One aspect I particularly appreciate about Nigella Lawson’s ‘In Defence of Brown Food’ chapter in Cook, Eat, Repeat is her note about how “allowing oneself ever to get roped into that game of rating food, or pitting one type against another, is both reductive and pleasure-draining.” We may be gasping and parched amid a nuance drought currently, but none of it is coming from Lawson, at least. She does also note that stews, that brownest of food, “can certainly be, in the wrong hands, unphotogenic”. Which in the case of this Guinness Beef Chilli, holds true — although I would, slightly defensively, clarify that I was being hasty against my will when I photographed it. Ironic, since everything about this recipe demands slowness; that achieved, I found myself with about twenty minutes of usable daylight within which to capture its challenging visage. You already know it, though: the taste is what matters, and this tastes incredible.

It seems fitting to quote Nigella Lawson — well, ever — but here particularly, since this recipe is inspired by her beef chilli with bourbon, beer, and black beans from Simply Nigella, taking some vast liberties, mind you, and I would certainly encourage you to find and make her trustworthy original. I’ve omitted the bourbon, darkened the beer, taken it in a little here and let it out a little there, and the results — while difficult to photograph in a frantic hurry — are exceptional. As with many slow-cooked recipes, the hardest part is the waiting, and here it’s cruelly twofold. It takes four hours to cook, which is one thing, especially when you start it mid-evening, but then it really, undeniably, indisputably, indubitably tastes fathoms and leagues better the next day. It would actually be irresponsible of me to talk about this recipe without drawing attention to this fact via laser pointers and airhorns. You have to wait.

In fact, I tried to force this recipe to taste like day two on day one by making it again and adding some hitherto-unrequired tomato paste, caramelising it along with the softly fried onions, assuming this would lend more immediate flavour, and? It was so much better without the tomato paste. And it kept getting better. If you reframe the patience requirement as laziness combined with an inability to keep track of the passage of time, that might help? But, speaking of the passage of time, let’s move on from belabouring the method and get to describing the flavour. Dark beer is no surprise party guest to a stew, indeed, Nigella’s carbonnade was one of the earlier recipes I blogged about many years ago. The Guinness used here is almost as meaty and iron-rich as the beef simmering within, its objectionable bitterness and vantablack intensity mellows overnight, yet still somehow acts as an extra spice and source of heat as it pools around the melting beef and black beans.

I urge you to seek out the ancho chillies over any other ingredient, they have what I can only describe as a prune-like smoky fruitiness that is quite indispensible. They are also not what I’d call overbearingly hot — I think most people, even the heat-averse, could enjoy this, in fact, there are many people for whom this recipe would be laughably mild. You’re welcome to increase the chilli aspect, I’d assume you would anyway. To that point, I’ve used chuck steak because my local Countdown supermarket is utterly useless and that’s all I could find, the upshot is it does also tend to be a little more affordable while benefiting from a low-and-slow approach to break it down to something affable to the tooth. The beans, unlike Nigella’s original recipe, are canned — again, because my local supermarket, though enormous, is perpetually and maddeningly empty — and I can’t deny that the canned product gives the illusion of being easier despite the same amount of work going into them. No matter; they add tender heft to the chilli and soak up the smoke-breathed paprika and chillies as they sit.

Though I shudder to use the words “meal prep”, I begrudgingly concede that this recipe probably lends itself to the process, particularly as it gets, as we’ve repeatedly established, better and better over time. I’ve photographed it here with some welcome and buttery roti to swipe through the sauce, but a mound of rice would make perfect sense too — I can also see a scenario in which a small amount of this sauce strewn through wide-legged pappardelle pasta would be excellent.

For more recipes that reward your endurance, I recommend this Vegan Carne Adovada, my Caramelised Onion Butter Bean Soup with Chilli Butter Pumpkin Seeds, or Rachel Ama’s African Peanut Stew.

PS: There is less than a week remaining on the Āporo Press Boosted campaign if you wish to donate to an independent Māori press and support myself and the two other books Āporo is publishing this year by Jo Bragg and Nicola Andrews. Whether five bucks or significantly more — and we’re all passing around the same donation to each other’s underfunded arts mahi with love — it’s amazing and welcome and helping to get more cool books on the shelf. Once that’s done there will be SO MUCH more to say about this imminent novel and its imminence!

