Cosy Cooking: Jackfruit and Potato Stew
Song Suggestions:
Music - Leela James
When We Dance - Sting
Ingredients:
1 onion
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp olive oil
2 carrots
1 stick of celery
2 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mild chilli powder
1 tin shredded jackfruit
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 18.7cl bottle red wine (the really small £2 ones in supermarkets)
350g baby/new potatoes
1 veg stock cube dissolved in 1.2L water (if you don’t have a lid for your pan,
2 tbsp cornflour
2 bay leaves
10-15 sprigs of fresh thyme
Recipe:
Prepare your veg: dice the onion, mince the garlic, halve the potatoes (quarter any slightly big ones), dice the carrot and the celery.
In a pan, heat some olive oil and add the onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Sweat until soft.
Add the jackfruit and spices (paprika, cinnamon, chilli powder/flakes). Mix until well combined and cook for a few minutes, ensuring not to burn anything.
Pour in the wine and burn off the alcohol. Reduce by 3/4s.
Add in the chopped tomatoes, veg stock, potatoes, bay leaves and thyme. Simmer for about 30/40 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and some of the liquid has evaporated.
In a small bowl, make the cornflour slurry. Dissolve the cornflour in 4 tbsp cold water using a fork/small whisk. Add to the stew and stir the pot well. The sauce should thicken within a few minutes.
Serve hot with fresh thyme and crusty, buttered bread!
Top Tips:
I keep the skin on my veg for this recipe, just give it all a good scrub under cold water with a soapless sponge to get rid of any dirt before adding them in.
If you don’t have any fresh thyme, use 2 tbsp dried thyme/Italian herbs in with the spice mix, in step 3.
The red wine you cook with should be good enough to enjoy drinking it by itself. Cook with the best quality ingredients you can afford (even if that means, like me, you buy your wine from Aldi. #uni).
If you want your sauce any thicker, add another cornflour slurry with 1tbsp cornflour/2tbsp cold water.
A Bite Out of Life
The year Covid hit was tough - I’ve always lived away from my grandparents but I found people really overlooked how bad the pandemic was for the elderly… That Christmas, I moved out to Portugal to be with my grandparents and care for them. I ended up staying a lot longer than planned but it was a blessing in disguise. We celebrated Christmas, two birthdays, Mother’s Day, Easter and so many other celebrations that I never had the chance to celebrate with them before. These photos are from a Mother’s Day breakfast I put on for my Grandma - she had never had a pastry croissant before (in Portugal, their croissants are made from brioche/bread dough, not pastry) so I popped to their local Lidl and put on this big spread that morning. She adored them, so we then kept it as a monthly Sunday morning tradition for us. We spent the morning listening to stories my grandparents told about raising my Mum and it was a morning I’ll never forget! Memories to cherish forever, always from around the table.
