Old clothes

My pile of free magazines from the supermarket is growing steadily. I always mean to go through it and it almost never happens. But the other day, I managed to do just this and found a treasure trove of interesting vegetarian recipes and I have been working through them over the past couple of weeks.

I decided to start with this one, mushroom ropa vieja and any Swedes reading this might well know why. Ropa vieja is a dish made in the Spanish speaking regions and the name means old clothes. It also seems to be a take on using up leftovers in a creative way. Everyone has those. This particular version is supposedly Cuban. The name of the dish was one of the jokes used in the Swedish comedy "Sällskapsresan" ("Package Tour") and a great example of things that don't translate well. And as I always do, I made some tweaks.

Ingredients

2 dl brown shortgrain rice
500 g parboiled chanterelles
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 red bell peppers
18 cherry tomatoes
2 bay leaves
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp tomato purée
200 ml vegetable stock
1 tsp granulated sugar
400 g tin of white kidney beans with their liquid
salt and black pepper

Method

1. Put the oven on at 100 °C and place two large bowls in to heat up. 
2. Boil the rice.
   
3. Peel the onion and the garlic. Dice the onion.
4. Wash and slice the peppers. Wash and dice the tomatoes finely.
   
5. Heat up the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and press in the garlic. Fry gently on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes until they go soft.
6. Add the bay leaves, cumin, oregano and tomato purée, stir through and fry for a further 2 minutes.
7. Divide the onion mixture in two and remove half of it into a bowl.
8. Add the peppers, tomatoes, stock and sugar to the frying pan and let simmer gently for 15 minutes until the mixture thickens.
9. Add the mushrooms, cover and simmer for a further 5 minutes until everything is hot. Then transfe to one of the bowls in the oven.
10. Return the second half of the onion mixture to the frying pan and add the kidney beans along with their liquid.
11. Stir and simmer for 10 minutes until thickened and season to taste.
12. Serve the mushroom stew with the beans and the rice.

The original recipe calls for 300 g oyster mushrooms that are to be shredded and sprinkled with salt and left to drain for 15 minutes, then squeezed before being added to the stew. I had parboiled mushrooms, so I used them instead and quite a lot more than you'd end up with from the oyster mushrooms. So we ended up with a bit more of that stew, but it was so tasty, that I recommend my amounts.

In the original recipe, it should be black beans, however I wanted to try the white kidney beans and they worked very well. But if I make this again, I will try to use black beans.

I should also add that I used 2 bell peppers instead of one, because I had two that needed to be used up and also because I'd increased the mushrooms.

The original recipe also suggested using a ready cooked mixture of basmati and wild rice. I'm not a fan of ready cooked rice, nor basmati, but a mix of brown shortgrain rice and wild rice will proably be quite tasty and esthetically pleasing too.

Lundulph scoffed his portion quite quickly and we had a minor argument about who would get what for lunch the following day. The beans were quite amazing too and reminded me somewhat of a Bulgarian bean stew, so I would aim to double the amount next time I make this dish.