african peanut stew

African Peanut Stew over brown rice

So.. winter has finally hit Upstate NY, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I am totally under the weather and feeling junky, and needed some soul food to warm me up and make me feel better.

This is some stew I made, full of veggies and some good spice to clear out my head and fill me with goodness. Very hearty and satisfying. I love the combination of the peanut butter, chipotle pepper and root veggies. I made a huge pot full to feed us for a couple meals, cause mostly I want to be hiding under a blanket, watching Felicity. Hopefully this healthy food will heal me.

This isn't really the type of dish/meal/recipe I'd worry about making sure I have the exact veggies, or amounts of each veggies suggested, I just use what I have in the fridge that needs to be used up and seems like it would work. Same with type of hot pepper, this time I used a chipotle in adobo. (Last time I opened up one of those lil cans, I froze the extra in a tray, so now I have lil chipotle icecubes. most of the time you only really want one, not all six or so that come in a can, right?)  If I didn't have any of those, I might have just used pepper flakes, but I was pleased with the smokiness the chipotle added to the stew. Maybe if I didn't have chipotle, I'd use some liquid smoke.


African Peanut Stew

ingredients:

1/4 onion- diced
1 tsp cumin seeds-crushed
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
1 chipotle pepper in adobo- chopped 
1 can tomatoes (i used canned whole tomatoes, and roughly crushed them/squeezed)
1 potato- diced
2 sweet potatoes- diced
2 acorn squash- (i had some i already roasted, so i just scooped out the flesh. peeled, raw squash would be great too)
2 carrots- chopped
1 clove garlic- pressed
1-1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/4-1/3 cup natural peanut butter
dash vinegar (i used ume plum vinegar-cause it's way yummy)
pinch Indian chili powder
1 package frozen spinach

cooked brown rice

directions:

-start cooking onion, cumin, coriander and turmeric in a lil water, when starts to get fragrant (1-2 min), add in the chipotle pepper, cook for a min then add tomatoes, and their juice, all the root veggies, the chickpeas, and the garlic. 
-add water to the pot until it's a soupy consistency/almost covers the veggies. turn up heat and bring  to a simmer. turn down heat to a low simmer, cover pot and cook until it's thickened up a bit and the veggies are starting to get tender (20-25 min).
-add in the peanut butter, and stir it around until incorporated, this can be a lil tough if the peanut butter is thick, if you cover the pot for a min, it'll start to break up and you can incorporate into the stew. taste and season with a dash of vinegar and hot Indian chili powder, you might even want more peanut butter. 
-once it tastes yummy, add in frozen spinach, stir and cook until the spinach is thawed and all mixed throughout the stew.
-eat over rice (it would also be really good with some bread)