I have not worked in the vegetable garden at all this Christmas break.
I know, very bad. But I was juggling work, university work and working in the pig run to prevent it from resembling the battle of the Somme over winter. Those are my only excuses.
Despite my lack of care, the garden has looked after itself pretty well (the grass is thriving in all of the beds it should not be in…)
It has been so long since I worked over there regularly that I had actually forgotten what I still had planted and left to harvest. I had forgotten the kale, the rest of the sprouts and carrots, the tree cabbage… all I thought we had left were potatoes. So I made a big effort and harvested and prepared lots of our produce during the week.
Carrots: these are the last of the carrots sown this year. They were under horticultural fleece and managed to survive some of the freezing temperatures we had suddenly. Not one has rotted so thank goodness we are on sandy soil. They were delicious and not a lot of damage or forking going on. We even had one gorgeous proper sized carrot!
Think they are ‘Flyaway’ carrots.
Celeriac: first homegrown celeriac harvested from this crop. I know, lazy. But it was in really good condition, a good size, and tasted really good. I like to boil mine but roasting them makes an excellent replacement/accompaniment to roasted parsnips as they apparently taste the same. I have also eaten it raw, grated with apple, in a salad and that is surprisingly good too.
Brussel Sprouts – the left over small ones from Christmas finished up. They did really well and packed a punch to the taste-buds.
Kale – the kale is still alive and doing pretty well despite the various slug/pigeon/ cabbage white attacks it had this year. I do love kale boiled and it goes great in stews, on top of pizzas, in casseroles or stir fries. Kale is brilliant because it fills in the cold ‘hungry gap’ aka, winter, when most other things aren’t available.
Garlic – I sneak up a bulb every time I need it. Garlic is still prolific in our garden from years of growing it.
Potatoes – Too. Many. Luckily, they taste really good and are in pretty good condition.
All of this dinner was homegrown, except the lentils. Self-sufficient and proud of my little garden for doing so well all on its own.
Christmas is one of the busiest times in the kitchen, but it doesn’t mean you can’t pop out to the garden too… especially to harvest things.
Christmas cooking can be like the climax of the harvested year. You can give your jams away as presents, eat redcurrant and cranberry jelly and sauce with your Christmas meal. Harvested chestnuts or other nuts can be used in desserts. Dried cranberries or raisins are great for puds. And of course, anything that is still green at this time of year can be added to your wreath or house for festive cheer.
Dried Cranberry Chocolate Cake anyone?
But you don’t have to stop there… what about the main Christmas meal?
What about growing and cooking your own Christmas dinner?
For future thinking, here are some traditional Christmas dinner things you could plan to grow for next Christmas:
Potatoes – we always plant so many we still have plenty in the ground come Christmas day. As long as they are well buried and not planted in too damp a place, potato tubers will be fine against the frosts.
Brussel Sprouts or Brukale (Brussel sprout crossed with kale).
Kale
Broccoli
Carrots – yes, you can still be harvesting carrots from the ground at Christmas, if you cover them with fleece.
Parsnips
Cabbages
Beetroot – why not add some to your roasted roots?
Celeriac – ditto, or a celeriac mash? Or just boiled?
Celery – homemade stuffing anyone? And in that case how about freezing some pears or storing some apple too?
Onions
Runner- beans or peas – store them in your freezers all year round from the first harvest onwards.
Pumpkin or squash – usually USA’s Thanksgiving, I know, but how about roasting some and creating a vegetarian/vegan replacement for the usual meat?
Homegrown Brussels and Brukale
Christmas is a holiday, a time of celebration and of having fun with loved ones. To me, it is also a time to be creative and original, to do what I love by going back and cooking from scratch, a way of tying up my year of cooking and growing. This year we will be having our own cabbage, beans, pumpkin, celeriac, beetroot, carrots, potatoes and Brussel Sprouts, not to forget homegrown redcurrant jelly and homemade cranberry sauce… What a way to celebrate an end to 2018!
