Posts Tagged With: stew

Zimbabwean Dovi (Peanut Butter Chicken Stew)

Posted on May 21, 2013 by pauldelancey

Zimbabwean Entree

DOVI
(Peanut Butter Chicken Stew)

INGREDIENTSDovi-

1 1/2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
2 green bell peppers
1/2 pound spinach
4 medium tomatoes
3 chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 cups water

Makes 8-to-10 bowls

PREPARATION

Mince onions and garlic. (Vampires won’t like this soup.) Dice bell peppers. Remove stems from spinach. Dice tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1/2″ cubes. Put onion, garlic, and butter in pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Stir frequently.

Add chicken, bell pepper, cayenne, paprika, pepper, pepper, and salt to pot. Cook for about 5 minutes on medium heat or until chicken begins to brown. Add tomato, peanut butter, and water. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add spinach to pot. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve and enjoy. Live long and prosper.

TIDBITS

1) I looked up fun facts about Zimbabwe. I read how its current leader had the houses of 700,000 homes of poor people destroyed because they had opposed him. Boy, fun facts you betcha.

2) Divo is an anagram for void. It is also an anagram for Ovid, the famous Roman.

3) Devo was a famous band from the early 1980. I have one of their albums. I’ve found no evidence to back the assertion that the band was named after this stew.

4) However, if Ovid had been a member of Devo, say bass guitar, and he didn’t have a video of divo soup then Devo Ovid would have had a TivoTM divo void.

5) And now two divo haikus:

Oh great Zimbabwe
Your peanuts and your spinach
Make yummy dovi

Mince ingredients
Simmer for ten minutes long
Stir occasionally

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, international, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spinach Stew From Central Africa

Posted on May 10, 2013 by pauldelancey

Central African Entree

SPINACH STEW

INGREDIENTSSpinStw-

3 small tomatoes
1 1/2 pounds fresh spinach (not that horrible frozen type)
1 1/2 medium yellow onions
1 green bell pepper
2 chile peppers
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup water

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Peel tomatoes. Chop or dice spinach. Dice tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, and chile peppers. (For goodness sakes, wash your hands thoroughly before touching your face. If not, well it’s a mistake you’ll only make once.) Put tomatoes and onions in frying pan. Add vegetable oil. Sauté at medium-high heat until onion becomes tender.

Transfer sautéed onions and tomatoes to soup pot. Add bell pepper, chile pepper, spinach, cayenne pepper, coriander, salt, peanut butter, and water. Simmer on low heat for 15 minutes. Stir stew frequently enough to thoroughly blend in peanut butter and to prevent stew from burning.

Serve as is in bowl or atop a bed of rice.

TIDBITS

1) The Central African Republic is well named. The country is a republic and is in the center of Africa.

2) Greenland is not green, however. It’s rather icy. Which is great if you continually want a handy supply of ice for your Roy Rogers or Shirley Temples sodas, but not so good if you want to raise cattle, à la the television show, Rawhide.

3) It’s doubtful Roy Rogers or Shirley Temple visited Greenland. I’d like to visit but then again I’m not Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers.

4) The Vikings were the first Europeans to discover Greenland. Norse real estate agents named it that way to encourage new settlers to come there. The part about ocean view properties was indeed true, though.

5) And did you know that the vast percentage of the world’s landlocked countries, including the Central African Republic, do not have any McDonald’s?

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Berbere Stew

Posted on October 9, 2012 by pauldelancey

Ethiopian Entree

BERBERE STEW

INGREDIENTS

1/2 medium yellow onion
1 garlic clove
1/2 russet potato
3 baby carrots
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 cup orange lentils
2 1/4 teaspoons Berbere spice mix (See recipe for BERBERE SPICE MIX INGREDIENTS, if you can’t find the     mix)
1 14.5 can diced tomatoes

PREPARATION

You will make your culinary life easy for yourself and everyone else within cussing distance if you soak your lentil beans before starting to cook. (It is a little known fiction that 37% of all aggressive dictators since 1738 ate unsoaked beans at one time or another.)

