Week 39 - West African

For the West African challenge, I decided to make a chicken peanut stew based on a recipe I found on Simply Recipes. That stew was based on a Ghanaian chicken groundnut stew and sounded really delicious. I remembered that I had made an African peanut stew sometime in the past, but completely forgot that it was for a previous challenge meal and also didn't realize how similar it was until I re-read that post after making this. (Even funnier, it was the Week 39 challenge also, 2 years ago.) While I guess I could have tried making something more complicated like dishes we got during our Nigerian dinner, I went for something a little easier, with more accessible ingredients, and that I was fairly sure I wouldn't screw up. I guess I also just have a liking for African peanut stew.

The ingredients for the stew we made, adapted from the original, were:

- about 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts ($3)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 1 yellow onion, sliced ($0.50)
- 2 spoonfuls crushed garlic ($0.25)
- 1-2 tsp ginger paste ($0.30)
- 4 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped ($1.96)
- 4 cups water ($0)
- 2 large spoonfuls chicken bouillon ($0.50)
- 1 can diced tomatoes (not drained) ($0.75)
- 1 cup roasted peanuts ($1.30)
- 1 cup peanut butter ($0.80)
- about 1 tbsp ground coriander (whatever was left in the jar) ($0.25)
- about 1 tsp cayenne (should have used more) ($0.05)
- about 1/2 cup chopped cilantro ($0.90)

The total for this stew was approximately $10.81, which is a really good price for the amount of stew it made and how full we were. If you added another sweet potato and a little bit more of some of the other ingredients, you could probably stretch this to two meals and stick the other half in the freezer.

The steps for making the stew were:

- heat olive oil in large pot
- slice chicken into thinner pieces and sprinkle with salt/pepper on one side
- add to pot in single layer and sprinkle with salt/pepper on other side
- brown chicken, flipping halfway through, and then remove to plate
- while chicken is cooking, slice onion, peel and chop sweet potatoes

- add onion to pot and cook for a few minutes, scraping off browned bits while cooking
- add crushed garlic and ginger paste and cook another minute
- add sweet potatoes and cook for a few minutes
- add chicken back to pot along with water, chicken bouillon, diced tomatoes, peanuts, peanut butter, ground coriander, cayenne, salt, pepper, and mix together well
- bring to boil and then reduce heat to simmer
- simmer covered for 60 minutes
- at some point during the cooking, chop cilantro

- remove cover and allow stew to keep simmering while removing chicken pieces (sweet potatoes should be really soft by now, but if not cook longer)
- shred chicken with 2 forks and return to pot, stir well
- add half of the cilantro to the stew and mix in well
- the original recipe said to add more black pepper here (as peppery as you can stand) but I forgot
- ladle soup into bowls and garnish with the rest of the cilantro

This stew was so good. I forgot how filling sweet potatoes can be, since we don't eat them enough, and ate way too much stew. Even after that, there was still plenty left for another meal. It was warm and comforting, perfect as we're getting into cooler weather, and so full of flavor. I think next time I would probably add some more cayenne and black pepper, and maybe garnish it with some chopped peanuts on top as well (similar to the H&H Senegalese chicken with peanut soup). I'm also not sure if it really needs the cilantro on top, which would make the process even easier (and I am always looking for easier on a weeknight!). I would definitely make this again.

Greens, Beans and Grains

Greens, beans and grains are some of my favorite food groups, so it's no surprise that I was very interested in the Greens, Beans and Grains frozen item at Trader Joe's ($2.99). We bought one a few months ago which we ate as a side dish with dinner, but at the time I thought it would work better as an entree than a side. I tested out that theory at lunch this week, and it definitely makes for a good light lunch. 

This was basically a kale, garbanzo, and peanut stew with a side of couscous, inspired by the stews of West Africa. The main ingredients were tomatoes, garbanzo beans, kale, roasted peanuts, garlic, onion, cilantro, butter, cumin, coriander, vegetable stock, and some other seasonings. It reminded me a little bit of the African peanut stew I made for a previous challenge meal.

The stew here tasted just like comfort food. It was hearty but healthy, and really good over the couscous. While eating it, I just kept thinking that I should try to make something like it for dinner one day, as it was just the type of thing we would enjoy.

Buy Again? Yes, unless I figure out how to make this and end up freezing single sized portions of it for lunches (highly unlikely). I love that it's healthy and filling with lots of flavor.

Boma

One of our favorite restaurants at Disney World is Boma, which is located at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We made it to Boma for the first time a couple of visits ago and we loved how different it was from everything else offered at Disney. We decided to take advantage of having a rental car for the first part of our trip by driving out to Boma for our first dinner on our vacation!

