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This is “just” a chilli. But it’s a good one (at least by British standards!). You can get most ingredients from larger UK supermarkets. Maggi seasoning cubes are in the overseas food section (the Caribbean bit, normally). You can substitute for a beef stock cube though, if you can’t find any.
The dried chillies are the only “unusual” one to find, but you can get these in the food section of TK Maxx or Homesense (you know, where they have the big bags of flavoured liquorice, and amazing selection of decorative pasta). They’re big dried chillies that come in bags of 5-10. I’ve probably been a bit shy here - if I’d have had it I’d have put at least another ancho in. Experiment a bit, but I’d stick with guajillos as the main one. You can add one or two chipotles for some smokiness.
Don’t worry about this being really spicy: all the heat comes from the Habanero. Add as much or as little of that as you want. The Jalapenos are there for flavour mostly.
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 1 medium onion, ¼ kept whole, the rest finely chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled but kept whole
- 1 dried ancho chilli
- 4 dried guajillo chillies
- 1-2 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
- ½ scotch bonnet/habanero, seeded and chopped
- 200ml tomato passata
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 2 bay leaves
- 250g minced beef
- 250 minced pork
- 1 can black beans
- 1 Maggi seasoning cube
- Salt
- Pepper
- Vegetable oil
Method
First make the chilli sauce (this is stolen from various “Chile Colorado” recipes - namely this guy). Cut the stalks off the dried chillies. Cut each open lengthways and empty out the seeds and membrane. Chop the flattened chillies into 4 parts. Put the ¼ onion, garlic cloves and dried chillies into a pan with about 500 ml of cold water. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 20 mins, or until the chilli skins are soft. Remove from the heat. Lift out the chillies, garlic and onion with a slotted spoon and place into a blender with around half the cooking water, and blitz for 10 seconds. Make sure the sauce isn’t too thick - it’s going to get sieved, so it’ll probably need more water. Now add ½ tsp salt, some ground black pepper, and the ground cumin. Blend for another 60s until smooth. Pass the sauce through a sieve (using the back of a wooden spoon), discarding the remaining pulp.
Now heat a sautee pan/shallow casserole on a high heat. Add some oil. Put the beef in, break it up at bit, season lightly, then leave it alone. When it starts browning properly, lift it all out with a slotted spoon onto a plate. Repeat with the pork. Some of the meat will be nicely browned, some will be barely cooked, but this is fine.
Turn the heat down to medium, add more oil if needed, and gently fry the chopped onion for 10 mins until soft. Add the chopped fresh chillies, and stir around for a minute or two. Return the meat to the pan and mix well. Stir in the passata, chilli sauce, oregano, bay leaves and crumble in the Maggi cube. Stir well, making sure to scrape up any leftover frond from cooking the meat. The consistency should be pretty thick at this point, but wet enough to simmer for a while. Add some water (or leftover chilli water) if it needs loosening.
Cover and simmer for at least an hour, preferably 2 or 3.
Finally, drain and rinse the beans, add to the sauce and cook for another 30 mins before serving on rice with a dollop of sour cream.