I’ve often had a variation of this stew on the menu at the bistro; it’s not something you see round these parts very often, and it balances out the menu so not every dish features potato. Originally it appeared as a ‘cataplana’ and didn’t sell at all well. It’s a beautiful looking dish and at the time was served with a great hunk of pristine white cod sat on top, and with a smattering of spinach leaves mixed in with the reds and browns of the stew.
Most people don’t like to ask if they don’t recognise something on a menu; embarrassment, pride, a room full of foodies listening in on the conversation with the waitress…I get that, and likewise I certainly wouldn’t want my customers to feel intimidated. There’s no point writing a menu in a language only other chefs will understand, unless of course, that is the point? Either way it’s not going to get the dish sold, and that, at the end of the day, is the name of the game.
So I changed the wording to ‘stew’, not a word I like particularly and not entirely accurate either, but it makes it clear what to expect, and sure enough it went on to earn its spot in our top 5 best sellers and has been on the menu one way or another ever since.
Ingredients
(serves 6)
4 x red peppers
500ml/g tomato passata
2 x small onions, thickly sliced
6 x fat cloves of garlic, thinly sliced width-ways
½ x standard 250g chorizo, sliced
Pinch of saffron threads (optional)
75ml medium sherry
2 x teaspoons smoked paprika
500ml chicken stock (or vegetable)
3 x 400g tins butter beans, drained.
3 x small packets of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
Preheat the oven to 200⁰C.
Halve the peppers vertically through the stalk. Remove the stalk, seeds, and pith. Massage a little olive oil onto the skin side of each pepper and place cut face down on a baking tray, season generously with salt and pepper.
Roast them in the oven, top shelf, for 20 – 30mins until the skins are blackened and wrinkled.
As soon as you take the peppers out of the oven, have a freezer bag at the ready to scrape the peppers into, tying a knot in the bag to create a steam trap. A Pyrex bowl with a bit of cling film would work equally well.
Leave the peppers until they are cool enough to handle, then remove them from the bag, but don’t throw away the accumulated juices.
Set half the peppers to one side and make a puree with the other half in a food processor.
Start the stew by frying off the chorizo in a dry pan over a medium heat until it starts to colour. Remove with a slotted spoon reserving the oil left behind.
Fry the sliced garlic in the chorizo oil briefly until just starting to brown, then whip them out and set to one side with the chorizo.
Increase the heat and stir-fry the onion in the same oil. Once the onion starts to brown, add back in the chorizo and garlic, then add the sherry, and turn the heat down again. Add to this the pepper puree, smoked paprika, passata, saffron and stock and bring up to a simmer.
Now add the butter beans and heat through for 10 mins.
Tear the remaining peppers into strips and add to the stew, along with the reserved juices. Taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary. Add the parsley just before serving.