I’m not the biggest Jamie Oliver fan….. I don’t like his ‘Italian’ Restaurants much, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fifteen in Cornwall either and he sometimes annoys me on TV, but that being said I do own quite a few of his cookbooks and think he does great family food, and do really enjoy his 30 and 15 minute meal books. I recently caught an episode of his Friday Night Feast programme, the one where he was making Chilli – and I thought the recipe looked fab, and planned to cook it off the back of watching this. I then found a copy of his new Comfort Food book for £10 in TKMax (gotta love this shop right?!) and the recipe was in there too. Fate, obviously! So here goes my attempt at the recipe – which you can find online here It calls for pork belly and brisket instead of mince, and the recipe is set out for 12 people in the book. We halved the quantities, using 500g of each meat, both of which are really good value for money at the moment – much more economical than the ‘better’ cuts of meat. The chilli fed us both for 2 evening meals and 2 lunches each (8 portions!)
Browning the pork belly
Its a pretty easy thing to cook, but does require a fair amount of prep. We cooked ours in the slow cooker rather than the oven, which suited us perfectly. The smell when we came home from the football on the Sunday afternoon was amazing!
Soaking the mushrooms
The base of the Chilli
The only comment I would have on the dish as a whole, was that for a ‘Chilli’, I didn’t find it spicy enough. I think if I make it again I will put in more red chillies, or add in some chilli flakes in the rub mix at the beginning.
When the lid came off…
A word on the apple salsa that accompanied it – this was outstanding. Really simple, but the apple and cider vinegar set of the pork element of the chilli really well and added a zing that the thing really does need to cut through all the richness.
Apple Salsa
Lots and lots of Coriander!
Happy eating :)
