Winter Peasant Stew with Left Overs

 

Hey everyone!

I wanted to do a really delicious warming stew which could take advantage of any of your leftover veg, some stock you have in the cupboard and in this case, I used what I had left from another meal puff pastry to add some extra dumplings to the dish.

Ingredients 

  • Vegan Puff Pastry

  • Almond Milk

  • Rosemary

  • Thyme

  • Sage

  • Vegan Sausage (Lind McCartney)

  • Tomato Puree

  • Leeks

  • Celery

  • Potatoes

  • Peas

  • Shallots

  • Sweet Potatoes

  • Yams

  • Carrots

  • Tomatoes

  • Cornflour

  • Seasoning

  • Stock

So I grabbed some of the ingredients I had leftover and thought let’s just throw it all in because the stew is all about using what you have. I used some offcuts of some puff pastry that I used in a previous dish and cut them up into squares, I moved them into like roses kinda and dripped almond milk over them for browning. I added some sausages to the same dish and threw it in the oven for 20 minutes on 200 c.

Next, it’s a case of cooking out all the vegetables other than the potatoes and sweet potatoes, which you’re gonna dice and boil in a separate pan till they begin to soften. It takes about 15 minutes to get them ready, but let’s focus on the other veg. You want to fry them in vegetable oil for about the same, 15 minutes. Add some frozen peas I had leftover and continue to combine. I wanted to use up some stock I had so I threw in an oxo cube with some I had from again, a leftover meal. You can use prebought veg stock or you can use your own. Add to the dish and bring to the boil.

Once the stock starts to bubble then we can add the sausage, the potatoes and we can combine. I added some tomato puree, I had about half a tube and I cooked that out with the rest of the ingredients. I added the thyme and rosemary to the dish now, I wanted to keep them a bit less cooked out as wanted them to still be present in the final serving as they tend to disintegrate. We’ve cooked this out for about 40 minutes at this point so the veg is really started to get to the result we want.

I noticed that the mixture wasn’t bringing a thickness I wanted so I began to mix some cornflour with some almond milk in a cup, separate to the meal and then I began to spoon this to the mixture step by step. It started to come to more about how I had envisaged the dish, basically less brothy and more of a stew sauce.

Finally, let simmer until the sauce is the consistency you want, for me, it took about 55 minutes in total and the vegetables melted in the mouth. It was absolutely perfect for a cold day and I’m super happy with it. I added some of those puff pastry dumplings to the final serving and shared it with my fam.

What’s your favourite meal to have in the cold months? Let me know in the comments below.

 
Joseph Harwoodwinter