We love: Nigel Slaters vegetable patch stew

Posted:23 October 2012

One of our favourite cooks and foodie author is Nigel Slater, he of The Kitchen Diaries, Tender, Real Fast Cooking and his wonderful biography Toast: The Story of a Boys Hunger.  This recipe is an easy fail-safe supper or lunch dish – and ideal for using up any late summer gluts of tomatoes, courgettes, peppers and aubergine.

Nigel Slaters vegetable patch stew

Serves 4, and preparation and cooking time is approx.1 hour.

The trick here is to avoid the temptation to cook this like a stew with all the ingredients lumped in together. It takes longer to cook them separately, but the individual attention allows each ingredient to keep its own character. You end up with layers of flavour rather than a casserole.

Ingredients:

Olive oil

Large aubergine, halved and thinly sliced

3 halved and sliced courgettes

4 (orange and red) peppers

2 onions, peeled and roughly sliced

2 garlic peeled and crushed

Marjoram, parsley and thyme

3 medium, quartered tomatoes

12 or so cherry tomatoes

500ml jar or pack tomato passata or crushed tomatoes

3 bay leaves

Basil leaves

Method:

1. Heat a shallow layer of olive oil in a large, low sided pan and brown the aubergine on both sides. Remove from pan and set aside.
2. Fry each of the other vegetables separately in the order above, adding more oil as necessary, until each is pale gold. Remove as each one is ready and set aside.
3. When you reach the onions, cook in the same way along with the garlic but when cooked, don’t remove from the pan. Add the herbs, along with the tomatoes and allow to cook a little before transferring the cooked peppers back into pan.
4. Add the passata and leave to simmer, with the lid on. When the sauce is reduced a little transfer the aubergine and courgettes back in to the pan along with the bay leaves and season.
5. Taste – leave to simmer for a few more minutes. Stir gently with a handful of torn basil leaves and serve.