Vegetable Chilli

I'm just back from dinner at my sister's where we had pork goulash, roasted & spiced butternut squash and sweet potato plus a delicious salad. This is a normal dinner for her. For me, that is an amazing feast which doesn't come to me naturally. I'm hoping eventually it does because I'm crap with putting spices and herbs together with actual ingredients - unless it's in a recipe or a simple pasta sauce. The same sister, let's call her H, also gave me my belated birthday present, which was a Leon cookbook (along with some very nice earrings, thanks H!). I mention this because the cookbook is split into two parts. First an explanation of ingredients and what goes with what (including herbs & spices) and the second is the recipes. I'm very excited to delve into the book and share some recipes with you - or at least my way of doing them, but first I thought I'd share my recipe of the week instead. This is actually my older sister's recipe, let's call her A, which has been changed in places by me to make it more friendly and also to make it less spicy. Korma is spicy to me. Let's just leave it at that and hope my taste buds improve with age!!

Vegetable non-spicy Chilli, serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 tbsp oil (olive or sunflower)
1 pepper (red, green, yellow or orange - your choice), de-seeded and sliced into long strips.
2 small white or yellow onions, sliced into strips then cut into half.
100g (more or less) button or closed cup mushrooms, chopped into quarters.
100g (more or less) cherry or on the vine tomatoes, left whole (but washed).
1/2 courgette (Britain's zucchini), chopped.
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely.
2 tins chopped tomatoes (around 400g each)
1 tin chickpeas
2 of:
1 tin kidney beans
1 tin pinto beans
1 tin butter beans
[I used pinto and butter beans] Rinse beans from tin in a colander, use cold water.
1 tin sweetcorn
olives (colour and quantity your choice)
1/2 vegetable stock cube
turmeric
cumin or caraway seeds (I used seeds as had run out of cumin!)
coriander
salt & pepper

Method

On a medium heat, fry garlic in the oil until it turns slightly golden, then add the onion, pepper and courgette. Leave to fry a while until the onions are easily bent in the pan. Add the mushrooms and stir gently.

Add the herbs/spices. As I find it impossible to stick a teaspoon into a herb jar, I use the other end of the teaspoon. Lift out one heaped tsp handle of each spice and sprinkle in. I used around 1/2 tsp of each.

Once sizzling, add the tomatoes, beans and chickpeas. Also add two tins of water (from the tomato cans) plus the 1/2 veg stock cube, crumbled in. Stir and leave this to bubble for around 10-15 minutes.

Add olives and tomatoes and leave to bubble for another 30 minutes on a lower heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Ta-dah! It is up to you how you serve this. Rice or crusty bread is good, I just had it on it's own.

As I had it a few days ago, this is a picture of my leftovers from the fridge! I really hope you enjoy it - I did!!