This is the third recipe in my Basic Kitchen series. It isn’t the first vegetable chilli I have put on the blog, nor the most complex or inspired; however, it was cheap and warming and the rice was delicious. Chilli recipes can be very varied, if you fancy having a nosy at the rather different veggie chilli’s I have written up previously the links are below.

• Slow Cooker Bean Chilli
• Marrow stuffed with vegetable chilli
• Simple Vegetable Chilli

This would have been a quick meal, but I had to cook the chilli, put it to one side and then cook the rice. Chilli is always better the next day, so if I had been feeling organised (which I wasn’t) I would have made it the day before and then just had to cook rice for supper.

Ingredients

• one onion
• a small carrot
• a couple of sticks of celery
• 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes (you can add more to taste later if required)
• black pepper
• half a tin of tinned tomatoes
• a tin of chickpeas
• a stock cube
• rice

Method

Finely chop the onion, garlic, carrot and celery sticks. Fry in a little oil and a few grinds of black pepper.

When the onions are starting to look translucent add the tinned tomatoes. Crumble the stock cube into a mug and pour over about a half a mug of boiling water, stir and add this to the pan along with the chilli flakes. Put the lid on and let it simmer over a low heat.

After about 10 minutes taste and season if needed. At this stage I removed the vegetable chilli from the pan and put it in a bowl covered with a plate to keep it warm and washed up the pan ready to cook the rice (for those of you who have not seen my recent posts, I have pared down my kitchen to an extreme extent).

Cooking the rice. A number of people have told me that they find it difficult to cook rice; I am lucky to have spent a lot of time when I was at university with friends from Singapore and Hong Kong who gave me some good pointers.

I tend to bulk-buy rice from the international section of the supermarket – either Thai Jasmine rice or Basmati rice. It is cheaper and, I think, tastier to bulk-buy international brands of rice but it is often less processed and therefore needs more rinsing.

Approximately 1/3 cup is a good portion size. Put the rice in a pan, cover with cold water and then give it a swill around; the water will turn cloudy with the starch, pour the water off and rinse again. I find that cheaper rice needs to be rinsed a few times. After rinsing I cover the rice with sufficient cold water that when I put my index finger on top of the rice the water comes to my first knuckle. Add a pinch of salt and less than a teaspoon of oil (I like to use coconut oil for this but it isn’t currently in my store-cupboard) and cook over a low/medium heat until all the water is absorbed at which point it will be done. It is difficult to say how long it takes because it depends on the volume being cooked.

Serve with the chilli and a little cheese if you fancy it.

I cooked extra rice for this meal so that there was enough for a leftovers lunch and a meal of fried rice.

Costs

• one onion = £0.09
• a small carrot = £0.04
• a couple of sticks of celery = £0.08
• 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes (you can add more to taste later if required) – £0.01
• black pepper
• half a tin of tinned tomatoes – the cost of this was accounted for yesterday.
• a stock cube = £0.04
• rice – six portions = £0.40
• tin of chickpeas = £0.35

Total = £1.01

No extra utensils this time!