A delicious stew combining sweet potatoes, peppers and mushrooms.

Sweet potatoes! These vegetables are only now starting to get the recognition they deserve. When cooked, the natural sweetness can turn sticky and caramelly and just plain scrummy. But they also bring a nice big nutrient boost. In fact this dish is so full of nutrients your body will feel an all over smile.

Kidney beans have the leading role in this recipe apart from the cholesterol lowering fibre and all the other goodness packed into these little beans they contain molybdenum. Your body needs molybdenum (and copper) to metabolize iron properly so if you have a tendency to be anaemic kidney beans will help your body make the best use of iron.

Fry some onions, chopped red pepper, garlic and ginger in coconut oil. Once the onions are glassy add two cups of quartered mushrooms and cook these. While these are frying you can either boil the diced sweet potatoes in salted water (remember to keep the water to use as vegetable stock) or you can slow roast them in the oven. Roasting can be better as the flavour intensifies but it takes a lot longer to prepare.

Once your mushrooms are cooked, strain a tin of kidney beans and a tin of cannellini beans and add to the mushroom and onion mix, stir gently and heat through. Finally add the cooked sweet potato chunks and as much vegetable stock as you need to get the consistency you want to the dish. (When Im trying to lose weight I add loads of homemade vegetable stock and make this dish almost a soup. When feeding the skinny vegan teen or a hungry hubby I make it as dense as possible!)

Garnish with a sprinkle of dried chilli and some fresh parsley.

Ingredients Main meal for 3

2 large sweet potatoes peeled and diced
2 medium diced onions
2 cups of quartered mushrooms
1 large red pepper chopped
1 tin cannellini beans
1 tin red kidney beans
1 large teaspoon of fresh chopped garlic
1 teaspoon of ginger
Salt and pepper to taste
Vegetable stock
Parsley
Dried chilli