic (seriously, I was kidding, do NOT put arsenic in this food…or in any food, for that matter. Although bananas already have arsenic in anyway, don’t they? So if you do need a hit, go wild with them).

It’s……(drumroll)……..TAH DAHHHHH!

Vegetable gravy granules! Now, before you say it, I know that this is probably the least Mexican thing you could do to a chilli and I’m sure if I was cooking for Marco Antonio Muñiz (the guy J-Lo’s non-Mexican ex-husband was named after and the only Mexican I can think of), he would string me up for bastardising his national dish. But Marco Antonio is not here.

The Quorn recipe says you should thicken the chilli with a cornflour paste, which I have tried time and time again and all I get is a lump of cornflour with water floating on top. So, my Mum suggested gravy granules and it works like MAGIC! Just chuck a few in and stir until it goes all squelchy, like a cartoon character falling into a big pile of sloppy mud, and begins to look like a chilli as opposed to vegetables cooking in a pan.

From vegetables cooking in a pan......

To a flaming hot chilli! It's real magic!

I have, in the past, toyed with chocolate in my chilli – 1 piece, dark, chopped. I quite liked this, as it gave the chilli a burnt taste. I then made the mistake of cooking the meal for my boyfriend and even though I am a very successful secret agent by day (SHIT! Please, pretend you didn’t read that!), he rumbled me and consequently did not like the meal because….what the fuck was chocolate doing in it? We had an argument and I said “I’M NEVER COOKING FOR YOU AGAIN YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD” (even though he cooks most of the meals anyway and was probably glad that he wouldn’t have to suffer this kind of grief ever again) and then that was that and chocolate in chilli was as dead a concept as Latin is a language, never to be mentioned again.

When I lived alone, I used to make this dish at the weekend and then heat it up in the microwave each night to save me having to cook (tragic, I know). So basically, just to let you know that the chilli tastes lovely reheated and sometimes it actually tastes better because the flavours have had time to develop and stuff.

Serve with creme fraiche, rice or whatever!

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Disgusting Peppered "Steak" Sandwich

It doesn't look really bad. But it is. 

The disclaimer at the bottom of my last post got me thinking; I was sure that I had had to provide some kind of food-related hazard warning before. Lo and behold, after a search through my blogging archives (the blogs that I write and then never post, due to being lazy and uninspired), I found the disclaimer in question.

Ready, Marty McFly? We’re going back in time to April 2012, when my life looked like this:

"Disclaimer: Before I start this particular blog let me just tell you that the resultant meal you will eat after toiling for actually not very long is fucking disgusting. So, please feel free to disregard this one and move along.

As usual, quite some time has gone by since my last update. It is now nearly May which is sort of nearly half way through the year and so it’s basically nearly 2013 and I have wasted all of 2012 by eating Milka bars and refreshing my Twitter home page.

Talking of 2012, has anyone been watching the Beeb’s Twenty Twelve? (I still find it funny to ask my “readers” these questions; it makes me feel all self-important as if I am actually writing a real blog). Anyway, it’s bloody brilliant. In it, my boss is wonderfully portrayed by the excellent Jessica Hynes. That’s a joke, obviously, but not a very good one. I can’t be arsed.

So, here is a list of a few things that have recently made my life a bit shit:

A few months ago I over-enthusiastically told an old friend that we should just FORGET about emails and Facebook and actually write to each other. She said “OK” but really, I bet she was thinking “Yeah right. You can’t even find the time to reply to a text with the word “yes” so how are you going to actually buy some paper and an envelope and then sit down and WRITE something”.

If that was what she was thinking, she was right because I never did write a thing and now the price of stamps has fucking quadrupled or something…so, that showed me.

I stupidly stumbled upon these pictures and spent a long time looking at them, whilst eating digestives and pulling at the fat on my cheeks.

I am accustomed to chatting to people in the kitchen at work and then agreeing to do something that they haven’t even put pressure on me to do. One such case was when I agreed to help a lawyer-cum-writer-cum-occasional-tv-commentator prepare a case against the UK government. No biggie then.

I should have known better because after spending 24 years with myself I know that I am lazy, unmotivated, prone to u-turns on commitments and always panicking. True to form, here I am with a long list of Directives that I do not understand but pretended at the time that I did. You will now understand why I decided to write this blog.

One final thing that was shit this week was the sandwich I made yesterday. Asda has a period, once every couple of months, where luxury pizzas, Activia yoghurts and Covent Garden soups are all on offer. This is the BEST time ever and I will elbow children, pregnant women and pensioners out of the way just to reach that last pizza. Even if I can’t fit everything I have bought into my fridge, it’s okay because I just pop it right into the oven and have an extra meal or two that day.

