Secret Recipe - deliciously warming vegetable chilli - shhhhh...

There's a few meals that occasionally I'll get a real craving for and this is one of them.

I spent years cooking it with minced beef and beef stock and now that I've created this veggie version - it's no less tasty, because the secret is to make it very rich and to ideally eat it 2 or 3 days after you've made it.

It's possibly one of my signature dishes and definitely something not for the faint hearted if you eat it in my house!

Go rummage in the fridge and larder:

1 tbsp olive oil

2 large onions diced

2 peppers diced

6 cloves garlic

2+ fresh chillies (I often use 2 large jalapenos - use more if you like)

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp hot chilli powder (mild if you prefer)

2 tsp dried oregano (or marjoram)

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 veg stock cube

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tin chopped tomatoes or half a jar of passata

1 tin mixed beans or red kidney beans rinsed (I used Epicure) 

300g bag frozen quorn mince (or extra veggies  such as carrot, courgette, mushrooms etc)

water to top up (approx 250ml)

6 squares dark chocolate (I only use Green & Blacks Organic)

Get cooking:

Gently sautee the onions in the oil over a medium heat until soft then add the chilli and garlic for a couple of minutes, then the peppers and finally all of the spices. Keep stirring and cook out gently.

Add the puree, stock cube (if you are using one) and continue to cook out gently for a couple more minutes - stirring all the time.

Add the tinned tomatoes or passata, the Quorn or extra veg and the water to top up.

Simmer gently for 30 minutes and then add the beans and simmer gently for around another 15 or until most of the liquid has been absorbed (chilli, to my mind, should not be a runny sauce - but thick and unctuous). Finally add the chocolate, stir in, taste and re-season if necessary. And you're done!

Tuck in!

So many ways to eat this - simply with rice, in taco shells, on nachos, on spuds.....

This time though it had to be a huge pile of nacho chips, topped with cheese, melted under the grill, topped with sliced jalapenos and served with sour cream, guacamole and salsa.

Total and utter fiery bliss. Arriva!


p.s. I love these chips - gluten free as well.

Amazing animal stories - the dolphin who asked a diver for help...

Today the BBC (and others) reported on a diving team's experience of a wild dolphin who 'asked' them for help to remove some fishing line that was tangled around one of it's fins.

The whole event was filmed and so I've just added the link here so you can hear and see the report for yourselves.

How wonderful that a human undid the harm that another human had done.

'An underwater camera has captured the moment a dolphin that became entangled in a fishing line was freed by a diver in Hawaii.

Martina Wing, who filmed the footage, said that the dolphin seemed to "communicate" with the diver to ask for help.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast's Jon Kay and Louise Minchin from Hawaii, she described the experience as "mind-blowing".'

Veggie Food Review - The Pomeroy Inn

The Pomeroy Inn

131 White Lion Road, Little Chalfont, Amersham, HP7 9JY
Telephone: 01494 766845

When you know snow is imminent and you have a 5 hour motorway drive back home ahead of you, it's clearly necessary to dive into a lovely country inn, stock up on hearty warming fare (just in case you get stuck in the snow of course) and warm ones cockles...

So the tempting menu of this rather nice looking pub seemed perfect. AND the carb-rich veggie options sounded just the ticket for a winter's day.

On order 17.01.13:

Cauliflower Fritters
cauliflower fried in a curried batter, served with minted crème fraîche (V)

 

&

Macaroni Cheese
rigatoni pasta in Ford Farm cheddar cream with rich tomato and red pepper sauce,
served with watercress and balsamic vinegar (V)

&

Side order of Dressed Slaw

 

[fixed price menu - 2 courses £8.50, side £2.50]

How was it for me?

Crisp fragrant florets of cauliflower, rich creamy pasta bubbling brown on top with grilled cheese, fresh vibrant salad and the tang of a healthy vegetable slaw - mmm yumyum my daydreaming little head thought.

But then the 'food' arrived...

I've never been able to mask my facial expressions easily (somthing that has gotten me into a LOT of trouble over the years) and on this day my face must have changed from one resembling a 5 year old child in utter rapture at the thought of a longed-for xmas present who then opens the thing they most hate in the world.

The 5 cauliflower florets sliding about on a huge plate and held back from the edge only by some rather limp lambs lettuce were, I think it's fair to say, a bit of a dissappointment. But, ever the optimist I pulled myself together and started tucking in.

