I don’t know about you but when I grew up, and having such fussy eater sisters, on asking my Mother what was for dinner the response was generally ’something with mince or something with chicken’. I guess I’ve taken that with me as you can bet your bottom dollar that in my shopping basket every week there will be a whole chicken and a couple of punnets of beef mince. 

The thing is, while I can think of a million things to do with chicken, I have to confess to being one of those weirdos who prefers to hack my own chicken into pieces rather than buy those revolting looking chicken pieces from the supermarket. For the record though, once you nail that skill the world is your oyster when cooking chicken! But when it comes to mince it tends to be the old favourites: Spag bol, lasagna, Chili con carne, Cottage pie, Minced beef and onion pie, Meatballs, Moussaka, hamburgers and frankly while I love all of the above I can’t help but feel a little bored by them.

This afternoon, on being faced with 500g of beef mince from the butcher, (20% fat since you asked) I was sat staring blankly at it having to ask myself a series of ‘mince related’ questions. Has there been any new innovative recipes with minced beef? What other cultures cook with minced beef and what do they do with it? I searched the web and came up with a few I hadn’t heard of before. ‘Bobitie’, which is a South African dish of gently curried minced beef with dried fruits and a baked egg custard top similar to a moussaka it seems. ‘Sloppy Joes’, which should be renamed ‘Sloppy NO’ as it’s a tacky combo of chilli mince topped with garlic bread. Those darn American’s!!! Actually speaking of Americans, my Mum used mince to make meatloaf with a mushroom sauce and it was pretty awesome. I was thinking of trying this but using wild mushrooms a bit of sherry and some cream just to bring it into this century. I think that might actually become quite special.

It seems lamb mince has a little more going for it as it is a meat that seems to be used in more ‘World’ cuisines. Lets go back to the Moussaka, It’s essentially not a Moussaka unless its made using lamb meat. In India - or Pakistan to be precise - they have a stonking dish called Mutter Keema which is a gently spiced curry, I suppose a bit like an Indian chilli con carne (but not as tomatoey) and studded with green peas which burst in your mouth rather than kidney beans. 

I twittered my mince problem and had some really great responses. The thing that stood out most was kofta. My father ended up retiring in Northern Cyprus so we got to eat a lot of Kofta in our teens. I bloody love it and again its a dish that works best with Lamb mince, but I wanted to try this a little differently. So I had decided what to try for supper…

I spiced the mince with, shallot, garlic, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, freshly chopped coriander and a lot of salt. Shaped it into meat balls and fried it off to brown it. While that was going on put some more shallots, garlic, ginger, chilli, ground cumin, ground coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cardamon and cinnamon and blitzed it with some oil and salt to make a paste. Once the meatballs were done, I whipped them out and fried off the paste until the room was awash with the smells of the East. I like this kind of cooking it’s full of buzz and energy with all these wonderful smells! When the paste had lost most of its water and started to go a little golden I poured over a can of chopped tomatoes and some beef stock, put the meatballs back to the pan and let it bubble away for 30 minutes. 

I chopped an aubergine into chunks, tossed it in some salt and fried it of in hot oil until it had gone golden. You have to do this to aubergine otherwise it tastes revolting. If its been fried it becomes gelatinous, gooey and caramelised and quite possibly my favourite vegetable. Aubergine went into the pan and cooked for a further 20 minutes. Its was blooming marvelous! In fact so good that I am going to write it up for you guys. Anyway this whole thought process has inspired me. What ingredient gets you going a bit potty or simply bores you and you’d like to have me work some magic on. Let’s start a new food revolution of boring ingredients - watch this space.