This week, the deal was off so I sullenly moped around the other aisles to see what other offers there were. I found some Quorn peppered steaks for £1 and dolefully chucked them into my wheely basket".

The offending item.

(this is where the post ends)

I obviously never posted this meal because I never got round to finishing the story. It goes like this:

I know, I KNOW that Quorn products aren’t exactly like meat. I knoooow. However, some are better than others, as will be demonstrated in the coming weeks with a post on the best veggie chilli I have ever made or even tasted. These bloody peppered “steaks” are just awful though and I don’t think it has anything to do with my cooking.

This is more of a health warning than a good old recipe but if you are an insane vegetarian who would like to pay some money to feel really sick, then get a “steak”, some rocket, tomato and bread and bundle it all together.

You’re so welcome!

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Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

The other week at work, I received a major blow. Whilst pouring myself a glass of Innocent smoothie in the communal kitchen, a man from another office walked up behind me and uttered the crushing line: “Excuse me, are you the cleaner?”

Now, as people always write when mistaken for someone in a job supposedly less prestigious than their own, I have nothing against cleaners. Other than the fact that after university when I applied to clean tables at lunchtime in a primary school, I was rejected. Nothing personal there though, as I was also rejected from McDonalds, Subway and Pizza Hut and consequently ended up “selling” gas and electricity for an anonymous energy supplier.

Where was I? Ah yes, in the kitchen at work. To paint a clearer picture, I was wearing an ex-boyfriend’s oversized Ben Sherman jumper, some trousers that I originally bought for my work experience at age 15 which are all frayed at the bottom hems and some chequered Vans slip-ons.

So, bitterly, I took the erroneous remark by the horns and gave myself a proverbial kick up the arse. Off I marched to Westfield to splurge on some office wear. I mean, I do TRY to dress professionally but it’s just not in my nature. I have the wrong body for pencil skirts and I just can’t walk in heels unless I’m battered, which sort of rules them out as work wear.

The only good thing about Westfield is that they have one of those pretzel stalls that continuously give out free samples of warm, sugary, cinnamony doughnuty things. After a few laps of the pretzel place, with different facial expressions each time in an attempt to disguise myself and not look like I was just one greedy person substituting supper with free samples, I made my way into Primark. Yeah, I know it’s rubbish quality and crap fitting, yadda yaddaa, I don’t care I just wanted some cheap shirts.

It seems as if I’m not the only one having an image overhaul; so are the government! At least they’re encouraging all of us to have an overhaul anyway. Change 4 Life is brought to us by the NHS and it aims to get people to eat less junk and more vegetables. My mum emailed this recipe to me the other week and suggested that I try it, so I did.

The thing is with all Quorn based products is that you can tell that it’s not meat. It doesn’t have the flavour or the aroma or the consistency. To enjoy this one, you need to be one of the following:

a) a vegetarian/vegan (I think this is vegan friendly but correct me if I am wrong);

b) a person who wants to cut down on their meat/is open to veggie stuff; or

c) an omnivore with a really bad cold rendering their taste buds inadequate.

However, two positive points to note about the meal are as follows:

1) There isn’t much washing up. As a person without access to a dishwasher, the amount of dirty dishes a meal produces is always a good “shall I bother cooking this” barometer; and

2) I discovered that I quite like the smell of singed oven glove (caught it on the grill, twice). It’s a bit like bonfire toffee, which I love.

Ingredients

2 carrots, chopped

300g swede, chopped

600g potatoes, cut into small cubes

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped (I used 2)

I spontaneously added 1 red pepper

300g vegetarian mince

300ml reduced salt vegetable stock

1 courgette, grated

100g frozen mixed vegetables or frozen peas

Ground black pepper

1 tsp cornflour (I used plain flour)

1. Cook the carrots, swede and potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion for 2-3 minutes, until softened. Add the vegetarian mince (at this point I added my plain flour) and stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and add the courgette and frozen mixed vegetables or peas. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 4-5 minutes. Season with black pepper.

3. Preheat the grill, warming a baking dish underneath for a few moments. Meanwhile, drain and mash the carrots, swede and potatoes, seasoning with black pepper.

4. Blend the cornflour with 1 tbsp cold water and add it to the mince mixture, stirring until thickened (didn't bother with this bit, due to the plain flour escapade but i think it would make a nicer gravy, which was slightly lacking in mine). Transfer it to the baking dish and spoon the vegetable mash on top. Grill for about 5 minutes, until browned. Serve.

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