Vegetable Stew

The vegetable stew is something I learned from my mom. This is a dish one makes in Serbia, Croatia, and Turkey, too. The prerequisite for this dish is fresh vegetables. The three main ingredients are onions, peppers and tomato. This time however, I am adding the eggplant and leak, which makes my stew even tastier.

Ingredients:

1 medium size onion finely chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 leak chopped

1 medium-size eggplant cubed

4 sweet Italian (green) peppers chopped

3 ripe tomatos chopped (with seeds)

1/2 tsp. herbs de provence

2 basil leaves

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

1/4 cup olive oil

Wash and chop all the vegetables.

1. Preheat olive oil in a medium soup pot over  medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic and leak, hermes de provence. basil leafs and pepper flakes. When the spices are added right away, the flavors infuse better. Cook for about 5 min, until translucent.

2. Add eggplant and cook it for 10 min, until it     browns and softens. It must get the golden color, otherwise it will taste bitter. When cubed, eggplant will have tendency to stick to your pot. If needed, add some extra olive oil. It is often said that eggplant  absorbs oil fairly quickly. Stir once or twice, but let it brown.

3. Add peppers and stir it once, so it is well coated and infused with the already existing flavors.
Add 1/2 cup water and lower the heat to medium. Let it simmer. After you stirred it, you will see that the bottom of the pot is no longer browned from the eggplant. This gives it a wonderful flavor. Add more water until the peppers soften, but are not overcooked. Add salt and pepper and take the basil leaves out.

Now it is time for tomatoes. Tomatoes will release a lot of water, which means that once you added tomatoes, you don't need to keep adding water any longer. Continue to cook the stew for another 10 min. Turn the heat off. Taste it, and add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to your liking. I end up adding more salt, but you be the judge of that.

Enjoy!

Alternative:
If you wish to give some protein to this dish, you may add an egg! This is very traditional way of making it in Serbia and Croatia. To 1 1/2 cups of the stew add one lightly beaten egg and cook until the egg is entirely incorporated into the stew (about 3-5 min.)

You may also choose to serve the stew over rice.


Enjoy!