Mushroom and minced meat ragout with leek and feta

Ingredients for 5 servings:

• 500 g minced meat, mixed
• 400 g mushrooms, white
• 350 g leek(s)
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 m.-sized onion(s)
• 150 g feta cheese
• 30 g dried tomatoes
• 250 ml boiling water
• 400 g tomatoes, pureed
• 150 ml orange juice
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tbsp, heaped Ajvar, hot
• 4 tsp, heaped miso paste, dark
• 2 tbsp thyme, dried
• 30 g butter
• a few stalks of basil
• e.g. salt and pepper

Instructions

Working time approx. 25 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 55 minutes

Dice the sun-dried tomatoes and place them in a small bowl. Add the dried thyme. Then pour the specified amount of boiling water over everything and set aside to allow the tomatoes to swell. Clean and quarter the mushrooms, dividing larger ones more often if necessary. Cut the leek lengthwise, wash thoroughly, and then cut into rings. Peel and press or finely chop the garlic. Peel the onions and slice into strips. Dice the feta cheese. In a large pan or roasting pan, fry the mushrooms without adding any fat for about 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally, so that the liquid in the mushrooms can evaporate. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and set aside. Heat about a third of the butter in the pan, add the minced meat, and fry for about 3 minutes until crumbly. Add the remaining butter, onions, and garlic, and sauté for another 2 minutes. Now add the leek and fry, stirring constantly, for about 4 minutes until it has wilted. Add the ajvar and tomato paste and let it roast briefly. Deglaze everything with orange juice and passata, then add the soaked sun-dried tomatoes with the soaking water and thyme. Now add the mushrooms back in and simmer over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. Towards the end, stir in the miso paste. Stir in the feta cubes and season generously with pepper. When serving, roughly tear fresh basil leaves and scatter them on top. I served this with pasta, but rice or something similar would certainly work just as well. Notes: There should already be enough salt in the dish from the miso paste, ajvar, and the soaking water from the sun-dried tomatoes. But if you like, you can add more salt to taste. I added the dried thyme directly to the sun-dried tomatoes so that the aroma of the thyme can develop longer, as otherwise the cooking time in the pan afterwards would be a bit short for the thyme. Therefore, don’t use all the butter to brown the ground meat at the beginning, as otherwise the meat will cook in the butter rather than fry. The relatively small amount of liquid will result in a rather chunky ragout. The number of servings specified in the recipe includes a side of carbohydrates.