Boma is a buffet serving African dishes from a variety of countries, and from the dishes we saw, it looked like they tried to cover all different parts of the continent. Since there wasn't really a set menu for the night and buffets generally make it hard to write about each individual dish, here's a list of the types of dishes that they serve at Boma, some of which we had.

We have pretty limited notes from our buffet dinner and can only really guess at what some of the other items on the plates were. But one thing we both got at the beginning of our meal was mulligatawny soup. We've only really had this before in Indian restaurants, but the internet tells me this might be on the menu to represent cuisine from Mauritius.

Since we don't really remember exactly what we ate on each plate (and there were some other partial plates from the end of the meal that aren't even here), it probably doesn't make sense to go plate by plate, and talk about the flavor of every single item. We doubt we could, 3 years later, even remember which items were our favorites. We just tried so many different things. So here are A's two plates, with curry and meat and salads and other dishes.

M managed to find a list she kept of some of the stuff from her plates, several of which were also things that A got. As a sampling of what was available on the night we went, the dishes included: tabouleh, chickpea and edamame salad, fufu, couscous with raisins, bobotie, Durban spiced chicken, lamb curry, nut-crusted salmon, lavosh, sundried tomato hummus, black olive hummus, white bean hummus, kokonut rice, zaalouk vegetables, chakalaka stewed tomatoes and onions, shrimp couscous, kool slaai (cole slaw), and Ghana tomato salad.

Some of the dishes we got were obviously African to us (like fufu and bobotie), but we can't really vouch for the authenticity of everything since we're not experts in all different African cuisines. Our goal at Boma was to get a tasty buffet meal with interesting dishes, and we did. What was also a nice surprise is that they brought out a special plate for us with some desserts to celebrate our anniversary. Don't remember now what was on that plate, but we were happy to get it.

We've tried to get out to Boma on every Disney trip since we first discovered it, since it's a nice change-up from eating at the parks. After stuffing ourselves with food, we relaxed a bit in the lobby of the lodge, which is quite beautiful. Worth the drive over from our resort!

Week 39 - Stew

I love making stew, so the biggest problem with Week 39 was figuring out which stew to make for the challenge. I wanted to do something completely different from the ones I'd done before, so as soon as I saw this African peanut stew on Budget Bytes, I knew that was the one. A few modifications to fit the ingredients we had and/or could get, and we would be good to go!

For the stew, I used:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- 4 large garlic cloves, minced ($0.10)

- 1-2 inches of ginger, minced ($0.15)

- 1 large onion, diced ($0.75)

- 2 medium sweet potatoes, diced ($0.98)

- cumin to taste (a few tsp) ($0.05)

- red pepper flakes to taste (a tsp or so) ($0.05)

- 1 can of chicken breast ($1)

- 1 can of diced tomatoes ($0.75)

- 6 oz can of tomato paste (free - from mom's pantry clean-out)

- 1/2 cup of natural creamy peanut butter ($0.70)

- 6 cups of water ($0)

- 3 heaping spoonfuls of chicken bouillon ($0.90)

- 16 oz bag of Southern greens, chopped ($3.49)

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro ($0.60)

A big pot of stew for $9.72, which made dinner as well as a few lunches, was definitely a great deal. Even if I paid for the tomato paste myself, it would be just above $10. That's almost double what her recipe came out to on Budget Bytes, but I did add chicken, the greens were way more expensive, and well, NYC grocery prices. That's usually the culprit.

The process for making this stew is really easy. Mince the garlic and ginger and then saute until garlic is soft. Add the onion, saute. Add the sweet potato, saute. Add the chicken and diced tomatoes, along with the cumin and red pepper flakes. After the onion and sweet potato are softer and translucent, add the tomato paste, peanut butter, and mix it all together. It will be thick and stuck together like the stuff in the pot above.

Once everything is mixed up, add the water and bouillon. Turn heat up to high and cover the pot so it comes to a boil. During all that, chop and add the greens. (Yes, for me, this meant taking the lid on and off but I think the cover is really just to get it to boil faster.) Once the stew is boiling, turn heat to low and simmer for at least 15 minutes (uncovered). Mash some of the soft sweet potatoes on the side of the pot. Once it's done, add cilantro to the bowls. Very easy stew! I pretty much followed the directions in the recipe other than adding chicken and tomatoes when I thought they might work.

This stew was really good and filled with healthy ingredients. We really liked it. The only criticism would be that the peanut flavor wasn't as strong as either of us thought it would be. Perhaps I needed to use more peanut butter or maybe the creamy peanut butter didn't come through as much as the crunchy would or maybe it was TJ's peanut butter compared to another brand. Whatever it was, I think I'd just use more peanut butter next time. But this stew was hearty, warming (of course I made it on the warmest day of the week, but whatever), and comforting. This was really easy, and I would definitely make this again.