Vegetable stew

Both Lundulph and I are working such long hours lately, quick dishes are what we aim for, often on week-ends as well, particularly when we get a chance for some decent gardening, like yesterday. This is something my Mum has been recommending for ages as well.

What I did was buy some greens more or less at random in the hope to find a suitable recipe in my Bulgarian National Cookery book. The closest thing was "пролетна яхния" which can be translated to "Spring stew". Only a couple of the ingredients were amongst the ones I'd bought.

The stew ended up ridiculously sweet, thanks to the 2 giant carrots I put in and I suspect the red peppers contributed as well. So I've changed the below list of ingredients in the hope that it won't end up too sweet. So fewer carrots and green instead of red peppers.

On the plus side, we got to try out our potatoes - it seems in my previous attempt at growing potatoes, I missed out quite a lot of them and so this year they sprouted happily and are now ready for harvesting.

Ingredients

6 shallots
3 cloves garlic
2 medium carrots
5 tbsp grape seed oil
3 tbsp tomato puree
4 tbsp paprika
1 kg baby potatoes
5 dl hot water
250 g baby sweetcorn
200 g green beans
2 green peppers
200 g okra
3 tbsp fresh chopped basil
3 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and trim shallots, garlic and carrots. Wash and scrub the potatoes.
2. Dice the shallots and garlic. Cut the carrots and potatoes in bite sized chunks. Boil the water in the mean time.
3. Heat the oil in a deep sauce pan and fry shallots, garlic and carrots for a few minutes until they go soft.
4. Add the tomato puree and the paprika, stirring vigorously for about 1 minute, then add the water and stir, in case anything is stuck to the bottom of the pan.
5. Add the potatoes, cover and reduce the heat to low. Leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes
6. Wash and trim the baby sweetcorn, beans, peppers and okra. Cut them in bite sized chunks.
7. After the time is up, add baby sweetcorn, beans and peppers, stir in well and cover and leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.
8. Add the okra, stir in, cover and simmer for 5 further minutes.
9. Remove from the hob and add basil, parsley, salt and pepper.

This is fine as it is on it's own, but Lundulph generally likes some meat, so I grilled some Toulouse sausages. He said it worked quite well. And it was even better the second round when we added a bit more salt. The potatoes went quite mushy and helped thicken the stew.

As usual, Lundulph suggested adding some chili. In fact, he suggests that "seasoning" should mean salt, pepper and chili, not just salt and pepper.