It was a great honour and a privilege to receive a slow cooker for Christmas. I realised a few months ago that I might be able to save on electricity costs if I wasn't using my cooker so much. But you can't microwave everything. You can't "slow cook" everything either, but most of things I like to eat (soups and stews, at this time of year all the more) seem amenable to it. I've yet to confirm if using a slow cooker actually uses less energy, but in the meantime I've become obsessed with chilli. Today was the fourth time I'll I've made it in the last two weeks.





I like to think I've become rather good at it. Toying around with a few recipes online, I've settled on a version of my own, that I hope is good enough to share.

It's rather like making soup: start with your "base" (celery and onions for soup, always steers you right) - find the combination of herbs and spices that makes sense to you and after that, it's just a matter of throwing all the ingredients in and letting them all cook.





With this chilli, it's only slightly less simple. Chop your onions, garlic and chilli peppers finely, and saute in oil for about 5 minutes, just until the onions start to brown. Stir as you fry, listening to some medium-heavy jazz.





Add these to your slow cooker. Next add one tin of tomatoes, the chilli powder, cumin and cayenne pepper. I've set my slow cooker on "medium" this time, which means it will take about 6-7 hours to cook. At this point I take a break, allowing the ingredients added so far to warm through, giving them a good stir after about 15 minutes.





All I do then is add the rest of the ingredients, cover and leave.





*Now, a word on beans. A lot of chilli recipes include at least some black beans, or other even more obscure varieties of bean. This is fine, but there's no need to worry if such things are unavailable to you. Kidney beans are a cheap staple and frankly, any chilli recipe without any kidney beans at all is pathetic. So you've got to include at least some. You also need to consider how "hot" the resulting dish is going to be. A mild bean, like butter beans (or perhaps chick peas, which I don't think are really beans but never mind) can relieve some of excess spiciness, should this occur. This is also why I add mint - quite liberally, in some instances, as it has a pleasant cooling effect. You need to taste your concoction a few times as you go along, and make the appropriate beans and/or seasoning adjustments, until you find one you're really satisfied with. On this occasion, I've kept it simple - two tins of kidney beans, one tin of butter beans, and a few handfuls of chopped, fresh, green beans.





And behold:





2 onions4 cloves garlic2 chilli peppers (one red, one green)2 chopped tomatoesBeans*Soy mince1 tbsp chilli powder1 tbsp cumin1/2 tbsp cayenne pepperMintSalt and pepper to taste