You know I really don’t want to come across as a negative person, but when it comes to Mondays I tend to side with Garfield. I find them fairly craptastic, seeing how they tend to start early and go on for ages. This was certainly one of those, where’ you’re home late and the urge to cook has completely evaporated. The urge to eat however is very much present so a compromise has to be made. Now there was a time, not too long ago, when I was one of those people who ate ready made dinners, that go from freezer to stomach in under fifteen minutes and are forgotten immediately. I’m not proud of that particular period, I have to say. I won’t go into the details of why I’d degraded to that level of culinary poverty, I’ll only say it was one of those times. You know the kind, where everything seems bad, so the food may just as well be bad too. Luckily I quickly realised how wrong this mindset is. Food shouldn’t be a mindless extension of your day; it should be an opportunity to turn it around. And after a Monday so extremely Mondayish as this one, that’s just what I need. Because of the ennui I’ve built up during the train ride home I need comfort food, and because I’m tired and short on time I need it fast with a minimum of effort. To a lot of people comfort food means something easy and mellow: a bland, unassuming meal. To me it means the exact opposite. When I’m taken by ennui I want food that has bags of flavour, lots of textures and fire. Most of all I want fire. I want a shock to the senses, and that’s just what this is: my quick chilli, the ultimate comfort food. It’s a doddle to make, it’s quick, healthy and it packs a wallop like a donkey kick.
Quick Chilli
About 300 gr lean beef mince
1 jar of spicy pasta sauce
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 red chilli
1 small can of crispy corn
1 small can of red kidney beans in chilli sauce
1 dash of sweet chilli sauce
Fry the mince in a bit of butter and oil, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Add the peppers, chopped into rough chunks. Finely chop the chilli, not bothering to deseed it (the real heat is in the seeds!). Add that and stir in a good dash of the sweet chilli sauce. Season well and fry for a minute or two. Add the corn and the beans and lastly the pasta sauce. Cook for a minute, cover the pan and turn off the heat. With any kind of tomato sauce it's always best to let it relax for a moment, without cooking. The flavour intensifies.
You can eat this with basmati rice, you can stuff it in big red peppers and pop it in the oven, you can cover it with cornbread... Be as creative as you want.
But on this particular Monday I'm just having it with nachos, using them to scoop up the chilli, no utensils required. A small salad of tomato, cucumber and carrot on the side for some cool crunch and it's a great meal, ready in under fifteen minutes.
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