This is the stew to make at the end of summer when the garden is producing faster than you can keep up. Corn, green beans, eggplant, chard, tomatoes — it all goes in! The flavor base is simple: coconut oil, chilies, onion, garlic, and tamari. What comes out is spicy, bright, and deeply satisfying. The crunchy toasted cashews and crispy shallots on top are not optional. Serve it alongside my cold veg mango noodles for a late summer meal that covers all the bases.
The recipe is adapted from Erin Scott’s Yummy Supper cookbook, with substitutions based on what I had growing at the time. Erin’s original calls for napa cabbage, bok choy, and mushrooms. I used chard, eggplant, and extra carrots. She encourages the swap-outs, and the brothy stew holds up to whatever you throw at it.
The heat comes from fresh cayenne chilies cooked right into the oil at the start. That sharp edge, combined with the natural sweetness of the corn and the tamari’s savory depth, is what makes this one hard to stop eating.
This recipe is excellent for when you’re just about ready to pack the garden up for another season, but don’t want anything to go to waste.
Free Recipe eBook!
25 of my most popular recipes (plus 2 that have never been published before), all in a beautiful eBook!
Enter your email and I’ll send it right over.
Garden Stew with Toasted Cashews & Shallots
Ingredients
- ¼ cup + 2 teaspoons coconut oil
- 1-2 cayenne chilies, seeded and minced
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 4 teaspoons Tamari soy sauce
- 4 cups water
- 3 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 1 small eggplant, chopped
- kernels from 2 cobs of corn
- 1 ⅓ cups sliced green beans
- 1 cup raw cashews
- 4 medium shallots, thinly sliced
- 4 cups chopped Swiss chard, loosely packed
- salt and ground black pepper, to taste
Notes
- From Erin Scott’s Yummy Supper
- I just went with the goodness of the veggies, but you could easily add diced tofu or chickpeas if you’d like a little extra satiation in this stew.
- She notes a little tip in the book that I completely agree with: have all of your ingredients chopped and ready to go once you have the stove turned on. The whole thing goes pretty quick. Also, serve this with some cooked rice if you like.
Instructions
- Heat a ¼ cup of the coconut oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the chili, onion and garlic. Cook until very fragrant and onion has softened slightly, about 2 minutes.
- Add the tamari and water to the pot. Bring to a boil and then add the carrots. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 3 minutes.
- Add the tomatoes and eggplant and cook for a minute. Add the corn and green beans and cook for another couple minutes. At this point you can turn the heat off until you’re ready to serve it because you’ll just need to bring the pot to a boil for the greens.
- In a small sauté pan, heat a teaspoon of coconut oil over medium low heat. Add the raw cashews to the pan and toast them in the oil until they brown a bit on all sides, about 4-5 minutes. Empty the cashews onto a small plate and give them a little sprinkle of salt if you like.
- Return the small sauté pan to the heat and add the remaining teaspoon of coconut oil. Add the thinly sliced shallots to the pan and stir them around here and there until they turn deep brown and a bit crisp in some areas, about 15 minutes. Set aside.
- Bring the pot of stew to a boil again and add the chopped Swiss chard. Cook until the greens wilt a little bot, about 1 minute. Serve the stew hot with the toasty cashews and shallots on top.
Those pictures are incredible! I love this time of year when you still have all the fabulous summer produce but there’s enough of a chill that you want to cook them.
Oh my goodness. Today is the day that I stumbled across your blog. It’s late at night and I can’t stop looking through your recipes and pictures! Your photography is amazing and I love your stories. I hope to be as good as a blogger as you are (one day!)
Your blog is inspiring and I want to create every dish right now! I guess I’ll have to wait until morning.
Thanks for working so hard to keep your blog beautiful!
Mandy Dugas from MandysHealthyLife.com
These look like some great healthy meals, as a vegan there are some here that I would really enjoy eating. The vegan bawli stew looks amazing
Whoa. This looks amazing!
Gorgeous pictures, and the recipe looks absolutely scrumptious!
Absolutely beautiful pics Laura – especially the mood captured in your garden shots. Honestly they are too beautiful for words. Hope you’ve had a wonderful summer!
I just LOVE cashews in my stew!
IM IN LOVE with your pictures and recipes! The whole atmosphere of your blog makes me inspired over and over again!
