Name: Chilli con Carne (and Sloppy Joes)
Ingredients: tomato purée; salt; red kidney beans; water; chilli powder; low-fat minced beef; tomatoes; paprika powder; sunflower oil; sugar; garlic; onions; powdered cumin; chilli flakes

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Chilli con Carne (and Sloppy Joes)

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Settler's Cookbook

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Published 2009

About

Ingredients

1 lb low-fat minced beef
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin red kidney beans
1 tbsp powdered cumin (my addition, this)
1 tsp sugar
2 onions, chopped
1 cup water
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tbsp tomato purée
2 tsp crushed garlic
1 tbsp paprika powder
1 tsp chilli flakes or powder
Salt

Method

Heat the oil in a lidded pan and cook the onions until translucent.
Add the garlic and spices, and continue to cook while stirring.
Add the meat and let that cook over low heat for ten minutes.
Add the tomatoes, kidney beans and purée, water, salt and sugar to taste, and cook partially covered for thirty minutes.
Serve with rice or slopped over crusty bread or split, soft baps. A dollop of sour cream on top is good.

I was warned this was for pregnant females only – men were meant to avoid it as the glue, it was feared, would clog up their vital tubes. It was wickedly good and eventually banned by my husband, whose own body was sculpted perfection. TL had always affectionately called me ‘Chubbs’ and said he liked my peachy body, but as my belly grew and cheeks filled out, he feared I would end up one of those fat, Southall begums who roll from side to side, puffing through each step they walk.

In the years after my marriage, a kind of working peace had settled between me and my brother’s family. My sister-in-law had softened towards me because her kids loved me. Besides, I wasn’t a burden on them any longer, and they were fast coming up in the world. We all seemed eager to cut off from the frightful past and move on.

Britain had in the meantime been taken by Heath into the Common Market but was still ill at ease with its continental neighbours. Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister, affable but ineffectual. Unions were getting ever more unpopular, and the Labour Party was proving to be hopelessly out of touch with the public and even more out of sorts with itself. Its policies on immigration and race were at best contradictory, at worst a capitulation to the nationalist right.

In 1976, during one of the hottest summers in living memory, the mother of all industrial disputes broke out in North London, at the Grunwick film-processing plant owned by an Anglo-Indian, George Ward, who refused to let his workers form a union or to give in to demands for better working conditions and equal pay. Most of his workers were female and Asian – many of them from East Africa – who had never participated in the labour market before their move to the UK. They complained that they were being exploited, denied basic rights, and being paid £28 per week when the national average wage was £72. Their leader was Jeyaben Desai, a small, feisty woman in a sari who unexpectedly found herself at the forefront of the first-ever strike initiated by non-white workers. They did get some support from white Britons. Mass pickets gathered, including miners brought down by Arthur Scargill; Shirley Williams, a Labour minister, joined in. However, the workers never had the full backing of the TUC or the power bloc within Labour. The strikers, who had just cause, came to believe race mattered less to these left-wing bastions than class, and their conclusions had some validity.

The Grunwick dispute contained all the volatile elements swilling in the land: poor labour relations, race, immigration, union duplicity and political betrayals. Immigration was a burning issue, with the press running incendiary (often fabricated) stories. When Asian ‘flood warnings’ appeared, racial abuse and attacks significantly increased. In 1977 Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered by a racially mixed gang, and the British fascist leader Kingsley Reed said publicly, ‘One down, a million to go.’ Judge McKinnon, who tried Reed, wished him well and said in open court, ‘Goodness knows we have a million and a half or more unemployed already and that all the immigrants are going to do is to occupy the jobs that are needed by our local population.’²

Primary immigration had dried up as a result of tightened laws of entry, and attention shifted to families of immigrants joining those who were already settled. There was an outcry over ‘virginity tests’ carried out on young Asian women to verify their claims of marriage. The Anti-Nazi League was born to combat the rising xenophobia. It was mostly a white organization promoting justice and anti-racism though peaceful means.

Surveys confirmed that racial discrimination was rife in the job and housing markets, and in the provision of goods and services. Pressure grew for legal redress. UK civil-rights lawyers tirelessly lobbied to protect Britons of colour. Roy Jenkins, one of the most enlightened of British home secretaries, pushed through new legislation in 1976. The Liberal Party supported the new law, and the Conservatives, guided by Willie Whitelaw, did not oppose it. These progressive policies modernized Britain’s structures and laws, but their beneficiaries rocked the nation’s sense of itself. Unemployment was rising fast; Europe seemed to be in the doldrums, while Japan was the rising sun. As ever immigrants were blamed for all ills.

During the Jubilee celebrations in 1977, the country rallied briefly and felt great again. People were determined to be jolly, to beat the national blues. WI types came out with cakes and pies to reassure those who feared the sexual revolution. I made a pot of chilli con carne (Sloppy Joes really) for the Park Town residents’ garden party and even wore an apron with the Union Jack, just to show willing.

Preparation info

Difficulty

Appears in

Ingredients

Method