Tonight's vegan lentil stew recipe comes to you from Saranda, Albania. Phil and I got here this afternoon from Meteora, in Northern Greece, and are staying at a great hostel with 2 Swedes (Mike and Carl) and Nina, from Ohio. We've been without a kitchen for a few days, so we were ready for some satisfying healthy vegan recipes.
We found some lentils in the store downstairs, which was a great start to a warm stew. I had just taken cash out of the bank machine here and it always gives me large bills. I tried to pay for our groceries, but the lady running the store couldn't break my bill, so she was very sweet and told us to come back tomorrow.
She also tried to sell us on some cookies, some meat, some cheese and a loaf of bread. We stuck with our fruit, vegetables and lentils and headed upstairs to make dinner.
We finished our meal out on the balcony, watching the Greek island of Corfu disappear under a thunderstorm (at the end of the video).
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes
Time from start to eating: 1 hour
Makes enough to serve 4, or 2 for dinner and 2 for lunch.
This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.
Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan recipes in Europe. Tonight Phil and I have made it to Albania. We’ve spent the last few days in Greece. We were in roads which you could have seen last time on the hidden section of our website at HealthyVeganRecipes.net/Europe.
And then we spent a couple of days at Athens and now we are in Saranda which is on Albania on the coast, very south tip of Albania, right near the border to Greece.
So tonight were making a stew to use up the rest of the vegetables that we’ve got at the wonderful market we found when we were staying at Northern Greece, so I’ve got eggplant, peppers, tomato and then over here I got some cauliflower and some olives.
And awesome tip from one of my YouTube viewers, who noticed that I was having trouble pitting my olives, they’re always a pain and he suggested to smash it with a knife and it makes the pith come out really easy and I thought ok sure I’ll try it - so good! Thank you so much for that tip, it made these olives so much easier.
Ok! So I got my big pot going on the stove here and what I’m gonna do is make this basically like a stew so I’m going to heat this up, add some water and get the vegetables going.
(If I can figure out which burner I’m using here, right here)
So I’m gonna add a bit of water here just to get these veggies started and then they’re gonna release some of their own juices so I don’t wanna tut too much yet. I’ve got onion, eggplant and pepper then I’m gonna throw in the cauliflower now as well.
So the last place we were in Northern Greece was a place called Meteora which has some really cool monasteries up on these rock formations and Phil took some videos while we are up there. We had a great walk up; we took the walking path rather than taking the bus because we like to be that kind of thing.
And Phil called it the Indians Jones route because it was through rocks and trees, it was pretty cool. We came out on a road up that goes between the monasteries and there were these people from a tour bus, they were walking around and they were looking at us coming out from the bush and they were like “wooh!”
It was pretty entertaining so check out the video from the – from the top of the rocks.
(Video Clip Playing)
So, I’ve sprinkled some salt into the vegetables to get them going and they have been cooking for a few minutes now and I’m gonna add the tomatoes.
Now these looks like a lot, Phil and I finally have the brilliant idea, ok let’s give Phil’s credit coz it was his idea to make enough for lunch tomorrow as well, for some ridiculous reason we haven’t done that yet, so this is gonna be dinner and lunch.
So I’m gonna add more water here because the next thing I’m gonna put in here is lentils. We’ve had quite bit of a trouble finding whole grains down here and lentils are one thing that are fairly fast cooking and are not white rice so were gonna do like a lentil stew here.
So, Im just gonna give this a stir through, keep in mind when you’re putting in the lentils that they do expand so don’t put on too much and they will need about 25 - 30 minutes to cook so what I’m gonna do is stir those in, the lid back on and leave them to cook.
So the lentils are now cook, they had about half an hour, I’m gonna add some garlic and onion powder. This is from my spice mixes which are posted on the hidden section of our website. You can go there, find a whole bunch of stuffs about us travelling, it’s all free but you have to go to HeathyVeganRecipe.net/Europe.
Then I’ve got some of my Indian mix as well. Give that a stir and then it just needs five to ten minutes for the flavours to get really into those lentils.
Alright! So these flavours have the chance to soak in here. I’m gonna throw in some spinach just to wilt it at the very end.
I’ve also got some fresh parsley that we brought over from Greece and some olives. I’m gonna stir this all together.
Don’t want to cook them too much and you can find the recipe for this meal at HealthyVeganRecipes.net and be sure to also check out the footage that Phil’s got coming in for you of where we are staying tonight, a lovely hostel in Sarandra called the Heerlen.
Does anyone want to be on TV?
Not really.
So here we are in Sarandra, Albania. We went through Greece quite a bit more quickly than we thought were going to because we kinda, we spent more time in Turkey than we are going to and Albania is much less expensive than Greece.
Our hostel here is 3.5 Euros each per night instead of like 25 Euros in Greece but also we just want to get back on track and so we have this place in Albania, in Saranda, its very beautiful view as you can see that’s actually Greece over there and the city itself here is a little bit rundown.
It’s kinda in the stage where their building, they have some nice building going up but they have some, a bunch of old ones if I point down here so its kinda of a junkie place but the countryside around here like on the bus ride here was actually incredible. I think we’re gonna have fun and then were gonna work our way up to Montenegro, Quassia in the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.
(Video Clip Playing)
I love thunderstorms.
(Video Clip Continue Playing)