RIP David Austin Sr.
What do you grow/dream of growing for Christmas time? Let us know.
It would be hard to summarise what we have been up to in the vegetable garden lately, so I took my crappy phone over with me to take some photos to show what we have been up to…
The broadbeans are doing really well. These I sowed as seed last autumn and we have already harvested a large amount, some small pods, some big that have been shelled.
Broabeans
This week we have harvested: broadbeans, parsley, Swiss chard (or perpetual leaf spinach), rocket, lettuce, radishes, cucumber, garlic, tree cabbage and wild strawberries.
LettuceRocket
After trying sooooo many times to grow spinach and carrots this year, I have started again with fresh seeds – fingers crossed it will work!
I also planted out my pumpkins today, the last crop to go outside. Now I just have to get a serious move on with my sweet potatoes and some of my tomatoes need larger pots too…
‘Charlotte’ Potatoes
Potatoes are looking as lovely as ever. I think I should just stick to potatoes. They seem to be all I can manage!
Onions
We have had really bad slug and snail damage this year – even the onions have suffered, which is very unusual. Protection has been put in place to save our babies at the cost of bug life 😦 There are only so many crops you can lose before you have to take action.
Summer Squash grown from seed and planted onRunner Beans
Our lovely runner beans are growing every day. The ones in the front row of this picture are the ones that we planted two years ago and left the roots in the ground. We covered them up to protect them from the frost over winter and now they have grown beautifully yet again. There are another two trenches of beans in the background, and another couple in the garden. Got to love beans.
Grown from seed sweetcorn. Our neighbour kindly gave us another couple of batches from her own garden too. One might produce…?Cheeky self-seeding orach growing among the broadbeans
Other than that, it has been weeding and feeding non-stop here. Working on clay soil at another garden has made me realise how hungry our plants must be on sandy soil. Compared to the other garden, ours need constant watering and manuring to keep them fit and strong.
Not to try and scare fellow gardeners but hey, its not far off till March – the biggest sowing month of the year!
This is when my sowing indoors becomes nuts, but because of the frosts there is little you can sow directly outdoors at this time of year still.
What you can sow are the hardy things like Broad Beans, winter Salad – Lettuce, Meteor Peas … but they all need to be sown under horticultural fleece and, ideally, a cold frame.
But do you know what is a good idea to sow directly outdoors first thing in the season, that has to remain under the cover of fleece the whole year round thanks to pesky flies? Carrots.
Carrots don’t like to be transplanted, they need a lot of time to develop, and need covering from carrot flies anyway so why not make a little bed and sow some seeds?
To make you want to grow your own carrots, here is a recipe to get you enthusiastic. Do you know what carrots go great in? Bolognese.
*To make it vegetarian, omit the meat. You can put pre-soaked or canned kidney beans in instead, but you don’t need to add more protein if you are serving it with grated cheese.*
Veggie version – with kidney beans instead of mince
Spaghetti Bolognese
Serves 4-6
-Olive oil, for frying -1 large onion, finely sliced -4-6 giant carrots, or the equivalent as small ones -2 garlic cloves, finely diced -x2 450g cans of tinned tomatoes -500g beef mince (optional) -Dash of soy sauce -Dash of Lea and Perrins Worcester sauce -Pinch of salt -Pinch of pepper -Spaghetti, to serve (about 500g) -Peas, runner beans or broccoli, to serve -400g grated cheddar cheese, to serve
Warm the olive oil in a large frying pan. Fry the onion and the grated carrot together, stirring the contents. You want the carrot to lose some of its orange colour, to cook, but you don’t want it all to burn.
Once the carrot is cooked, add the tinned tomatoes and the diced garlic. Mix in well.
In a separate frying pan, fry the mince meat if using. Once cooked, add to the sauce, or if using kidney beans, drain if from a can and add to the sauce straight away instead. Mix well.
