Winter comfort food

It's been very cold for the past few days, and raining almost non-stop. It seems that every time that I step outside to take the dog for a walk, rain suddenly starts to fall, increasing in intensity from a few drops to a full and heavy downpour. I realise that this is nothing unusual for certain places in the world (especially like where I grew up), but this is very much the exception than the rule for where I live now.

Bearing this in mind, I thought it a good idea to cook some comfort food - what I call 'beef ratatouille' [Digression: whilst 'ratatouille' is not an English word, it does contain all five vowels, albeit not in the correct order, having one doubled. 'Facetious' also has all five vowels, each once, and in the correct order]. This is an easy dish that even kitchen challenged people can cook well - it's hard to mess up.

The day before, I had soaked 'white' beans and pearl barley in water.  Today I first prepared all the vegetables: cubed courgettes, sweet potatoes, potatoes and tomatoes; grated carrot and diced onions. Then I fried the onions until they started to turn brown, at which stage I added the tomatoes and carrot for a few more minutes frying (these release water so they counteract the frying somewhat). Then I added half a kilo of minced meat and continued frying and turning until all the meat was brown/grey. The next stage was adding flavour: tomato extract, oregano, cumin and paprika. Finally I added two cups of boiling water, along with all the vegetables and the beans. I mixed the entire mixture thoroughly, covered the pan then let it cook for a few hours - the longer the better.

After about two hours, it was lunchtime, so I took out two portions: the beans were cooked, but I prefer them softer, so I continued cooking for about another hour. Eventually I turned off the gas but let the mixture sit in the pot for another hour before transferring to a glass dish and storing in the fridge. This is the sort of dish that improves with age, so tomorrow's lunch should taste better than today's (not that today's was bad).

I won't include a picture because it doesn't exactly look attractive - especially as I mash everything up together. Unfortunately, it looks like something the dog brings up. But it's warming and nutritious!

Continuation from a few days later: I'm making a second batch because the first got eaten very quickly! I made one conceptual change to the above recipe: I'm cooking the beans and barley in a separate saucepan for two hours so that they can absorb liquid and get throroughly cooked; then I'm going to add them to the main mixture.

Here are most of the ingredients