Author Archives: Rick Ogden

Rick’s Chilli Con Carne

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Starting what I think may become a theme, I have decided my first recipe should be my signature Chilli. I make no claims about authenticity, however I do know it’s extremely tasty.

Serves: 4 (generously).

Ingredients

ingredients

  • 1kg of minced beef
  • 3 medium sized onions
  • 2 bell peppers
  • 1 Scotch Bonnet
  • 3 large cloves of garlic
  • 2 tins of chopped or peeled tomato
  • 1 tin of kidney beans
  • 1lt cafetiere of coffee
  • Cumin (Jeera) powder
  • Hot Chocolate powder
  • 3tsp of Demerara Sugar
  • 2 mugs full of rice

Method

Frying the mince

Fry the mince with no oil

There are two things to note at this point: this recipe contains no oil and it does not use any salt. The salt I recommend people can add to taste once served, and the fat from the beef is used for frying the veg.

Put the minced beef in a large-bottomed pan. This should be fried on a medium heat until it has just about turned entirely brown. This should be stirred periodically to get it evenly fried all over and to make sure you do not burn the beef.
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National Winter Ales Festival 2012

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The National Winter Ales Festival is a beer festival I know well. Having been going for the last 7 years and also volunteered at a number of them. This year was the largest yet: over 300 beers! I am very much a fan of hoppy beers, particularly the aromatic hops, but I can appreciate good dark and old ales as well, and seeing as this is the Winter Ales Festival there was an emphasis on these darker beer types.

There is always an issue which I have at beer festival, and I’ve named it (as I am a nerd) the “signal to noise ratio”. This simply means the number of good beers there are compared to the number of poor beers. This year I felt this ratio was very low. There were a couple of times I thought I’d go for beers from breweries which I’d never heard of, and almost instantaneously regretted it. I can’t remember who these breweries were as their beers were really not that memorable. So I ended up being unsurprised by which beers I thought were good as even if I hadn’t had the beer before, I knew the breweries. I thought I’d make a list of the particular highlights for me and beers to look out for in the future:

  • Quantum – Stella IPA (5.5% ABV): Now, it is rare you get to go to a beer festival and order a “Stella”, so I thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to ask for it. This beer tastes nothing like the namesake, and the beer is actually named after the hop strain which is used in this Single Hop IPA. I’m a big fan of IPAs and this was incredibly tasty, aromatic and fruity but not overly intense. Very drinkable even for the strength.
  • Red Willow – Wreckless (4.6% ABV): This award winning strong bitter was one which I’ve had before, and very easy to drink. It is perfectly balanced in the hops and malt it uses and creates a nice quaffable beer. I could have drank this all night.
  • Magic Rock Co. – High Wire (5.5% ABV): This is an American style Pale Ale and incredibly hop forward. This is a beer I’ve had before but only on keg (under pressure and dispensed from a tap rather than a pump). It’s very nice on keg, but as with everything I’ve tried yet, I much preferred it on cask. Unfortunately the beer was slightly hazy at the festival, so the condition wasn’t great, but it still tasted fantastic. I think it would have been even better if it had cleared properly.

If you were at the beer festival, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Welcome to Metal Chef!

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Welcome to our brand new blog! We are a bunch of friends who share a passion for music (particularly heavy metal) and also for good food (both cooking and eating). Forget those tasteless ready meals, take-out pizzas and pre-made curry pastes and enjoy a blog about how to cook great, tasty food from scratch with influences from all over the globe.

In this blog expect recipes which we have come up with from scratch, or adapted for our own tastes. We all love chillies so many of the recipes will be on the hot side. We are not shy about experimenting, so we will happily be posting the “cock ups” which do not go quite so well (with a disclaimer at the top warning people not to follow these recipes). Many of the recipes will not be authentic because we are not cooking for authenticity, but for what tastes good. The only important thing is how much we enjoy eating it. Also there may be a few posts about other things we get up (music and food related).

We do not cook lowest-common-denominator food, bland food that will not offend anyone. We don’t care if you don’t like it. We are cooking for ourselves and wish to share our dishes with anyone who is interested.

We have no absolute grand plan for this blog, and we are just going to see how it goes. We want you to find it enjoyable to read and useful, and we are hoping that we can learn from others and each other, so please post comments with opinions and additional experimentation and improvements which you have come up with.

We hope you enjoy this blog!