Add the flavourings and stir. Leave it to come to the boil and then turn the flame down and allow it to simmer.
Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in boiling hot water until cooked through. Bring another pan to the boil and cook the greens.
Serve with a helping of spaghetti and greens, the bolognese on top, and a good helping of grated cheddar.
Left overs can be used for chilli con carne (just add diced chilli) or for lasagne.
Well, it is December and the festivities are drawing closer.
I end my uni term this Friday (finally) and at space 2 grow we have our last meeting on Wednesday to clear space for the vegetable patch!!!! before breaking up until the new year. We have a special Christmas dinner on Thursday night to celebrate all of the work that we have done so far. I thought I was going to have to make nut roast for it (ah) but it turns out I don’t need to (phew) so instead I am making some brownies tomorrow night to bring along to our Wednesday meeting to encourage everyone to keep digging, pruning and burning (we have a couple of pyromaniacs on board).
But back to Christmas – this is a time for not so much growing in the garden, but they are very special because of this. Brussel Sprouts, Celeriac, Celery, Kale, Cabbage, Carrots. All of those cosy winter veggies. And Cranberries.
You’ve planted all of your delights in the warm weather, now it is time to play with the harvest indoors when it is hitting minus temperatures outside. So here are some little festive treats to get you in the mood. Some are from this blog, some are from my other blog Bella’s Baking, now very recently Beagle Baking. If any of you have a beagle, you will understand.
Brussels Sprouts – ideas and information about your favourite green!
Cranberries – cranberry sauce is essential for Christmas lunch, as is this Christmas Chocolate Walnut and dried Cranberry cake!
One of the best dishes for cooking up unwanted veg from the garden or your fridge has got to be a stir-fry.
Almost and veg can go in, a basic one is very quick, once you have prepared all of the vegetables and the content shrinks down so much in the pan, that you can easily get rid of a few items from the storage.
I think you could probably get away with any veg but it all depends on taste. Personally, these veggies seem to be good to use, according to me:
carrots, bell peppers, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber is surprisingly good, any green leaves, like spinach, pak choi, swiss chard, Spanish tree cabbage, ordinary cabbage, kale, spring onions, garlic, normal onions, sweetcorn, mushrooms…
I’m sure there are more.
Another good think about stir-fries is that they can easily be vegetarian or vegan too. I don’t make them as much as I should do, but stir-fries are the way to use up veg when you have a glut.
So here is ONE basic, simple stir-fry recipe that is veggie/vegan appropriate. I use stir-fry oil from Sainsbury’s (because I’m lazy) but for this recipe I have included the basic flavourings for making your flavourings from scratch.
A Basic Mushroom Stir-Fry
(Serves 4)
For the flavourings:
-2tbsp olive oil -2 garlic cloves, finely diced -2 spring onions or 1 large onion, finely diced -1tsp grated ginger -1/2tsp finely diced chilli
-8 mushrooms, finely sliced -1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green (or the equivalent in the same colour) bell peppers, de-seeded and finely sliced -4 celery stalks, sliced -3 handfuls each of kale, swiss chard, tree cabbage and spinach; de-stalked and shredded
-Dash of soy sauce -Dash of sesame seed oil
-Noodles, to serve
Heat the oil up in the pan. Add the garlic and the onion and sauté gently. Turn the heat down to simmer and add the ginger and chilli. Stir for about a minute.
Add in the sliced mushrooms, bell peppers and celery. Fry for a few minutes until starting to look a little brown.
Stir in the shredded green leaves. Leave for a few more minutes and then add a dash of soy sauce and sesame seed oil. Stir and leave for a minute or two.
I will admit it – I used to hate carrot cake. The idea of a vegetable in a cake, an orange vegetable at that, was just crazy. But, now I can literally eat my own words. I’ve had at least three different types of really good carrot cake recently, but the best so far has been a recipe my mum made from the River Cottage Veg Patch handbook.
