Chili Con Carne Corn Bread Pie

1. As tempting as it is to pour a lot of batter onto the filling, don't make it much thicker than 1.5 cm / 1/2" because otherwise you will need to bake it until the top is very brown before the centre of the corn bread is cooked.

Because of this, it is better to make this pie in a dish so it is flatter rather than deep. The individual pie dishes I used are rectangle in shape, 15cm x 12cm (6" x 5") and 4 cm/ 1.4" deep.

2. You will probably have some batter left over - about 1/4 to 1/3 of it. It is difficult to make the exact amount required, especially because pie dishes differ in shape and size. If you have any batter left over, spoon it into greased ramekins or muffin tin trays and bake it at the same time as the pie. A standard muffin size corn bread will take about 15 to 20 minutes to bake.

3. Polenta is not really an ingredient, it is a porridge type dish made from cornmeal. It's the Italian equivalent of mashed potatoes! But in Australia, cornmeal - fine yellow grains - is sold as "polenta", which is confusing. In most of the rest of the world, it is sold as cornmeal.

4.The nutrition takes into account that approximately 1/4 of the corn bread batter is leftover and not used for the pie.