Oooh, this was fabulous! I have blog reader and friend Zelda from Dinner With Zelda Manners to thank for this wonderful recipe. She generously spent time creating a vegetarian version of the Johnny Cash chilli for the Columbo cookbook, and it’s absolutely delicious. I know I have lots of vegetarian readers, and do hope they will try this corker of a chilli recipe – it is sooooo tasty.

I liked Zelda’s note on the version she wrote up for the Columbo cookbook that it’s a good idea to gather all your ingredients together before you start…

It was at this point I panicked slightly about whether I had any tinned tomatoes, but there were some in my kitchen-cupboard-overflow-sideboard, phew.  

I was a vegetarian for 12 years, but that was in the olden days (the late 80s / early 90s) and I was amazed when I saw the range of choice these days in the non-meat aisle. Not knowing which veggie burgers to go for, I went for a brand I knew and trusted – Linda McCartney.

These worked really well as they held their shape when chopped into chunks. The meat version of Johnny’s chilli has chunks of sirloin or venison mixed through the mince and I loved the way Helen made a similar mix with veggie mince and chunks of burger.

This chilli rocks – just like Johnny!  It seems like a very BRITISH thing to have chilli with a baked potato and cheese – is it?  It was bloody lovely!  Double thumbs up from me, and loads portioned up in the freezer for a later date.  Goodie!

Zip over to Zelda’s place for the recipe by clicking on this link…

Thank you for putting in all that work to develop this recipe, Zelda, there will be a prezzie coming to you soon in the post…

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