Now, she adjusted the recipe a bit. She added more dried fruit, salted butter instead of oil and any extra salt, instead of apple sauce she grated a whole apple and a pear (in a food processor) because our trees have been so generous this year, she ground the walnuts up (because that’s our trick ingredient to a good homemade cake) and she made the mistake of adding the syrup that is meant to go over the top at the end into the actual cake, but it was so much better. It wasn’t sickly sweet or sticky then, it made the cake instead moister and more delicious.
It is a darling of a recipe and very good for you too!
River Cottage Carrot Walnut Cake
(Mum’s Version)
(Serves 10)
– 150g sultanas, raisins, currants -220g self-raising flour -1 tsp baking powder -1 tsp ground cinnamon -1 tsp ground ginger -Pinch of ground cloves -220g light brown sugar, plus an extra 3 tbsp for the syrup -116g salted butter -Finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange -2 eggs, lightly beaten -225g apple and pear, coarsely grated -270g carrots, peeled and coarsely grated -80g walnuts, ground -1 tbsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line a 20–22cm square cake tin, about 8cm deep, with baking paper.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and ground cloves.
In a large bowl, whisk together the 220g sugar, butter and orange zest until well combined, then whisk in the eggs until the mixture is creamy. Fold in the apple and pear, followed by the flour mixture until just combined. Next fold in the grated carrots and ground walnuts.
While the cake is in the oven, make the syrup. Put the orange juice into a small saucepan with the 3 tbsp light muscovado sugar and 1 tbsp lemon juice. Warm over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Fold into the cake with the sultanas.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface with a spatula. Bake for about 1 1/4 hours, until a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the cake appears to be overbrowning before it is done, cover the top loosely with foil.
Stand the cake tin on a wire rack and leave to cool. Serve hot or cold. Store in an air-tight tin.
There are too many plants that can be started off indoors/outdoors in March to name! But here are a few to get you started…
Carrots – Carrots – sown one trench outside under fleece
Spinach – Salad – Spinach – planted out ‘Turaco’ spinach sown last autumn in a cold frame with fleece and started off indoors ‘Barbados’ and ‘Emelia’, onto ‘Samish’ soon…
Lettuce- Salad – Lettuce – planted out lettuce sown last winter in the cold frame with the spinach and sown some seeds indoors
Radishes – Salad – Radish – sown outdoors under fleece between other crops
Chickpeas – Sown indoors, first time trying them this year!
Broad beans – Broad Beans – ready to plant out under fleece
Peas – started off indoors but can be sown directly now – post hopefully coming soon…
Okra – Okra – couple damped off so planted some more indoors
Rocket – Salad – Rocket – sown indoors, not doing so well…
Watercress – sown indoors
Herbs – sown the parsley and coriander so far
Fenugreek – damped off, need to sow some more indoors
Cucumbers – Cucumbers – sown indoors, doing best at moment, please stay that way!
Tomatoes – germinated very well indoors
Potatoes – time to think about planting them outdoors under a lot of earth and some cover
Turnips – just sown some
Purple Sprouting Broccoli – just sown some (as well as some more Calabrese Broccoli) indoors AND just harvested first batch of last year’s crop the other night to have with some of the last dug up potatoes from last season with baked beans, cheese and frozen homegrown runner beans – yum!
Sweet Corn – on my list but I know from experience that I can still get away with sowing it in May, indoors
Rhubarb – Rhubarb – time to feed and start forcing
Fruit Trees/Bushes – time to feed!
There are bound to be plenty more veggies to sow/plant out as we plough on through the first month of spring. Temperatures are finally warming up but hang onto some fleece – the fruit trees might be lured into a false spring, deadly for blossom and fruit production… Make sure anything you sow outside/ plant out is wrapped up under cover, nice and snuggly. It will be a shock to the system if they are exposed to Britain’s ‘spring time’ too early!
