Starter Fasting
Lutenica
A winter preserve of roasted peppers and tomatoes with carrot and chillies — sharper and looser than ajvar.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 50 min
- Cook
- 1 hr 40 min
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 9 ingredients
Method
- Roast the peppers and chillies until the skins blacken, leave them covered for 20 minutes and peel them. Wear gloves when you clean the chillies.
- Parboil the carrots for ten minutes or so until tender, then drain them.
- Grate the tomatoes and cook them alone for about 25 minutes until reduced by half.
- Mince the peppers, chillies and carrots together. The carrot is what gives lutenica its body and its sweet note — do not leave it out.
- Add the mixture to the reduced tomato with the oil and garlic and cook over a low heat for about an hour, stirring often so it does not catch.
- Add the salt, sugar and vinegar, cook for another ten minutes and taste. Jar it boiling hot in sterilised jars.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Macedonian chillies
- Cayenne or ordinary chillies; start with fewer and add — the heat builds as it cooks down.
- Fresh tomatoes
- Passata, cooked down for longer to thicken.
- Carrot
- One more roasted red pepper; the lutenica will be looser, but the flavour holds.
