Thursday 13 January 2011

veggie chilli

Veggie chilli is one of my favourite meals; I never get tired of it. I usually serve it with sour cream, guacamole and organic tortilla chips. Home-made bread is also fine. This is a recipe I put together in 2009 (I made chilli yesterday so I decided to share the recipe with you today). I had wanted to make my own recipe for a long time because I had tried various ones and always felt something was missing. This one isn't too spicy because of my children and because I don't really enjoy eating chilli that only burns my tongue; I want to be able to enjoy the taste of the other ingredients. As the name indicates, the recipe contains no meat. I have actually served it to meat eaters who didn't even realise that there was no meat in it.

VEGGIE CHILLI

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 4 large cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 green peppers or 1 green and 1 red, seeded and diced
  • 1 green jalapeno or chilli, seeded and finely chopped
  • 1½ tablespoons light olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
  • ¼-½ teaspoon chilli powder*
  • 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses (or unrefined cane sugar/agave syrup)
  • 2 tablespoons ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 1 can black beans or kidney beans (400 g)
  • 1 can pinto beans (400 g)
  • 1 can tomatoes (or 2 cans and skip the tomato purée)
  • 2 tablespoons, heaped, tomato purée
  • 100-200 ml water (½ cup = 125 ml)
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • optional: small can sweetcorn

* Use more or less, depending on how hot your chilli powder is. A very hot variant I once bought called for halving the does in all recipes. I like it when the chilli has a bit of an edge, but not when it sets the tongue on fire and makes it hard to actually taste the food. (When I first put this recipe together I used 2 tbsp of a very mild version which was some sort of a chilli mix.)


METHOD

  1. Before you start cooking, rinse and drain the beans and keep them in a colander until ready to use. Mix all the spices in a small bowl (not the salt) and set aside. Make sure you are using spices of good quality.
  2. In a large saucepan over low to medium heat, fry the chopped/diced vegetables in the olive oil until soft
  3. Add the spices and mix together
  4. Add the beans, tomatoes/tomato purée, water, molasses and salt and blend together
  5. Put a lid on the saucepan, turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Then turn the heat down again and let the chilli simmer on the lowest heat with the lid for 20-30 minutes and without it for another 10 minutes. If using sweetcorn: Rinse and drain and add before serving.

You can use another can of either black, kidney or pinto beans but then you may want to add some tomato paste and water as well.

You can serve the veggie chilli with sour cream, cheddar, (home-made) guacamole, bread, organic snack (blue corn tortilla chips are my favourite) or whatever. Please make sure that you do not spoil this healthy recipe with unhealthy side dishes.

Chilli even tastes better the day after so it is perfect for the lunch box if you can heat it up at work. It's also excellent to make a grilled sandwich with chilli and cheese. It's also excellent to put chilli on a baguette with cheese and spring onion and grill/heat in the oven. If I'm serving it to guests and have plenty of time, I cook it in the morning and let it sit in the pot. Then I simply heat it again right before the guests arrive.

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