I’ve adapted this to suit my pocket and tastes and reduced the quantities. Serves about 3 with rice or in wraps with cheese, lettuce, sour cream, more ketchup and mustard. It’s also a delight with tortilla chips or actual chips (i.e. fries).

Ingredients

• 500g minced beef. My Sainsbury’s dumps packets of this that have reached their sell-by date cheap on a Saturday afternoon, I buy & freeze.
• 1 beef stock cube (I use Knorr).
• 1 finely-chopped white onion.
• 2 minced cloves of garlic.
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 1 large can of Sainsbury’s Basics Lager. It’s 2% abv (steady now) and tastes like weak apple juice but it’s only about 50p a can and works brilliantly in this recipe.
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin.
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander.
• 1 teaspoon each of chilli flakes, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika.
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano.
• 1 tablespoon of pickled jalapeños, finely chopped – more to garnish.
• Large squirt of Heinz tomato ketchup – more to garnish.
• Large squirt of French’s American Mustard – more to garnish.
• Salt and pepper.

Method

Fry the onions gently in some vegetable oil, add the garlic and remove when they start to brown. Fry the minced beef with the tomato puree until browned all over. Crumble in the beef stock cube and then deglaze with the beer. Add all of the other ingredients, stir, topping up with hot water if needed. This is a wet chili. Leave to simmer for at least an hour, preferably longer, adding water if it looks like it’s getting too dry. Serve with tortilla chips, wraps, fries, rice, cheese, sour cream, whatever. It is totally amazing.

This is a simplified version of a recipe in Mexican Food by Wahaca-founder Thomasina Miers. Feeds 4.

• 4 large, plain flour tortilla wraps
• 200g chorizo – whole not sliced
• 1 ball mozzarella cheese, torn into chunks
• 4 large handfuls of grated cheddar cheese
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 500g potato
• fresh thyme
• olive oil, salt, pepper

Peel and cut the potato into 1cm cubes. Fry until soft, then set aside. In the same pan, fry the onion until soft, then add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Cut the chorizo into chunks, put the potato back in with the thyme and fry for several minutes until everything combined and the potatoes have taken on a glorious reddish hue.

Spread a quarter of the mix on half a wrap, and add the cheese. Fold it over and squish down flat so you have a semi-circle. Brush with olive oil and cook on a hot griddle for a minute or two, flipping over and cooking both sides until the cheese melts. They will have pleasing scorch lines on them from the griddle and be slightly crisp and crunchy. Cut the half moon in to 3 or 4 wedges and serve – we had them with salsa, slaw and guacamole.

We also made a pescatarian version with prawns, smoked paprika and a dollop of pibil chilli sauce. Plenty of scope for veggie alternatives too – I’d like to try making them with squeaky cheese (aka halloumi).

No photos as they didn’t hang around long enough to snap. Delicious, quick & easy!

• 800g beef brisket
• 2 red peppers
• 1 red onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• half tsp smoked paprika
• 2 fresh red chillis
• 1 beef stock cube or pot
• 1 can of cooking beer
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tbsp French’s American mustard
• fresh coriander leaves
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar

Put the oven on at 200 C. Cut deep slices into the brisket. Rub the spices with salt & pepper into the meat. In a casserole fry the chopped onion until translucent, then add the garlic and sliced peppers and thinly sliced red chillis. Cook for a bit longer on a low heat, then whack the heat up and fry the brisket. Then add the tinned tomatoes, beer, beef stock, ketchup, tomato puree, mustard and bring to the boil. If needed, top up with water. Put a lid on, turn the over down low (I went down to 100C) and leave in there for 3 or 4 hours.

Then remove the meat, put the sauce on the stove and simmer vigorously to thicken, adding the vinegar and chopped coriander. Pull the beef apart with a couple of forks, and re-immerse in the liquid.

Serve in wraps, with rice, grated cheese and sour cream. Delicious!

Whilst cooking this, I also invented Tequila Rice. I can confirm that tequila does not add enough flavour to rice to warrant flambé-ing half your hair off.

Makes 3 burritos.

Ingredients:

• 1 huge potato (or 3 small ones)
• 1 medium or small onion
• some fresh chillis
• half a red pepper, diced
• 3 eggs
• 3 sausages of choice
• 5 rashers of bacon
• salt, pepper
• olive oil
• smoked paprika
• chilli sauces of choice
• 200g grated cheddar cheese
• 3 tortillas / wraps

Put the grill on, grill the sausages and bacon. Remove the bacon when crispy.