Now I've long since come to terms with the fact that deep fried foods are going to be cooked in the same oil that's been potentially used to fry fish and burgers in etc. But for the cauliflower fritters to taste more like the scampi on my mother-in-law's plate than her scampi probably did, was (theres no other way to say this) pretty gross. There was no hint of the advertised curry flavour in the batter or int in the creme fraiche.

End of round one.

Never mind I thought - macaroni cheese will lift my spirits again. Um, not so.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear poor Pomeroy - you're chef has lost the will to make the effort. This dish was, I suspect, a  bowl of cold cooked pasta to which has been added a couple of slices of soggy red pepper, two halves of tomato and a bare minimum sprinkling of a less than flavoursome cheese. All microwaved and then thrown under the grill - not so much to gratin the cheese (as there wasn't any) but to brown the edges of the pasta thus making it chewy to the point of inedible. And all topped with a drizzle of balsamic (weird and a bit of a passee attempt to be chefy) and a reappearance of the dreaded wilted lambs lettuce - presumably the watercress was having a day off... The 'rich' sauce had absconded with the watercress...

The 'slaw' turned out to be possibly the most peculiar concoction I think I have ever seen mascarading as a side dish. It was a sticky goo that seemed to contain some minute pieces of carrot and broccoli and that tasted sweeter than a sweet thing even if you have a sweet tooth. [As my husband has diabetes I had to warn him off from trying this, as I feared he might go into bloodsugar hyperdrive with just one spoonful.] It was far far removed from the promsing 'fresh vegetable mix' (sans mayo) that the waiter had described.

And finally:

In terms of ambience, I do like the look of this pub, the decor is what I would call attractive 'contemporary rustic', it has lovely open fires and a nice buzz about it. But it took 20 minutes for us to get seated (!) although we did arive at 2pm at the end of the very busy lunch rush (they serve until 5pm though). The first member of the team was really too busy to be friendly but she was polite; the waiter who took pity on us and cleared us a table was very good; and the lady who cheerfully and chatilly served our food was also very good (NB she readily offered a refund when we complained about the slaw). 

Now I'm a girl who loves her grub - and if the first two rounds been delicious then I would no doubt have used a snowy excuse to partake of a pud as well. But I really didn't want to throw good money after bad. Yes, it could be argued that prices are cheap at the Pomeroy, but I still expected to get what was described, and there's no excuse for such simple food being such a let down. 

4/10 - OK if desperate and heavy snow is falling.

The big (V) question.

Still relatively new to vegetarian eating it doesn't always occur to me to check the true vegetarian authenticity of foods when I eat out. When a restaurant adds that (v) in brackets you hope they know what they're talking about, but as I learned when Glynn Purnell's somelier insisted that animal products are never used in wine making, that isn't always the case.

So I have asked whether the creme fraiche in this case was (v) and indeed about the Ford Farm Cheddar!

I'll keep you posted!

Chantal Denny-Harrow
x

Veggie soup for the soul . . . stories of amazing animals

If you've ever worked with animals or shared your home with them, you'll know for certain that all of them are sentient beings, just as we are - with intelligence, emotions and distinct personalities.

Each week on this blog I'll seek out a story from across the world that shows the true nature of the animals that we share our planet with. Stories that inspire, lift the heart and demonstrate their equality to man and their right to a peaceful existence.

A Ray to Remember

In old mariners' tales of yester-year Manta Rays were often said to be associated with the devil and were seen as evil. However, our understanding of them now is mostly as being graceful, peaceful creatures. Indeed the sight of them occasionally leaping out of the water is simply one of the most beautiful things you could see.

They are usually quite shy creatures - but whilst helping a team to film underwater, well-known diver Sean Payne had an encounter with one that changed his perspective on them completely.

A large female ray came out of the depths and seemed to take a shine to him - swimming right up to him and pushing her body into the underside of his. She was playful and when he decided to stroke her she responded as if she were a dog having her belly tickled. In his account of this wonderful meeting he even describes how her wings vibrated with what seemed to be like pleasure.

Like many other people describing animals Sean says he felt a real connection, despite being from an extremely different species. She wanted to be with him and swam around him touching him and wanting to play. She even followed him protectively up to the surface of the water.

I love this story for 2 reasons:
1. It reminds me of watching baby rays dancing in the shallows of the Indian ocean when I was in the Maldives and 2. because fish and underwater animals are so often dismissed as being incapable of this type of reaction and that they even have no intelligence, emotion or physical capacity for pain. The scientific fact is that they have all of these things. Hence we should not eat them/ harm them. How lovely that this animal still trusted a human and wanted to interact with him, and, that she wasnt let down. But what a shame that this isn't the case universally.

Have a wonderful rest of the week.

Chantal x