This is my signature dish. Whenever the Mrs has friends around this is what I prepare. Everyone loves it. Where do we start? With two large onions which are finely chopped and sweated with olive oil in a large pan.
When they are fully softened you add six peppers ( roughkly chopped), two small chillies and 12-15 large tomatoes, blanched so the skin is removed. Then just leave that all on a slow heat.
You then take 2lb each of pork (diced), bacon ( use cooking bacon and dice although here I used one packet of breakfast bacon as well) and chorizo ( again diced to 1 cm cube max. Each in turn is fried in oil with the oil left in the pan. The order is pork, bacon chorizo.
You will see that at the end the pan has a residue which is heavily chorizo based. Add water and rub off anything left on the ban by the meats, using a wooden spoon.
By now the vegetables will have been cooking for 30 minutes and you add all three meats and liquid from the pan which should ensure that there is liquid up to the top of the meats. Simmer for another hour.
At that point add in two types of beans. Here I used butter beans and kidney beans. The original recipe is from Darina Allen of Ballymalloe and she uses black beans but I don't need to open the book for this dish these days and have tweaked. Mix and stir and after half an hour the stew is ready to eat. It can be left on a very low heat throughout a party and just has all sorts of flavours.
We tend to offer guests the stew with rice (that is the Mrs at play). I rather prefer Darina's Irish suggestion of colcannon ( mashed potato with kale or cabbage and I add in a few spring onions as well).
The quantities above, with a good helping of colcannon, should serve a good portion for at least 15.
