Week 1: African Chicken Stew

(QUICK NOTE: The first two posts on this blog will not be very picture heavy- I kind of forgot to take pictures throughout the process, and I left my camera charger at my mom's house, so I have very minimal photography. I promise it gets more interesting, though!!)

Week 1 is the letter A: African Chicken Stew. It sounded kind of interesting, and I've always had a fascination with anything African, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make something TOTALLY AWESOME :D Like I said earlier, this dish is based on African cooking, but more specifically Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a really poor country in Africa, so it'll be really interesting to taste some awesome African peasant food :D

Firstly, here's the link to the recipe:
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/african-chicken-stew/Detail.aspx

Rating: 3.5/5
Cost: less than $20
Difficulty: easy
Would I eat it again: Heck to the yes!
Allergies: peanut

I made this recipe with my boyfriend, so the time it was supposed to take to get all the preparations ready was multiplied by about 6 xD It definitely took us an hour to finish everything, but that was because I was also teaching him how to cook :P

When you look at the recipe, you might be as confused as I was- peanut butter? In a stew? LOLWHUT. Well, never fear, this actually works! It added a really nice flavor to the stew, and made it very unique :) Make sure to get the right kind of peanut butter, though! You need the unsalted, natural peanut butter. Unfortunately, this can be a little bit more expensive than your typical Jif or Skippy :( And I'm not sure when else you're going to use unsalted, natural peanut butter :( It's kind of just sitting in my pantry rotting atm lol

The only thing I changed with this recipe was I replaced 1 cup of water with 1 cup of chicken broth, and I did not remove the chicken when the recipe told me to. I just added the other ingredients to the already cooked chicken. I made sure to only cook the chicken so that it LOOKED cooked out the outside, so not to dry it out from cooking it longer with the rest of the ingredients. I did this because I'm lazy XD and because I'm a Chinese cook at heart- I just throw everything in a pot and cook it till it's done. :D But I kept everything else consistent with the instructions.

The thing to worry about with this recipe is the consistency- when I made it, I added the suggested amount of peanut butter and every other ingredient. I don't think I'll add quite as much peanut butter next time. It was definitely a little bit gloopier than I wanted it to be, and surprisingly thick for a stew. I'll add a little less peanut butter (maybe 1/2 a cup as opposed to a 3/4 a cup?) and maybe a tad more chicken broth, if needed.

The flavor of this was really interesting!! It was peanut-ey and creamy, but you could feel the zing from the spices. The spices felt very pepper-ey and strong, and I really liked it :D I ate it on top of rice, like the recipe suggests. It filled me up a lot faster than i imagined, though. By the time I finished one serving of it, I was suuuuper full. I had a ton of leftovers, which is a good thing! College students live off of leftovers!!

Overall, I'd make it again because it tastes good, and because I've still got the peanut butter sitting in my pantry XD Dang those Sierra Leonese people know how to make a good stew out of peanut butter :P