Anyway, there are two ways to soak your beans. The first way is the “quick soak” method. Soak lentils in 6-to-8 cups of water. Heat on high until water boils. Boil for 2 minutes. Turn off heat and cover for 1 hour. Drain and rinse. The second way is the “slow method.” Soak lentils in 6-to-8 cups of water for at least 6 hours. (This give you time to run marathons in record times with about an hour break in between.) Drain and rinse.

Peel and dice onion, garlic cloves, and potato. Dice baby carrots. Put water, lentils, onion, garlic, potatoes, baby carrots, bebere spice mix in soup pot. Cook over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes or until lentils soften. Stir periodically with increasing frequency as you reach the 20-minute mark.

Let me stress that the time necessary to soften lentils varies with the time it soaked beforehand and the temperature at which they are cooked. So it is quite a good idea and periodically monitor the softness of the lentils. (Too many business mergers have been stopped because one CEO made another CEO wait too long for unsoaked lentils to soften.)

Add diced tomatoes and heat at low-medium heat for another 15 minutes.

Serve in a bowl or over rice on a plate.

1) Cardamom, used to make the Berbere spice mix, costs about $60 a pound.

2) Many of today’s cars weigh about a ton and cost about $25,000.

3) The same car made from cardamom would run you about $120,000.

4) That’s before labor costs. Who knows how much it would cost to hire workers skilled enough to fashion cardamom into an internal combustion engine, tires, windows, steering wheels and all the fixin’s.

5) Saffron costs about $170 an ounce or about one-tenth the price of gold or four times the cost of silver.

6) Thank goodness, keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t mean owning a $5,600,000 saffron car.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chicken Recado Stew

Posted on August 15, 2012 by pauldelancey

,Belizean Entree

CHICKEN RECADO STEW

INGREDIENTS

2 small red potatoes
2 pounds boneless chicken breasts
5 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup barbeque sauce
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice

2 tablespoons red recado (This Belizean spice is found online.)
1 cup chicken broth

1 medium white onion
1 green bell pepper
1 stalk celery
2 stalk green onion.
6 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups brown rice
3 cups water

PREPARATION

Boil potato eighths for about 15 minutes. Cut chicken breasts into bit-sized pieces. Mince onion and green onion and cut each potato into eight bits.

Put chicken bits into mixing bowl. Add lime juice, barbeque sauce, thyme, basil, white pepper, paprika, crushed red pepper, coriander, and Jamaican Jerk spice. (My goodness, I’ve just used up the last of my coriander. Augh! And the Jerk Spice should really be from Belize. I’m no longer spice ready!) Mix the chicken and spices until nearly all of the spices stick to the chicken bits.

Put recado and chicken broth in small bowl. Stir a few times to help the recado dissolve into the broth.

Saute white onion, bell pepper, celery, green onion and garlic in vegetable oil on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add chicken and saute again until the outside of the chicken starts to brown and the inside is completely white. Add recado/chicken broth. Add potatoes, cover, and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Serve with rice (cooked according to instructions on package) to your family, or guests, who will be looking at you with adoration in their eyes.

TIDBITS

1) A thumbless dwarf called El Duende inhabits the Belizean forest and eats children who destroy the wildlife.

2) I wonder, could El Duende develop a taste for lawyers?

3) Belize possesses 900 Mayan sites.

4) If you don’t like ancient stone sites, you’ll be bored at all 900.

5) Coca Cola in Belize is bottled using cane sugar rather than the evil, nasty high-fructose corn syrup. Yay, Belize.

6) A web page about Belize had an advertisement for Alaska Air. Why?

7) In Belize, it is considered rude when coming upon someone for the first time, to greet them using their first name.

8) How on Earth, would you know that person’s first name when first meeting them?

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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