Tagine végétarienne aux épinards et légumineuses

It has been a while since I last posted a recipe here. You know how things go with moving and the holidays, time flies by. I also consciously didn’t set myself the goal to work in between all the madness. But now that we are back and most things have found their place in this house, it’s time to start sharing recipes with you. This time an easy, healthy and warming vegetarian spinach and legumes winter stew.

spinach legumes winter stew

This stew is basically made from ingredients that you don’t have to get fresh from the (super)market. I find that typical of winter food, and I therefore like to use stored veggies during this time of year whenever I can. As far as I understand, the nutritional value isn’t lost, so there is no harm of using stored veggies amongst other things. It’s pretty natural and it decreases your footprint on this world. And for me the biggest plus is, that I can just refrain from going to shops for a long period of time this way. Although we now basically live two steps away from a grocery store, I still try to keep up the lifestyle we had in the old house, where we try to only visit a grocery store once every week at max. Ideally once every two weeks, with a visit to the village market in between.

Anyway back to the -no grocery shopping- stew. Let’s start with the ingredient list.

VEGETARIAN SPINACH AND LEGUMES WINTER STEW

spinach legumes stew by pakovska

Ingredients
  • 400gr frozen spinach
  • 2 cups dried assorted legumes (you can also make your own mix with lentils, small beans and grains)
  • 5 onions (sliced in rings)
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 small tin tomato paste
  • 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika powder
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seed (ground)
  • 1 tsp penja, smoked pepper (ground)
  • 4 tbsp sunflower oil
  • salt to taste
    optional for serving: a cup thick yoghurt and some bread
Preparation

Although this dish is very easy to prepare, you might find it annoying that it needs some pre-preparation early in the morning to be ready for the night. You need to do two things in the morning: 1. get the spinach out of the freezer and let it defrost on your kitchen counter (to remove the excess water). 2. you need to soak the dried legumes in some handwarm water during the day.

C’est tout. You can go on do your daily tasks and you can start again 1h-1,5h before your dinner. Now first heat up the oil in a big soup pan. Add the sliced onions and let them fry for a minute or two. When glazy, add the smoked paprika powder, fenugreek, garlic and penja. Stir again and add the tomato paste. Mix everything up and quickly add a few glasses of water. Let it heat up again. Drain the legumes and place them into the pan. Let everything simmer on a low fire for at least 45 minutes. Don’t forget to look once in a while to see if the dish is still moist enough. If all water has been soaked up by the legumes, add an extra glass of water. After 45 minutes you can add the apple cider vinegar and let it simmer again for 20 minutes. With adding the apple cider vinegar, you will smell how the aroma of the dish changes.
Taste the dish and add some salt to taste. When you are ready for serving up dinner, place the drained spinach in the middle of the pan. Let it warm up quickly on the stove. When warmed up, serve it on a plate with a spoon of thick yoghurt on top of the spinach. Don’t forget the slices of bread to dip into the stew.

For me this is an ideal nourishing dinner in winter. We ate this dish two days in a row, the first day I served it up like it’s described above. The second day I served the remains up with Tarly. I could have used buckwheat as well as I did with this curry.