Hi All

I cooked some amazing Food and Drink at the weekend. IT is a delicious chili con carne - I had a recipe however I just improvised a bit but here is the basic premise: Heat some oil (olive for me), add 2 - 3 bay leaves. Fry for about 1 minute to release the flavour from the bay leaves. Add onions, garlic and oregano to the mixture. Fry until the onions are brown. throw in some chopped celery and fry till celery soft and clear. Add some smoked paprika, coriander powder and cumin powder and stock. If the spices start to stick to the bottom of the pan, make sure you add a little water so as to take the spices from the bottom of the pan. Fry to about 5 - 8 minutes. Add some beef cubes or stewing beef (brisket would probably work best however you need to cook that for much longer), 2 tins of chopped tomatoes and a splodge of tomato puree. Add water to suit and bring to the boil (if you add more water, you can make it into a sort of soup, the less water you add would make it more of a chili). Cook untill beef is thoroughly cooked (as mentioned above, it depends what type of beef you use - standard cubed beef takes about an hour, stewing beef and brisket would take longer). Add a can or 2 of red kidney beans, maybe one kiney beans and one chick peas. Turn heat down and simmer for about 30 minutes. Give the chili a quick swizz with a hand blender to mix everything and slightly mince up the beef. I prefer it slightly lumpy so you get some chewy beef - however blend to taste. Add a handful of chopped fresh parsley and a couple of roasted scotch bonnet.
let me know what you think.

All the best - Foodheaven

Bay Leaves..celery..chick peas and kidney beans? That would get you hung to the nearest mesquite tree in Tejas young man. Now they might like it in Noo Yawk City. Its hard to say.