Karen Wright: Cooking up a bonfire night meal that will tantalise your tastebuds

I think cooking and baking is very therapeutic and can be a relaxing hobby with delicious results.

When I say from scratch, I include some store cupboard basics in many of my recipes and the one I am sharing today uses mostly tins!

Before I get to the recipe, I want to say that even though we are so restricted now we can all try to make the time count. We have a tiny back garden but we try to make the most of it and this week we lit our garden stove at dusk and had our evening meal outside.

My bonfire tea is a vegan bean chilli served with jacket potatoes and a slab of parkin. This is how I made the chilli; the secret ingredient is cocoa!

Chop a large onion and soften it in a large pan in a splash of oil. Add a chopped red pepper and a couple of squashed fat cloves of garlic.

Cook for a couple of minutes taking care not to let the garlic burn. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of baked beans and a tin of mixed beans and a good squeeze of tomato puree.

Bubble the contents up and then add a tbs of smoked paprika, a tsp chilli flakes, a tsp cinnamon and a tbs of cocoa. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar and some Henderson’s relish and then salt and pepper.

This vegan chilli is so adaptable, and you can add more vegetables for example celery and mushrooms and play with the spices and extras depending on what you have in the cupboard and your taste buds.

Of course, if you love cheese and are not vegan loads of grated cheese on the top is fantastic too.

People often ask me about the cocoa and cinnamon.

The cinnamon was recommended to me years ago by a friend and cocoa seems to darken and thicken the sauce and tastes amazing.