Vegetarian Gyuvetch

Yesterday we were at a party with lots of people and several of the guests, including me, brought some dishes. Since no one else was catering for the vegetarians, I thought the following might be nice. It is called gyuvetch, because that's the name of the dish it is cooked in, a large terracotta pot. Mine takes about 5 litres, so the amounts below really filled it up. If you remember, I cooked our Christmas bird in it, but this is it's true use. Generally there should be pieces of meat in there as well, but going through my Bulgarian cookbook, pretty much any ingredients can be used. One other exciting thing was that I tried out the slow cooking facility on my cooker, so I cooked this overnight, in total of around 12 h, which I believe makes a huge difference.

Ingredients

1.5 dl vegetable oil
5 medium sized onions
4 medium sized carrots
4 large Jerusalem artichokes
5 large potatoes
2 tbsp paprika
3 - 4 dl water
2 large aubergines
3 large courgettes
200 g okra
4 small peppers
1 red chili
1 x 400 g can whole button mushrooms
100 g peas
10 g fresh thyme
15 g fresh mint
15 g fresh dill
salt, black pepper
2 x 400 g cans of whole tomatoes

Method

1. Peel and clean the onions, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. Dice the onions coarsely, slice the carrots, cut up the Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes in bitesize chunks.
2. Wash and clean the aubergines, courgettes, okra, peppers and chili. Remove the "tails" of the okra, i. e. where they held onto the plant. Cut up in bitesize chunks, apart from the chili, which I cut into as small pieces as I could.
   
3. Heat up the oil on medium high heat and fry onions, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes, stirring regularly, for about 5 - 10 minutes. The vegetables should release some liquid.
   
4. Add the paprika and stir in quickly so the vegetables get covered, then add the water and leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.
5. Place the other vegetables into the gyuvetch, add the mushrooms, peas, herbs, salt and pepper, except the tomatoes. Try to mix them up a bit.
   
6. Transfer over the fried vegetables and mix in as well.
7. Place in the oven on the slow cook setting (gas mark S, or 110 degrees C) and leave to cook overnight. Alternatively, cook at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) until the potatoes and the other vegetables have gone soft, about 45 minutes I should think.
8. Take out only the tomatoes from the can, not the juice, and blend. Add to the gyuvetch and stir in, then put back in the oven for another hour or so on the slow cooking or 10 minutes on the faster cooking variant.

Putting the chili in made it spicier than I anticipated, but it was very nice. Also I forgot to put in parsley, but that didn't matter too much.