McCartney's Chorizo, Chicken & Bean Stew

Messy but completely delish!

McCartneys of Moira are going a dinger at the moment! First of all their Corned Beef beat 7,500 other entries to become the Great Taste Awards 2011 Supreme Champion, then they were named best Neighbourhood Retailer Butcher of the Year! But we knew that anyway! Their sausages are just the best thing ever and so cheap when you consider how delicious they are. I'd rather have a plate of McCartney's sausages (especially their Italian ones) than a supermarket steak any time.

I made a fantastic (even if I do say so myself) casserole for the weekend from McCartney's chorizo sausages, some chicken fillets, a few tins of beans and a tub of tomato sauce. These sausages aren't as strong as proper chorizo (they are more accurately chorizo flavoured) but they are full of garlic & paprika and perfect for a winter casserole. Incredibly easy and quick to do, this will keep us going through a busy weekend where my husband and I are doing a very accurate impression of ships that pass in the night. You can eat a bowl of it on its own or have some crusty bread and cheese on the side. I make a pretty damn good tomato sauce in industrial quantities once a month and freeze 400g or so batches of it, so that's what I used here. Use your own recipe or a supermarket one if you must, though I can't recommend one cos I think they are all awful.....if you can recommend a good one please let me know!

Chorizo, Chicken & Bean Stew
450g McCartney's Chorizo sausages (If you are not lucky enough to have McCartneys, use a premium pork sausage with a lot of garlic, paprika and spice in the mix) cut into bitesize chunks
450g chicken breast fillets cut into bitesize chunks
1 punnet chestnut mushrooms sliced
1 medium aubergine diced into 1/2" chunks
100g Kabanossi sausage sliced
1 tin chickpeas drained and washed
1 tin flageolet beans drained and washed
3-400g or so of tomato sauce (see recipe below)
1 tsp paprika
Oil for frying

Fry the mushrooms on high until caramelised and golden. Transfer to a large casserole. Do the same thing with the aubergine. Turn the heat down slightly to medium high heat. Fry the chorizo until golden and add to the casserole. Then do the same with the chicken. Put everything else (beans, kabanossi, tomato sauce) into the casserole, bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 45 mins.

My tomato sauce
2 x 500g cartons of passata (Tesco's 29p one is grand)
2-3 large onions
2-3 peppers (optional)
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 tsp sugar
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme or a few sprigs of fresh.

Put the peppers, onions & garlic in a food processor and whizz till finely chopped. Fry on a medium high heat till cooked through (30 mins?). Throw everything else in, bring to the boil, simmer on low for an hour or so, remove whole herbs, cool & freeze in batches (this makes 3 batches for me). If you make it without peppers it's stupidly cheap and tastes much better than any dirty oul thing out of a jar.

My magical powers...

Soooo.....my first blog post ever about a random little trip to Moira for corned beef ends up on national news and Mr McCartney gets a deal with Selfridges. Coincidence, or what? OK, coincidence. Been eating his corned beef sandwiches all week, moving on to his pork & walnut sausages tomorrow night. If they end up in some kind of sausage Oscars this weekend, start worrying, I have special powers.

• Moira butcher George McCartney crowned corned beef king

Good luck McCartneys of Moira - off to London for the Great Taste Awards final! |

Good luck guys!

Off to London for the Great Taste Awards Final! | McCartneys of Moira:

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Corned beef: Food of the gods?

We attended a great Doggy Fun Day organised by Beechgrove Stables near Banbridge on Saturday. Unfortunately we couldn't bring wee Sheba as she's just come into season and that's not the kind of Doggy Fun we had in mind.

Instead hooked up with the wonderful Jackie Redmond and her agility squad - we had a good chat about training sighthounds and we got to meet Lady, the elderly greyhound Jackie is fostering. Also caught up with the magnificent Mr. Jack Quaile who was letting his wee alsatian Diamond have a rake around the agility course (more of a demolition derby to be fair, but she had fun!).

On the way home we diverted to McCartney's butchers in Moira. I bought my usual 10lb of assorted sausages (I particularly recommend the Italian, Pork & Apple and Oak Smoked but to be fair it's impossible to go wrong here - everything is the best of the best). Having heard great reports about their famous corned beef I was keen to give it a go - corned beef is one of my very few "bleugh" foods so I was intrigued that McCartney's were making it. I've been going to McCartney's for 20 years and they are really creative, high quality butchers.

Got talking to the owner and he told me they are in the finals for the Great Taste Awards "the food Oscars" on Monday night for their corned beef! Getting it home I can see why. It's the most utterly moreish beef product I've eaten in a long time.

Where your usual experience of corned beef is that gruesome mush bound together by dripping (our school canteen used to add insult to injury by dipping it in batter and deep frying it!) this is luscious shreds of lightly seasoned, braised, pressed beef bound in the lightest imaginable jelly and thinly sliced. It is about as different from canned corned beef as a Porsche from a Lada. Buy it by the kilo (it's about £2 per 100g and worth every penny).

Production | McCartneys of Moira:

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