Mexicali 1

Today we did Mexican food for our cooking group - which involved (my criteria) cooking reasonably real Mexican food without the use of the ubiquitous yellow boxes!

We (well the lovelies actually) cooked 2 basic chilli con carnes from the the same recipe - one with spices and one without. You can see from the photos that we chucked in a little corn instead of the beans for the non-spicy mix (bottom photo). Please also note, in the same photo, the artistic use of funky lettuce offered by the lovely when he knew that it was to be blogged :-)

From this we made empanadas and cheesy burritos, as well as offering the meat served separately for a 'build your own' option.

Chilli Con Carne

2 T olive oil
1 brown onion. finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 T tomato pasta
3/4 - 1 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t ground cinnamon
500 g beef mince
400 g can crushed tomatoes
200 g can red kidney beans, washed and drained.

Heat oil in sauce pan. Add onion and garlic and saute until transparent. Add mince and brown. Add tomato paste, cayenne pepper and cinnamon. Add tomatoes. Reduce heat and cook for about 20 minutes.