Nigella’s Quick Chili

This week’s I Heart Cooking Clubs theme is One Pot Wonders.  What a perfect time to have such a theme given I had to work all weekend (hence the lateness of my post).  I bought Nigella Express recently, which is great cookbook.  We’ve been having some very unseasonably cool weather here in Kansas, so I decided to make Nigella’s Quick Chili from Nigella Express.  I love making chili when the weather is cool.  Her version was a bit different than I’m used to.  It didn’t contain any chili powder, but it did contain several spices, including cinnamon and cardamom, which I’ve never used in chili.  I did deviate from her recipe a bit by adding an onion and garlic, which I think are essential components of chili.  I made it last night, refrigerated it, and had my husband heat it up while I was at work.  It was delicious!  It was great to come home from work to an already prepared meal.

Quick Chili (Courtesy of Nigella Express)

Ingredients

• 5 oz chorizo sausage (not the hard salami sort of sausage), halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4-inch half-moons (I used ground chorizo, as it was all I had access to at the time.)
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 t ground cumin
• 1/2 t ground coriander
• 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 3 cardamom pods, bruised (I used about 1/2 t ground cardamom instead.)
• 2 c good-quality tomato and chunky vegetable sauce for pasta (I used diced tomatoes.)
• 1 14-oz can mixed spicy beans
• 1/4 c sweet chile sauce
• 1/4 t chile flakes, optional

Directions

1. Put the chorizo into a hot pan and cook over medium heat until the sausage crisps a little and gives up its orange-red oil.
2. Add the ground beef and cook for about 5 minutes, breaking it up with a wooden fork to help it brown (at this point, I added the chopped onion and garlic and cooked until opaque).
3. Stir in the spices and then add the tomato-vegetable pasta sauce, beans, and chile sauce.  Also add the chile flakes if you need more heat.
4. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes and eat with rice or just as it is.  If you’re not adding any rice, you might consider dolloping with a blob of sour cream and sprinkling some grated cheese and chopped cilantro.  I can’t think of any way of eating this that isn’t good.