FLOWERS TO SOW INDOORS:
French Marigolds
Cosmos
Viola
Lavender
Geraniums
Calendulas
Lupins
Sweet Peas – they are ready to plant out under cover
Homegrown carrots taste delightfully sweeter, fresher, crisper and have a far more pungent smell than ones we buy in supermarkets. If one can grow a carrot successfully and scrape back the soil to reveal a little glint of orange attached to the feathery green leaves (that resemble parsley and dill as distant relations), then they can feel very satisfied and like a proper vegetable grower.
First carrots harvested June 2016
Carrot, a root vegetable, is usually recognisable to us as that bright orange crop but it can be found in black, purple, white, red and yellow. In fact, the orange colouring was the last to be developed from the list. The cultivated carrot originated from the wild carrot, initially coloured white. There are white rooted carrots still around today, mostly used for animal feed or as a novelty crop.
Carrots have an ancient history. Fossil pollen from the Eocene period, 55 to 34 million years ago, has been identified to belong to the Apiaceae, the original carrot family. It is said that the carrot dates back to about 5,000 years ago, first cultivated in Persia (areas that are now Afghanistan and where the wild carrot is still popularly grown today). From there, carrot seeds were sold by caravans to neighbouring African, Asian and Arabian lands where the cross-breeding began. Historians have been able to show that this particular vegetable was important to our ancestors in Egypt from the evidence of numerous carrots being placed in tombs alongside the dead pharos and drawings of carrot harvests in hieroglyphic paintings. During this time, the carrot was grown purple. This was before a mutant occurred, removing the purple pigmentation and creating a new species of yellow carrots (where our known orange ones eventually derived from and hung around). The orange carrot is thought to have developed in the early Middle Ages, after hybridisation with a central Asian species. The first European author who mentions red and yellow carrots is the Byzantine dietician Simeon Seth during the 11th century.
After its popularity in Egypt, carrots were medicinally used in Ancient Greece and during the Roman period although they do not appear in many scribes where parsnips had a more preferred role for harvesting. For a time, the word parsnip was interchangeable with carrot due to the confusing similarities between the two. Bitter and hard to eat, carrots were used to heal many illnesses and as use of a sexual aphrodisiac. In normal cooking, Romans boiled them and covered them in dressings and various herbs.
By the 13th century, carrots had moved to Japan and were being cultivated in the gardens of France and Germany. In the 1600s, they were brought to the New World, Jamestown and Virginia in particular. During the Middle Ages, carrots continued to be confused with parsnips and some believed they originated from the same plant, mostly because carrots during this time were still white or purple rooted. It is thought that the orange colouring of carrots was not ‘stabilised’ until around the 17th century in the Netherlands after that mutation rid them of their darker outer-colourings. Yellow carrots had been gifted to the ruling House of Orange. After years of selective breeding, Dutch carrots were designed to no longer be bitter in taste, becoming Daucus Carota.
America were amongst the last to accept carrots in its cuisine. They only became customary after the Great War when soldiers returned home with knowledge of European dishes, French ones in particular, that had helped them survive their ordeals during military combat. The modern popularity of the carrot in cooking can be traced to English meals during World War II where the government actively encouraged the population to grow and cook the hearty vegetable as a way of increasing people’s consumptions of important nutrients during rationing and lack of imports.
Today, the carrot is a traditional vegetable, shared between horses and humans alike and is a customary delight of children’s diets. The average person will consume 10,866 carrots in a lifetime. Currently, China produces the most carrots in the world. In 2010, they produced 15.8 million tons. Purple carrots (still orange on the inside) were first sold commercially in British stores in 2002.
