Photo by Neni Panourgia
Provenance of Dish
I had this dish once while visiting Lake Prespa, the Trinational border of Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia. When I asked for the recipe I was told that there is no recipe, you just put everything together in the oven. When back in New York I tried to replicate it and this version is just like the one that I had there.
Recipe
Ingredients
2 lbs mushrooms, cleaned and chopped in chunks about the size of half a small egg.
4-5 juicy tomatoes, chopped (you can but don't have to seed) or (in a pinch) about 1/2 cup of crushed tomatoes from a can
1/4-1/2 cup white wine
Greek oregano (a good pinch)
1-2 bell peppers, chopped in chunks (cut each in sixths and cut each sixth in two or three pieces, depending on the size) OR one long green chili pepper
1 Tb sweet bucovo or Korean crushed red pepper
2 ts hot bucovo, or Chinese crushed peppers
salt, black pepper
olive oil enough to cover the bottom of the baking pan
1/4 bunch of Italian parsley chopped, not minced, stalks discarded
2 shallots-thinly sliced
4-5 large (but not Elephant) cloves of garlic, sliced thickly
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 450F. It's best to make this is an earthenware pan. Choose one that will hold the mushrooms snugly.
Mix everything well together except for the parsley, make sure that there is enough liquid in the pan for the mushrooms to cook and not roast, cover with aluminium foil leaving a couple of openings on either side of the pan for steam to escape, and bake/roast until the mushrooms are cooked through and have given off all their liquid, about 45 minutes.
Give the mixture a good mix at about 20 minutes into the cooking, and start checking for donness at about 30 minutes. You need to have a nice sauce where the oil will have just barely started to separate.
You take it out from the oven, mix in the parsley, and leave it to cool off. It should not be eaten hot from the oven.
