Beefmeat

Y'know how you get chilli sin carne, for vegetarians? Chilli without meat, basically. Well - I really like meat, particularly beef, and I like the idea of chilli con carne but I'm not a massive fan of the chilli element.

I want something mince-based, flavoursome and comforting to eat but without burning my tongue or having bad breath for a week. So I've invented carne sin chilli!

It's basically steak mince, onions, borlotti beans, tomatoes, tomato puree and a bit of stock all cooked together and served with rice. As a colleague said: sort of rice bolognese.

Well ... I like it!

PS: the title of this post refers to a restaurant we went to in Spain, which had 'beefmeat' on the menu!

Teaching your grandmother to cook eggs

It's a bit like the beans on toast post, this one. I know you don't need a recipe for ham, eggs and chips. So this is basically me telling you about really nice food I've eaten, and that's the extent of it.

But ... well, I had ham (leftover Christmas joint of ham), eggs (fried) and chips (oven, because I used to get so fed up with all my belongings smelling of chip fat when we made our own) the other day and it was delicious!

It's also really quick and undemanding to make, which is nice for a change. It was fairly economical too.

So if I've given just one reader a little bit of inspiration for an easy dinner, then it's worth me writing about it. Or, to put it another way: "If I bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes me feel as though my hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'!" [Lina Lamont]