First time round I forgot a few things (the lemon, honey) and couldn’t justify a few others (smoked paprika, thyme). I followed the recipe above, having bought beef and veg from the local market plus chillies from Mozza’s. I also used a few less ingredients, about 500g braising steak, 2 sticks of celery, 2 peppers and just the 1 chilli (I have a less spicy tongue than Andy!)

I sliced the potatoes (not baby ones) into thick slices and boiled ’til pretty soft. Diced meat and doused in flour, salt and pepper and fried that off. The pre-grated veg (I suggest you grate celery with a peeler if you don’t want it all to disintegrate) was then thrown into the pan with the meat and at tha tpoint it went a little wrong as the frying pan was nowhere near big enough. Moved some of the veg into a second pan and fried til veg was a bit softer (but not soft)

Transferred the whole lot into a bit stock pot, adding a can of tomatoes, a can of puree, all the herbs and stirred. Atthis point the potato started to fall apart and not knowing what to do I just went with the flow. I then left on a low heat for a few hours. The potato ends up giving the whole thing a really wintery thickness and texture.

Served with grated cheese, pittas and soured cream was a great alternative to chilli con carne.

Second time around I used beef from a different butchers which was a mistake but still fantastic, and I only got 400g which was still more than enough. The best thing is you can modify this to your tastes, using different veg, more or less tomatoes (more = thicker, redder dish, less = thinner more stew like – and the same for the potatoes).

This dish served 2 people for 2 nights (I reckon Andy’s exact measurements above would feed the 5,000!)

Can’t recommend it enough, and make sure you serve it with a nice, refreshing beer!

We didnt follow the recipe exactly as missing a few ingredients[caraway seeds, bit too exotic for the local shop] but it was still incredibly tasty and just the thing to keep the winter cold at bay. Recommended.