Peel and grate the potato and onion – I used a food processor and picked the gratings out by hand to leave the juice out. Fry the potato and onion in a big pan. If it sticks and goes brown in places, so much the better. Add the diced red pepper, fresh chilli, salt, pepper, some smoked paprika. After about 10 minutes, chop the crispy bacon into chunks and add to the pan, stir. Crack in 3 eggs and mix, stirring until the egg is cooked. Then add the cheese and stir until melted.

Now get your 3 tortillas and place a cooked sausage in the middle of each. Surround the sausage with the mixture from the pan, and add your chilli sauce of choice at this point (we like the Wahaca ones). Fold your burrito and quickly grill them in the same tray you cooked the bacon and sausage in.

I’d have taken a better photo, but they didn’t hang around long enough. Not quite as epic as Epic Meal Time’s, but a whole lot quicker and easier. And so, so tasty. We could all have eaten another one…

• Half a white cabbage
• 5 carrots
• 4 spring onions
• 6 radishes
• half a red onion
• 3 small apples
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 large fresh green chilli, seeded
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp plain low fat yogurt
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• salt & pepper

Shred the veg in a food processor. Mix the wet ingredients in a jar, shake and combine with the veg. Treat with caution. But you’ll be back for more.

• 500g brisket
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika – must be smoked, this is a key ingredient
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• veg stock powder
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• small amount of chopped fresh coriander

Put the oven on – about 150 degrees C, or lower perhaps.

Score lines in the brisket. Season with salt & pepper and rub in the cinnamon, cumin, paprika and oregano. Brown the meat in a slug of olive oil a hot casserole on the hob. While it’s searing, in a small saucepan boil the chopped red pepper, bay leaf, tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce and stock made up with some boiling water – you need enough liquid to cover the meat.

Then add the onion to the meat and cook for about 5 minutes on the hob until the onions are translucent. Add the tomato sauce from your other pan to the meat, and put the casserole in that low oven – or on a low heat on the hob if you like. I cooked mine in the oven at 150 C for about 2 hours, then I cooked it for another half an hour on the hob with the lid off to thicken it up a bit. You could probably cook it for longer at a lower heat and get even better results.

When the meat is ready, pull it apart with a pair of forks. It should just fall apart. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and a small amount of red wine vinegar to taste. Remove the bay leaf. Add chopped fresh coriander and serve on warm tortilla wraps with grated cheese, lettuce, rice &c.

The orginal recipe uses fresh red chillis, but I find the spices, especially the smoked paprika, give it enough kick. My middle son loves heat, so we let him add Barefoot Kitchen Habanero sauce to taste – you won’t need much!

This is adapted from ‘The great Mexican breakfast’ in Thomasina Miers’ Mexican Food Made Simple – she’s the genius behind Wahaca, the Mexican restaurant chain. It’s a bit like Huevos Rancheros, but we ate these slobbing out in bed one Sunday morning, rather than on a hard-working ranch – hence the name. It’s probably also the perfect hangover cure – though I wouldn’t know about that of course.

Serves 2.

• 400g tin of tomatoes
• 1 small onion
• butter and/or oil for frying
• some fresh chilli, chopped – I used some Ring of Fire chillis – zing!
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• salt and pepper
• tsp brown sugar
• Worcestershire sauce
• grated cheese of choice
• 2 tortillas / flatbreads
• 2 eggs

In a pan, fry the onion and chilli in a little butter until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and fry briefly. Add the chopped tin of tomatoes, salt and pepper, sugar, a generous slug of Worcestershire sauce. Simmer over a low heat until the sauce thickens – maybe 20 minutes or so.

Warm the flat-breads or tortilla wraps on a dry frying pan or griddle while you fry the eggs. Put a wrap on each plate, smother in sauce, pop an egg on each one and add grated cheese. Eat in bed.

We made veggie ones and steak ones. Both use the sneaky salsa (below) though this time we left out the ketchup and used lime juice instead of lemon.

Veggie burrito filling:
Get a carton of black beans from Sainsbury’s. Fry an onion, garlic and finely chopped fresh red chilli until the onion is translucent. Add the beans with the juice. Simmer for 20 mins. I can’t begin to explain how tasty these simple ingredients are – this is culinary alchemy of which Frank Bath would be proud (Georgina knows what this means even if no-one else does!)

Carnivore burrito filling:
Fry a chopped onion. Thinly slice steak, garlic, fresh chilli and chuck them in, fry until brown. Add a dash of Worcester sauce, Tabasco sauce and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Assemblage
Warm some soft tortilla wraps in a dry pan. Add sliced lettuce, your filling of choice, grated cheese, sneaky salsa, sour cream, rice, whatever you fancy. Enjoy. We did.