Chillies stuffed with beans... WITH couscous salad with herbs and walnuts

by Amy

Chillies stuffed with beans

Substitutions:
Bell peppers for the chillies
No oil, obv
I added cheese in Stu's

Rating: 6

Carol and I were musing on existential themes earlier on. Can a recipe be considered a Hugh recipe if your substitutions render the name of the dish factually inaccurate? Carol's response to my question ("Er, yeah, pinto bean chilli that contains everything but pinto beans?") settled the issue. I reckon if Radio 4 invited us both on to the Moral Maze we'd achieve world peace within four episodes.

So on I went, stuffing common-or-garden bell peppers from the back end of my fridge, because I'm not going to order stuffable giant chillies from an internet site, not even if HUGH tells me to. And the bean stuffing was the perfect amount for four peppers, so I was pleased.

And I was also fairly smug when I dished these out onto our special dog plates, because they looked so pretty! All, like, restauranty, which makes a change from the bowls of unprepossessing vegetable slop that I normally dish out. Stu was all excited to be eating something that looked like it hasn't been prepared by a soup kitchen. But then, as he tucked in... he went all meh. It tasted a bit meh. I mean, it was still nice, just not worth fiddle of blistering and skinning the peppers. And grating whole tomatoes! What was with that?! I would advise anyone else to just use half a tin of chopped tomatoes; the result would be identical.

The peppers tasted amazing because roasted peppers do taste amazing but the filling just didn't bring much else to the party. Maybe it works in a whole different way with giant chillies but I'll never know until Tesco decides to stock them. And I'm fine with that.

Couscous salad with herbs and walnuts

Substitutions: Loads
I used ground cumin, didn't roast then grind whole seeds
I omitted the fennel and fennel seeds (because fennel is Stu's kryptonite) and added more celery
Normal sized couscous instead of the giant couscous
No tarragon or chives

Rating: 5

Where the hell are you meant to find that mutant couscous anyway?? Well I'm glad I didn't bother hunting it down because this was only okay. The parsley, walnuts and abundance of celery made it taste sort of bitter, although the lemon was nice and fresh. I just wasn't moved. It was easy enough to make I suppose, and perhaps it was lacking something without the fennel. I couldn't add the fennel though because Stu would have spat it back in my face.

Neither of these were bad, but I probly won't make them again. Also incidentally, making them has BROKEN OUR OVEN. After dinner it sputtered and collapsed. Normal blog service will not resume until it has been fixed. MEGA SADFACE.