Vegetables Plakia with Pork Fillets

Having succeeded once with a plakia attempt, I've been wanting to try variations on it. I have several recipes and most of them sound appealing.

Today I couldn't make my mind up so decided to improvise. I ended up with something edible, but not entirely tasty. Very close to my gyuvetch failures.

It also took a lot longer than I expected, but then that's what happens with lots of vegetables to clean and chop.



On the plus side, I got to use some of the potatoes I planted this year that are now ready. Most of the other veg is from the Pick Your Own pace down the road and a couple are from the supermarket.



You can also see the elephant garlic that I grew as well. It was massive, but only one bulb, no cloves, despite planting it last September and having a decent cold Winter, which should make it form cloves.

Ingredients
600 g potatoes
4 pork fillets
pepper and savory
1 tbsp grapeseed oil

2 medium sized onions
3 tbsp grapeseed oil

500 g courgettes
250 g French beans
175 g okra
2 tbsp tomato purée
2 dl water
1 tbsp paprika
187 ml red wine (small bottle)
2 cloves garlic
Salt, pepper and savory to taste

3 beef tomatoes (about 650 g)
1 lemon
1 dl olive oil


Method

1. Wash and dice the potatoes and parboil for a few minutes.


2. In the mean time sprinkle coarsely ground pepper and savory on one side of the pork fillets, heat up a little oil in a pan and brown them off. Start with the spiced side down and sprinkle the upper side before turning them. Then place in a deep baking pan.


3. Peel and slice the onions, add a bit more oil to the pan from before and soften them for a few minutes, then transfer to the baking pan.


4. Dice the courgettes to about the same size as the potatoes, wash and cut the French beans and okra also to the same size pieces and add to the pan.


5. In a small bowl, stir together tomato purée, water and paprika, then pour over the vegetables, followed by the red wine. Season further with salt, pepper and savory and stir carefully to distribute the flavours.Slice the garlic and push the pieces in here and there among the vegetables.


6. Remove the woody bits from the tomatoes, then slice them as thinly as possible and lay them on top of the baking pan. Peel the lemon, slice and lay over the tomatoes.


7. Bake in the oven at 200 degrees C for about 45 minutes.

I'm wondering if I should have steamed the courgettes and beans as well as the potatoes. I had definitely too little salt and things were crunchy, but not too unpleasant.

Some of the recipes call for adding a bit of flour to thicken the sauce. I did end up with a lot of it and it might have been better if it was thicker.