Carrots have a rich supply of antioxidant nutrient beta- carotene and vitamin C. Different varieties of carrots contain different amounts of antioxidant phytonutrients. For example, red and purple carrots have a rich anthocyanin content and orange carrots have outstanding levels of beta-carotene (which makes them orange in the first place), 65% of their total carotenoid content. Due to the richness of antioxidants, carrots are advertised as being beneficial for our cardiovascular systems that need protection from antioxidant damage, particularly for our arteries that carry highly oxygenated blood. A study in the Netherlands suggested that carrots are the best food for reducing these cardiovascular diseases. Participants in the investigation who ate 25 more grams of carrots than other studies had a significantly lower risk. Those who ate less carrots, had a higher risk or having a cardiovascular disease. Carrots also contain anti-inflammatory and anti-aggregatory properties that prevent excessive clumping together of red blood cells, protecting our bodies from the inside pretty well. Other studies suggest that carrots are beneficial in reducing cancer, especially colon cancer but more research is required in these ares as to how much they help.
The tale that carrots help you see in the dark was in fact a World War II propaganda stunt circulated by the British to mislead their oppositions, suggesting that their RAF pilots ate a diet rich in carrots that helped them to see their enemies at night in order to hide the technology they were using. From this story, the belief that carrots improve our eyesight became ‘an old wife’s tale’ but there is some truth in the myth. Vitamin A, that carrots contain a fair amount of, helps the eye convert light into a signal that can be transmitted to the brain, allowing people to see in low-light conditions. Also, the cornea in the eye can disappear when one is lacking in vitamin A. Therefore, carrots might not give us super-night vision, but they will help to protect our eyesight a fair amount.
The other carrot nutrition story is that eating too many can turn one’s skin orange. This is, oddly enough, true, mostly noticeable in the palms and soles of the feet. This is called carotenemia and is fixed by reducing one’s intake of carrots.
Carrot seedlings, 2015
Varieties I have grown:
Baby Carrots – Sow: January May
Autumn King 2 – Sow: March-July
Amsterdam – Sow: March – July
Flyaway – Sow: March – July
Eskimo – Sow: March – July
Sugarsnax – Sow: March – July
They can all be harvested from the summer until winter, depending on when they are sown and how kind the weather is for us.
These are all orange varieties. It would be fun to try growing different coloured ones but they do have a reputation for tasting woody. I believe Mark Diacono once wrote that their taste resembled eating a trowel…
Carrots are best sown direct into a finely prepared patch of soil. Most people advise not to plant carrots in manure to prevent forking carrots. However, as we work in such barren, sandy soil, this year I took the risk and dug a small amount of very well-rotted manure, compost and mulch into the soil a while before planting the carrots. It helped enormously for us – last year my carrots were tiny and took forever to germinate and grow to reasonable harvesting size. This year we have already picked a fair few in good shape and they have been delicious. I have only come across one forked carrot so far but to be honest, I am not too fussy. They taste the exact same even if they look comically odd.
Sow carrot seeds in drills, 1cm (1/2 inch) deep, trying to leave about 30 cm (12 inch) apart. Sowing the tiny seeds can be very hard and they do like to ‘bunch’ or ‘clump’ together, giving you patches of carrots rather than an even spread. Water the area well – inconsistent watering can lead to irregular growth and splitting in the carrot root so be wary of droughts.
Carrots should be sown successionally every few weeks for a steady supply throughout the year. Try not to sow them too close together as they are a nightmare to thin and release volatile chemicals that will attract carrot flies.
Carrot flies are the worst pest for carrots. They need to be guarded with a cover all the way around to keep the bugs out. This year we have stuck bamboo canes into the soil and draped fleece over like a tent so as not to crush the carrot heads this year. We then pinned the fleece to the ground to make sure no flies find a way in. Mark Diacono, River Cottage ‘Veg Patch’ book suggests comfrey or seaweed solution discourages carrot flies and improves plant growth. Companion planting of chives (we have done that this year around the edges) or spring onions work well, the strong smells deterring the carrot flies. French Marigolds are also great too and look beautiful. I always pop a few in close by for beauty if not purpose.
