Stewpendous

Your brain needs sensorial stimulation to function,

While your lungs require oxygen to blow,

Your hair and your nails need sunlight to lengthen,

But without stew your heart would not go.

Now the heart is the most important of organs,

It’s capacity for love is unbound,

It knows when someone else is important,

Before your brain has the chance to find out.

It’s job is full time, it never clocks off,

Neither rain, nor shine, can stop it,

When your lungs pack it in and your brain becomes dim,

Your heart only says “oh come off it”!

So think for a moment, when lighting a fag,

Or sinking a pint or fifteen,

That thing that’s a pumpin’, and keeping you jumpin’,

Isn’t just some useless old spleen.

Look after yourself, it’s good for your health,

Eat carrots, get up early, see the dew.

But more important than this, and it’s the size of your fist,

It’s your heart, and it runs best on Stew.

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

1 medium sized potato, peeled and chopped

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 parsnips, peeled and chopped

2 leeks, roughly chopped
8 mushrooms, quartered

1 white onion, roughly chopped

1 can kidney beans in water, drained

1 can adzuki beans in water, drained

1 can cherry tomatoes in sauce

300g pearl barley, soaked for 10 minutes in warm water to soften

1.5 litres of vegetable stock

1 large glass of red wine, cabernet sauvignon will do nicely

½ grated nutmeg

2 bay leaves

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 bouquet garni

6 tablespoons Worcester Sauce (ditch it if you want to go veggy)

Butter

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

Method:

1. In a large saucepan melt the oil and butter together over a medium/high heat and chuck in the leeks, onion and garlic. Sweat for a couple of minutes before throwing in the carrots, mushrooms, parsnips, sweet and regular potatoes, tossing them in the oil and butter and frying them for a few more minutes.

2. Add the stock to the pan, it should just cover the vegetables. Simmer for 20 minutes over a medium heat so the veggies soften up a little. Then add the pearl barley, bouquet garni, bay leaves, nutmeg and can of cherry tomatoes and stir thoroughly.

3. Simmer for another 20 minutes over a low to medium heat, the barley will absorb a lot of the stock and the stew will thicken up nicely. In the latter 10 minutes sling in the kidney and adzuki beans along with the red wine and Worcester Sauce, stir it in, smell the goodness and season it how you like it. 

4. Let it cool for another 10 minutes before serving with a heavily buttered multi-seed loaf. Crusty if needs be, and needs must.