Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Mexican chilli bean soup: prep work done Mexican Chilli Bean Soup It's cold out there so a warming spicy soup is the very thing. I've made Mexican chilli bean soup from The Soup Book three times already so knew it would be good. Ingredients Sunflower oil 1 onion, chopped 1 red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 400g lean minced beef 1 teasp ground cumin 2 teasp chilli powder 1/2 teasp dried oregano 400g can chopped tomatoes 2 TBS tomato puree 750ml hot vegetable or chicken stock 400g can kidney beans, drained and well rinsed handful of chopped parsley salt and pepper  Taking care not to breach copyright, I'm not including the method but you can probably work it out yourselves.  Serve with soured cream, nature yoghurt, creme fraiche, grated cheese, tortillas, tortilla chips ...  I had a bit of almost everything when we ate this for our dinner yesterday (16th January 2016).   Make up your own minds....

Mexican Chilli Bean Soup As I was leafing through The Soup Book the other day and looking at recipes I have yet to cook, I spotted Angela Nilsen 's recipe for Mexican chilli bean soup. I read the ingredients (onion, red pepper, garlic, minced beef, cumin, chilli powder, oregano, plum tomatoes, stock, kidney beans, etc) and it crossed my mind that I had made this soup before. I have gone through my records (i.e., my notes made in my copy of the book, this blog and my spreadsheet) and can't track it, but I still think I've made it. The cumin and oregano are interestingly different flavours to this household's usual chilli con carne recipe taken from our M&S cookery book which the spouse and I have owned since the 1980s (our edition was published in 1983, to be precise). Anyway, the only item I didn't have at home was the red pepper so I went down to Stephen's to buy one. The recipe specified a small pepper but there were only large ones on display. I decide...