I cooked this dish on a recent very cold autumnal evening, as I really fancied a big bowl of tasty comforting food, which was also rather healthy – so voila! This dish came about.

Use a range of veggies (I list what I used below) but just use what you have available, that’s the joy of this dish, you can use up what you have. Spinach or kale would work or you could add butternut squash, sweet or regular potato to make it more substantial. A must is the chorizo however, as this adds BIG flavour whilst using very little. It tends to keep very well, so keep the rest for a future dish.

The stew is great served by itself, with big hunks of sourdough bread (the recipe will probably make enough for 2 if serving just as the stew) or serve with some fish or chicken, absolutely delicious!

Recipe (serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 large cloves of garlic, crushed

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, peeled and chopped into chunks

1 stick of celery, finely chopped

1 leek, sliced

2 courgettes, sliced into half rounds

100g chorizo sausage, skin removed and chopped

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp sugar (you can leave this out if you want)

x2 cans chopped tomatoes

1 bunch of fresh coriander, torn up

Salt and pepper

4 salmon fillets

To serve – sourdough bread

Heat up the olive oil in a large pan and fry the onion, celery and carrot until softened, about 10 minutes. Add in the leek, courgette, garlic and chorizo and cook for 5 minutes, so the chorizo releases all its flavour and coats everything in a lovely fragrant red oil. Add in the paprika, sugar, chopped tomatoes and half of the coriander. Cook on a low heat for 20 minutes until the tomatoes have slightly reduced and the veggies are soft.

Next, heat up a frying pan until hot. Rub the salmon fillets with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. On a medium-hot heat, put the salmon skin side down into the pan and leave for 5 minutes. This will crisp up the skin, but make sure you don’t burn it. Gently turn the fish over, and cook for 2 minutes on the flesh side. You will see on the sides of the fish how much it has cooked. Pop the fish fillets on top of the stew and cook very gently for another 5 minutes until cooked through.

Spoon the stew into shallow bowls (perfect for all sorts of dishes and my favourite sort of crockery) and place a salmon fillet on top. Finish with come more fresh coriander and serve with crusty sourdough bread to mop up the sauce.