31 October - cheese on toast and beef chilli

With fresh Turkish figs still in season, I bought a lovely crusty sourdough loaf from Hart's this morning to make some goats cheese on toast with figs on the side for lunch.

There was a chunk of beef from yesterday in the fridge which I somehow fancied slow cooking. I stopped in Smith's on my way to the supermarket to flick through Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple. I really ought to buy a copy, but for today, I settled for just memorising a recipe for beef chilli. It's a pretty long list of ingredients, but I think I managed to get home with them all still in my head it more or less the right proportions and order!

• Blend an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic.
• Brown a chunk of beef on all sides in a pan- I used about 150g topside - and remove.
• Fry some chopped cooking chorizo in the same pan, then add the onion and garlic mix.
• Add a tsp cumin and a tsp allspice, a few cloves, a cinnamon stick and a bay leaf.
• Stir in a couple of chopped red chillis, a few bits of jalapeno (from a jar), a splash of balsamic vinegar, a squirt of tomato ketchup, some dried oregano and half a tin of tomatoes. Stir it all around to cook for a while, then return the beef and top up with about 150ml water.
• I transferred the whole lot to a casserole, covered it with foil and popped it in a low oven (150C) for a couple of hours.
• Towards the end, stir in half a tin of borlotti beans.
• When you take it out, break up the beef with a fork into shreds.

The result wasn't particularly photogenic, but it tasted absolutely fantastic! All the flavours came together wonderfully to create a real 'surround-sound' kind of taste that lingered long after the last mouthful! Rather than rice or tortillas, I served it with some cubes of roast sweet potato and a blob of guacamole.