Huncowska Pomazanka - Monastic Sandwich Relish

This recipe - a vegetable relish-like thing - has an interesting background, in that it comes from a very old monastery of the Order of the Saint Benedict, where it is apparently made for the monks' sandwiches. I found it in the monastery cookbook and eventually decided to try it out.

For the first run, I decided to keep to the recipe religiously. Right there on the spot, when I was finished with it, this resulted in me being very disappointed with the taste and overall effect of the thing. Still, I decided to go through with it to the end, packing it into jars and putting it away and all that. After about a month I took out one jar on an occasion when I had very little to eat, and was surprised to find it very good indeed. Various acquaintances since then have been enthusiastic about it.

Ingredients

The monastery cookbook gave proportions for 1 kg of each base vegetable, and I did exactly that. For different amounts, adjust the doses accordingly, but remember to keep the proportion: equal parts of vegetables and all that.

• Tomatoes - 1 kilogram
• Bell peppers - 1 kilogram
• Onion - 1 kilogram
• Chili pepper - 1 stalk
• Garlic - 1 clove (this seems way not enough, but I kept to the recipe and it was good ; all the same, I think adding more garlic won't hurt it at all).
• Laurel leaf
• Olive oil - 2 spoonfuls
• Dill pickles spice mixture - 1 spoonful. This contains:
  • dill flowers with seeds
  • mustard seed
  • garlic

That last bit probably needs some explanation. Dill pickles can be made using a variety of spices, but around here we've been making them for so long that we have formed habits, and ready mixtures for dill pickles are widely available. I've listed the standard ingredients above - they're all usual spices, possibly apart from the dill flowers, as the dill commonly sold for kitchen use is just the leaves, and what we need here is the whole plant in bloom - stalk, flowers, seeds and all. This adds a distinctive taste that is a big part of this recipe's appeal.

Preparation

Tomatoes need to be peeled, so rinse them with boiling water and peel. Chop the onions and peppers, you don't have to be too conscientious about it because You will be blending it anyway. Put the oil in a saucepan, fry the onions for a moment, then add the rest of the ingredients and cook for at least 20 minutes, taking care to stir and not let it burn.

After 20 to 30 minutes, use a blender to make a smooth mixture, but take out the laurel leaf first, because otherwise it will be minced into small, very hard wiry parts that will ruin the whole thing. Then you can put the laurel leaves back in and cook the resulting paste some more, stirring frequently, until you achieve desired thickness. After that, it's only a matter of putting it into jars.

Let it rest for at least a week or two. It's a recipe from a monastery, they don't hurry in places like that.