Heston's Chilli con Carne

Well, I have dithered at length about whether to blog this or not for a couple of reasons, certainly the recipe is looooong ....phew lots of typing.....and the photo's that Mr Debs took are not great and don't really do the recipe justice ( mental note to track down teenage son for phone photo taken! ).

I record most Heston programmes so that I can dip in and out and try to memorize as much as possible but this recipe seemed quite easy(ish) so printed it off and away we go......

Serves 4

For the spiced butter.

2 Tbspn Olive oil
1.5 tspn (one and a half ) ground cumin
1.5 tspn smoked paprika
1.5 tspn cayenne pepper
1 tspn Tomato ketchup
1 tspn Worcestershre sauce
1 tspn Marmite
125g Unsalted butter at room temperature

For The Chilli.

Olive oil
450g Lean minced steak
1 Large onion peeled and diced
2 star Anise
1 Large carrot peeled and diced
3 Cloves garlic peeled and crushed
1 Green chilli de-seeded and diced
2  tbspn Tomato puree
375mls red wine
50g spiced butter
3 large tomatoes diced
500mls beef stock
400g Tin kidney beans
2 largish vines of vine tomatoes

To Serve
Soured cream or greek yogurt depending on your taste
Finely grated zest and juice of 3 limes
Grated cheddar cheese
Whole pickled chilli's

To make the butter fry the cumin and chilli in the oil for a few seconds and then add to the rest of the ingredients, mix well and pop into the fridge while you get on with the chilli.

Heat the oil in a large pan until nice and hot and brown the mince really well in batches until all nutty brown, place meat aside and de-glaze the pan with a little water to remove all the meaty juices.

Turn the heat down to medium and add a little olive oil to the pan again, add the onion and star anise and fry for 7-10 minutes until onions begin to colour.
Add the carrot, garlic and green chilli and cook for a further 10 minutes until the carrot is soft
Add the tomato puree and cook for 5 minutes
Pour in the red wine and allow to reduce by two thirds - remove star anise and discard
Stir in the spiced butter, red kidney beans, stock, diced tomatoes, whole vine tomatoes and bubble over a low heat for 2-3 hours until silky and tender.
Discard vines stalks and add lime juice, zest and a little more spiced butter until it tastes just right.

I served ours with a baked potato and it was extraordinarily tasty. I made a couple of changes to the recipe;

I used Tinned kidney beans and popped the whole tomatoes and beans in at the start of cooking
I didn't use the peppers at the end, I thought that they were unnecessary
I didn't make the corn bread as I knew that we were having ours with baked potatoes

I would use a little less Spiced butter next time as it does make the whole dish a little greasy

On the whole we all loved this dish as it had so much flavour not just heat. Having said that, Mr Debs plopped some Daves insanity sauce in his as it just wasn't spicy enough for him.

Debs