Rubbishy Cookery

  Happy New Year! Let’s start 2026 on the right foot with a nice chili dinner! Ingredients: Directions: Start with a couple of good glugs of neutral flavoured oil (I’m using canola oil) in a big pot and heat over medium high heat. Chop an onion and add it to the hot oil pot: Sauté the chopped onion until softened: Then add 3-ish finely chopped garlic cloves and sauté further for a few moments until fragrant and maybe not as browned as I’ve done: Then add your lean ground beef, hopefully not still partially frozen like mine: Is fine! Brown the beef with the onions and garlic on medium heat until no longer pink: Still pink! Keep going: Perfect!  Now start adding spices: a really generous amount of chili powder, about a tablespoon of ground cumin, and a few shakes of ground chipotle powder: Golly it’s hard to see with all that steam! Stir that all together on medium heat until the spice aroma fills your kitchen with fragrant spicy goodness, then add a can of tomatoes: Pro tip: ma...

  I was making this recipe for baked beans long before I had an Instant Pot, and so you can too. But as you’ll see, the IP makes everything a whole lot simpler. Ingredients (the night before): What we have in the photo above is two cups of dried Jacob’s cattle beans in a large bowl of water to soak overnight. You can use any beans you like here. To be more of a classic canned baked beans, use the smaller white “navy” beans. Full set of ingredients: Note: feel free to add bacon or ham or other pork product if you want the meaty version. Directions: The next morning, drain your overnight soaked beans and place in the IP with water covering, but not exceeding the halfway measure, to avoid overflow: Check the manual for pressure cooking time for the beans you’ve chosen and soaked. Since Jacob’s cattle beans aren’t listed, I’ll approximate the time based on similarly sized beans listed here: And choose 8 minutes: I let it have a slow release after the 8 minutes, and here they are, prett...

  This is a homemade easy version of a classic tasty Lebanese dish, based on verbal instructions from my favourite Lebanese grocer, Shaddy of Brighton Clover Farm. He gave me the broad brushstrokes version of how to make this at home while I was shopping in his store and buying the star ingredient, the canned fava beans, many years ago.  Actually, the way I remember it is that I was shopping at the store and chatting with Shaddy, as one does, and told him how much I loved this dish at a local Lebanese restaurant. Shaddy, who never minces his words, asked me why the heck (he did not say heck) I was paying good money at a restaurant for something I could make at home for a fraction of the price and much tastier? I told him to go on, I was interested. He went forth to show me the cans of fava beans and told me how to prepare them. This is what I remember from those long-ago verbal instructions, and how I’ve been enjoying them at home for years since. Ingredients: Directions: Empt...