Guinness Beef Chilli

You have to wait a long time for it to cook, and then even longer before you eat it, but it will be worth it. This is lavishly plain with swirling intensity of flavour, and honestly it’s not that hot — particularly if you leave out the seeds from the smoky, fruity ancho chillies. Inspired by a Nigella Lawson recipe from Simply Nigella.

• 750g chuck steak
• 2 large dried ancho chillies
• 2 onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons neutral oil, such as rice bran
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 1 x 600ml can Guinness or other dark stout
• 2 teaspoons beef stock powder, or use two stock powder cubes
• 2 x 400g tins black beans
• 2 x 15ml tablespoons maple syrup
• A few sprigs of oregano leaves, to serve

1: Set your oven to 150C/300F and take the steak out of the fridge. Place the two ancho chillies in a heatproof bowl and cover in boiling water, prodding them down with a spoon to help submerge them.

2: Peel and roughly dice the two onions, and while you’re there, peel and finely slice the three cloves of garlic. Heat the two tablespoons of oil in a large pan and gently fry the chopped onions, letting them become translucent and then lightly browned.

3: Add the chopped garlic and the two teaspoons each of cumin and smoked paprika to the pan, and stir for a minute or two to let the spices warm up in the heat — this will coax the most flavour from them. While this is happening, slice the steak roughly into chunks of about 1.5 square inches — or thereabouts, don’t get hung up on the absolute uniformity. This is a stew, after all. Add the diced steak to the pan and give it a quick stir to let some of the meat’s surface brown a little.

4: Pour in the 600ml Guinness, followed by the two teaspoons of stock powder. Pull the two chillies from their soaking liquid and chop into 1cm dice — discarding the stems and as many of the seeds as you wish — and add them to the pan along with 100ml of the soaking liquid. Let the beery liquid bubble up just to the boil, then remove from the heat.

5: Open the two tins of black beans and half-heartedly drain away some of the liquid, then tip the contents of both into the pan and stir through, along with the two tablespoons of maple syrup.

6: Carefully — I find a 1-cup measure useful — transfer the hot mixture from the pan into a large baking dish into which this can fit comfortably, and cover tightly with tinfoil (or a lid, if it has it). Bake for 4 hours, without disturbing, then — and I apologise again — let it cool and then sit overnight in the fridge before reheating and consuming.

Serves six with sides, four generously, two with many happy leftovers, and infinite people if part of a laden potluck buffet table.

Notes:

• The ancho chillies are a fairly crucial ingredient, but if you can’t access them and do have a favoured method of adding heat to something — and most people who enjoy heat do — then you are welcome to try that instead, but I do really urge you to get hold of the anchos!
• I recommend going to a bottle shop rather than the supermarket for your Guinness — you’re much more likely to find it sold by the single can there, rather than having to fork out for a six-pack.
• I’ve successfully made a roughly half-quantity of this using a 25cm square dish, it still felt abundant in its relatively smaller amount.

music lately:

Puti’s Maunga by Kōtiro, have linked to this before but it bears repeating because I can feel it changing my life molecule by molecule with every re-re-re-listen and I cannot in good conscience gatekeep that existential yet grounding buzz from you.

Lowbrow by Chelsea Jade, who I happily saw perform live for the first time in a long time on Friday, commanding the red-lit room, this song is so blissful but I was particularly elated to hear the short and zappy Personal Best that night.

Down by A.R. Kane, a dreamy dream from my dream-pop heroes that has more layers than a thoroughly laminated croissant and each one of those layers is, to the surprise of no-one, immensely dreamy.

PS: As we enjoy our food we can’t forget those going violently without it. Though the people of Gaza are beyond crisis point and surviving under barbaric cruelty, Aotearoa-based humanitarian org ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal continues to work to deliver food and water so give it if you’ve got it. I also happily re-recommend Emily Writes’ recent post, Five Ways To Help Your Community Right Now, for exactly that, making it easy to read, take in, and make decisions “whether you have five minutes or $5, or both”.