Happy new year everyone! #TheFridayRecipe 2024 is back! This healthy and delicious butter bean stew with chorizo in a rich red wine and herb infused tomato sauce is one I think you’ll make over and over again. In 2022, my mother died so I spent hours driving back and forth to my home town in Lincolnshire to support my family. That March, I listened to this marvellous edition of The Food Programme on R4 which was all about legumes and how good they are for you. It featured an inspiring entrepreneur called Amelia Christie-Miller, the founder of a new brand called Bold Bean Co. Amelia’s beans come ready to eat in glass jars and she explained why they taste so very different from the ones we are used to eating from cans. It provided me with a very welcome distraction that day so, when I saw a jar of her Bold Bean Co Queen butter beans in Waitrose the other day, I thought I’d create a Friday recipe to do them justice. There are lots of other wonderful bean-related recipes on her website so do check them out as well here. I sourced my chorizo and olives for this recipe from the Suffolk fine food emporium Emmett’s.

• 1 x 700g jar of Bold Queen butter beans
• 1 green pepper, de-seeded, quartered and cut into medium strips
• 1 tbsp light olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 5 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 large cooking chorizo cut into thin slices
• 10 or so plump green olives, pitted and sliced in half
• 1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp thyme leaves
• 200ml red wine
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• Salt
• Fresh dill or flat leaf parsley to garnish

To make…

• Put the olive oil and garlic into a large sauce pan and heat over a medium-high heat until the garlic begins to sizzle. Add the chorizo and cook until the slices are lightly browned on either side.
• Add the onion and green pepperoni cook until softened.
• Add the red wine and cook off until it has reduced to nothing. Add the can of tomatoes, paprika, thyme and teaspoon of salt. Simmer for 15 minutes.
• Stir in the butter beans and a tablespoon of the liquor from the jar and the chopped olives and warm through for 5 minutes. The stew should be thick and unctuous.
• Serve with a little fresh dill or parsley scatter over the top and some crusty bread.

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