Illustrated recipe: Tomato and bean casserole
one pot meal for early autumn (or a cold and wet summer day)
I had planned for the July and August illustrated recipes to be summery ones. But the weather has conspired against me and I really can’t be writing or drawing a piece about lovely cooling salads today. Instead, I’m bringing forward one of the autumn recipes, because this is what I want to be eating right now.
This is not one of the recipes the whole family love. They used to, when the kids were little. One of them will eat this if it doesn’t have beans or peppers or mushrooms in. The other won’t because there are far too many vegetables she doesn’t like. And I’m not sure why Chris doesn’t eat this one much. But this is one of my top favourite meals that I would happily eat a lot (not every day it turns out – because no-one else is into it I end up having to make it last for days or freeze some of it, but then I never ever remember that it’s in the freezer until it’s time to defrost it and by then it’s too late). I especially love how full it is of different vegetables (see 30 days of plants).
If you are making it last for days too, whether just for you or not, there are things you can do to make it feel different or new.
Serve it on toast as a fancy beans on toast.
Add pasta to turn it into a minestrone.
Add mashed potato (or a mix of mashed sweet potato and white potato) on top to make into a vegetarian shepherd’s/cottage pie.
Reduce it down or just take out some of the vegetables and put them in pastry to make little vegetable pasties.
Whizz it up to create a hidden vegetable pasta sauce (shhh… that’s actually a way I’ve frequently gotten my family to eat this!).
Throw in some different spices to make it into a chilli or a curry and serve with rice or tortillas/naan bread.
Here’s where the paywall would be if this wasn’t Freebie July…
Here’s your downloadable printable PDF version. This is an A4 version. If you need a Letter version, too, please let me know.
And a text version of the recipe…
1 aubergine
1 large courgette
4 cloves garlic
1 large onion
1 red chilli pepper (optional)
2–4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 medium carrots
3 sticks celery
5 new potatoes
125g fine green beans
4–5 chestnut mushrooms
6 fresh medium tomatoes (or a tin of peeled plum tomatoes, squeezed by hand)
1 can of beans (I prefer cannellini or borlotti, but most beans would work including chick peas, haricot beans or even butter beans, though they will break apart a lot more than the others)
1 litre vegetable stock (we tend to use Kallo organic but if you have a preference, or even better make your own, then use that)
3 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp paprika (if you like a kick, use spicy paprika, otherwise the plainer sweet kind)
Herbs to flavour (if you have fresh herbs, all the better – a good few handfuls of basil, tarragon and/or parsley will go down a treat; otherwise 2-3 tsp of dried herbs will be fine)
leafy greens of some kind (e.g. spinach, rocket, kale)
Start by dicing the aubergine and courgette and salting it in a colander.
Finely dice the garlic, onion and chilli pepper and slowly sauté them in the olive oil, in a large casserole dish or other big pan, for 5-10 minutes on a low heat.
One by one, dice the carrots, celery and potatoes, adding them to your pan and stirring as you go.
Quarter the green beans and chestnut tomatoes and add to the pan and stir.
Drain the beans and add to the pan, then add the vegetable stock and tomato purée.
Add the paprika and herbs and simmer on a low heat for at least 30 minutes (and up to, or even over, and hour).
Depending on which leafy greens you are using, add them between 5 and 20 minutes before you’re planning to serve the dinner (kale being the longest).
Serve on its own in bowls, or with some nice crusty bread to dip in (and the spread of your choice).
I hope you enjoyed this taster of what’s to come if you take out a paid subscription.