I just love it when my favorite bloggers are talking about my other favorite bloggers. You two are so great! This soup sounds incredible. I’ll have to flip through Erin’s book again to find the original. I’ll save your version for when we get some relief from the heat!
Gorgeous! This looks so tasty. :)
That looks so good! The cashews sounds like a great addition.
Great recipe, it was delicious and packed with flavour and colour. Thanks for the inspiration to get busy in the kitchen
Made this last night and loved it! I always trust your taste.
This looks so so good!!
I dream of having a veggie garden filled with goodies!
This stew is so dreamy, especially with those cashews on top. So yum!
Teffy X
Beautiful and colorful soup! LOVE!
xo
Elisa
This stew is exactly what I need right now. Such a vibrant dish full of so much goodness!
Love what you say about Erin’s book; I’m with you all the way. Nourishment is absolutely the best word for it. It’s not just about what you’re physically eating but what you’re taking from the ground and how your feeding your soul. Love it.
Yum! This looks gorgeous and so beautiful and fresh!
This is fantastic! I am so glad I made it for dinner tonight. So flavorful and delicious, and so easy. I will definitely be making this again!
That photograph of the corn is simply gorgeous and the soup is so vibrant and colorful! I ordered Erin’s book and can’t wait to receive it, she always has a lot of interesting recipes.
I am really loving Yummy Supper’s new cookbook too! I had my eye on my recipe – glad to hear it’s a good one!
Well I don’t have a garden, but rather a little pot of chillies on my balcony that i feel will have a home in this stew. Congrats on Pure Green…. Ontario grows the best stuff and I can’t wait for some more inspiration on how to use it! xo
Just gorgeous, Laura! Erin is killing it with this book. I cannot wait to make my own pot of this. Wonderful!
Your pictures are lovely. The lighting is so pretty. I’ve already bought Vibrant Food because you had recommended it. Now I may just have to get Yummy Supper!
I’m so jealous of anyone with a garden or something nearly resembling one. I’m limited to whatever I can cram on my kitchen window sill! What a beautiful selection from Erin’s book to make using all those beautiful veggies!
What a beautiful celebration of summer, so much color and goodness all in one bowl! I want to sit out on the porch with this wholesome soup and that gorgeous book and a cool, soon-to-be-fall breeze. YES!
p.s. I totally [TOTALLY] feel you on the 1/2 done house projects.
Girl, your words. They get me every time. You have such a calming, storytelling thing going on with the way you write and I always feel a little more zen after reading your posts. I love how you point out that Erin’s book is GF but that you wouldn’t notice right away. I know I would love this book for that reason! And this stew…gorgeous. BTW – we get to hang out in ONE month! Wishing we could get dirty in the garden/kitchen together but I guess I can settle for just hanging. ;)
such a gorgeous stew. and bravo to you for somehow creating a luscious vegetable garden in the midst of all the craziness.
will you please come over and teach me how to be a good garden grower person and not be freaked out about all the little green friends on my kale so i can just casually toss some in my smoothies in the morning?! who knew gardening would be so…scary? hehe. this stew looks delicious… anything with shallots has my heart!
These photos! Erin’s book! Your garden! I am loving it, lady. This is just the nudge I need to finally contact our HOA about putting a community garden in the rarely (and by rarely I mean NEVER) used side yard.
Oh my what a gorgeous post, Laura! Your veggie patch is so darned abundant and I’m honored to see your bounty working so beautifully in the Bali Garden Stew. It’s just right that you made all of those substitutions and played with what you had on hand. I bet the eggplant was super tasty!
SO so touched,
xoxox
E
Love everything about this stew, and it reminds me of the wonderful curries and rice dishes I had in Bali, especially since it’s topped with topped with toasted cashews. This looks like the perfect summertime soup.
Sounds great. This would work well with olive oil also. The problem with coconut oil is that unless it is extremely fresh it frequently has a rancid after taste. We loved for years where it was the basic cooking oil, often rancid, often overpowering, and when I was there my cholesterol rose markedly only to come down when I returned to this country and other cooking oils.
These pictures are an inspiration and I too have a garden when I should probably spend my time doing something else but the satisfaction of eating from your backyard way out weighs rational thinking!