Other pests I have had slight problems with previously have been slugs and snails that munch underground. This is likely to happen if you leave your carrots in the earth over the winter months.
Harvest your carrots from May onwards when the tops are orange and the carrots look big enough to gently pull up from the ground. Leave the smaller ones to have the chance of getting bigger.
If you are planning to store them rather than eat them straight away, wash them, dry them and place them in a crate full of slightly damp sand or in paper sacks that exclude the light. Otherwise, you might be able to leave the carrots in the ground for a few months, especially over winter. They will keep better this way than in the fridge.
I like to eat my homegrown carrots raw, freshly pulled up from the earth. They taste best this way, finely sliced into matchsticks and eaten alongside more salad, perhaps with pasta or a baked potato and cheese or put in a dip. Otherwise, of course one can boil them and eat them with other vegetables with perhaps a roast dinner, sausages or fish and potatoes, see my recipe for Chicken Casserole:https://wordpress.com/posts/thekitchengardenblog.wordpress.com , or they can be finely sliced or grated for a stir fry or a Bolognese or Chilli Con Carne, see below. Or roasted in the oven after being sliced and drizzled with olive oil. Another classic is carrot and coriander soup or, for the juicers out there, carrot juice, blitzed in a processor. There is, of course, the popular carrot cakes as well if you ever have enough. The tops of the carrots are edible too for those with an acquired taste. My ducks love them so I share them out instead.
Chilli Con Carne
Chilli Con Carne is best cooked with lots of grated carrot in it.
The chilli makes this a very warming dish. You can use any beans grown from your patch, podded, like borolotti beans, haricot beans, soy beans, broad beans, or stick to the traditional kidney beans you can buy canned or dried for soaking. Exclude the minced meat if catering for vegetarians. If you leave out the chili, this immediately becomes Bolognese to serve over spaghetti with cheese or a lasagna filling. It freezes well. Serve with lots of other vegetables from your kitchen garden, like peas, runner beans, broad beans, broccoli, kale, cabbage… I also like to add some greens into the actual dish itself, often kale or swiss chard, perhaps pak choi, komatsuna, perpetual leaf spinach or normal spinach.
(Serves 6)
– 450g prepared and cooked kidney beans/ borlotti beans/ soy beans/ broad beans etc. – Olive oil – 450g minced meat (omit if vegetarian) – 2 large onions, finely sliced – 2 large cloves of garlic, finely diced – 6 large carrots, finely grated – 800g tinned tomatoes – 300g of greens (kale, lettuce, swiss chard, pak choi, spinach etc.), de-stalked and shredded – Dash of soy sauce – Dash of Lea and Perrin’s – Salt and pepper – 1 chili (or more, depending on how hot you like your meal to be), de-seeded and finely diced – 400g basmati rice, to serve – Peas, runner beans, broccoli, kale, to serve
Fry the minced meat in an oiled pan until well cooked and browned.
In a separate frying pan, fry the cut up onion in olive oil over a high heat. When it starts to brown, turn it down to a low heat and leave it to simmer. Add the grated carrot and allow to fry until the carrot is cooked (turn up the heat and stir if you can hang around the stove to speed it up).
Add the tinned tomatoes and diced garlic and stir. Add the greens and stir in to wilt. Add a dash of soy sauce, Lea and Perrin’s and salt and pepper. Stir in.
Add the cooked beans of choice and the mince to the con carne, stirring in well. Leave to combine flavors for at least ten minutes over a low flame. Add the cut chili and stir in well. Leave the ingredients to combine over a low heat, simmering.
Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil and add the rice. Turn the heat down to low and leave it to cook for about 20 minutes until all of the water has been absorbed.
Bring another pan of water to the boil and add peas, runner beans, broccoli, kale, any green vegetables of your choice. Once cooked, drain.
Serve the Chilli Con Carne over rice with the vegetables alongside.
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