Guys, this stew is fixed to make your week.
I was cooking for a friend that really doesn’t care about food. The kind that only eats to live. The kind that eats what they’re given and never comments on the taste – good, bad or indifferent.
I made this stew because it was easy. The majority of it is built around opening cans and literally slicing 2 or 3 things into disks. It’s not hard work. I figured if I was cooking for someone that doesn’t care, they wouldn’t notice the haphazard manner in which the dish was thrown together.
We ate the stew on my sofa, bowls balanced on our knee caps and a troth of bread in between us. He ate a spoonful and said ‘Fuck me, this is amazing Mike’. I hit the floor.
In all of our years of friendships and with every one of my meals that has passed his lips, THIS is the dish that gets recognition. What a blessing.
Yes I’ve specified blood oranges here because they are at their best right now and very readily available but don’t feel restricted by such confines. A regular orange will work just fine.
Slice a ring of chorizo into small pound coin disks and fling into a big pot. Turn the heat on to medium and fry them gently until they start releasing their paprika oils.
While they heat up, slice the white part of a leek into little disks too and throw them into the chorizo. Stir together and cook the leeks for a little bit.
As they cook, roughly chop (and by chop I mean halve) a tub of mushrooms (any kind) and throw into the pan. Add a tablespoon of tomato puree, teaspoon of paprika, quarter of a teaspoon of chili powder and grate in a garlic clove. Cook everything until the mushrooms have softened.
Pour in a cup of red wine, bring it to a boil, drop it to a simmer and cook until the red wine has cooked down a little bit and become rich and thick.
Now add a beef stock cube and throw in a can of chopped tomatoes. Half fill the can with water, swish it around in the can and throw into the pan. Squeeze in the juice of one blood orange and then add a drained and rinsed can of butterbeans.
Stir everything together, bring it to a boil again and then drop it to a simmer and keep it blipping away for about 10 minutes to warm the tomatoes and butterbeans.
Serve with a leafy scattering of parsley and a wobbling mound of buttered bread.
Serve to your most silent friend, sit back and watch them crumble
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 
Yum!