Recipe: Botswanan Chicken Groundnut Stew

[tersa]

For the last few weeks, tavella, zdashamber and I have been watching the extremely limited (seven episode) run of BBC/HBO's "Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency" for our Wednesday night Movie Nite. Knowing absolutely nothing about it before watching the first episode, other than Tavella enthusing about it because it's a female-lead driven show, it came as a pleasant shock to discover the show is set in...Botswana. A country I'm not sure I'd even heard of before a month ago, or, if I did, I never, in a million years, would've expected to be watching a TV show aired in any capacity in the U.S. set there.

Anyway. The show is adorable in its own quirky way (although I'm more partial to the main character's supporting cast than the main character herself), but when it came my turn to cook dinner for it (did I mention I'm no longer hosting? I'm no longer hosting, for Reasons), I got it in my head of wanting to try to cook something in theme.

A quick googling for recipes earlier this week turned up...not much. The most prevalent recipe turned out to be seswaa, what Wikipedia describes as "heavily salted mashed-up meat" (and it looks like, traditionally, beef in that regard), which although authentic, looked rather...uninspiring. (Although better than something else I just read about on Wikipedia while stumbling on their Botswana cuisine entry that I recall being referenced in the show. I won't repeat it, because...yeah lol)

But then I found this--Botswanan Chicken Groundnut Stew--and although I would never have dreamed of combining tomatoes with peanuts (or in the case of this recipe, peanut butter), the idea, once presented, intrigued me. The rest of the ingredients seemed rather straightforward and preparation easy, so I decided to give it a try.

The short version is: A+, would make again.

(The original recipe, with the ingredient list re-ordered and the instructions lightly edited and re-organized for what I hope is more clarity)

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 chicken thighs
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1⁄2 cup peanut butter
1⁄2 cup tomato paste
1 teaspoon ginger, grated
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1⁄2 teaspoon chili flakes
1 cup water
1 (15 ounce) can tomatoes, diced
Salt, to taste

Directions:

1. Add the oil to a large pan and fry the chopped onion until translucent. Add the chicken and continue frying until the chicken has begun to brown before adding the bell pepper. (Can add a chopped and seeded hot pepper if you like a little more heat!). Continue cooking until the chicken is nicely browned all over.
   
   
2. While the onions, chicken, and peppers are cooking, prepare the sauce by combining the peanut butter, tomato paste, sugar, chilli flakes, and ginger in a bowl. Slowly stir-in the water a little at a time until the sauce is smooth.
   
   
3. Pour the peanut sauce and diced tomatoes into the same pan with the chicken and aromatics and stir well.
   
   
4. Cover and reduce the heat to low simmer. Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Taste and add salt if needed.
   
   Serve over rice or rice balls.

However...me being me, I read through that recipe and came to a few conclusions:

- It reminded me to some extent of an Indian curry (onion, ginger), which made sense given the poking around I did indicating there is an Indian population presence in the country. Plus, it's on the southern tip of Africa, meaning that it is near'ish the Indian Ocean, meaning the flavors of India could've made it there via traders.

- It would likely convert very easily to being cooked in a crock pot, which was a big plus because it would make it easier to cook at home then transport it to Z--'s.

So...that's what I did. XD

The biggest changes I made:

1. I increased the recipe up to 6-8 servings. Given that this is cooking and not baking, precision was not required. The thighs only came in four packs, so those got doubled, as did the tomatoes. Everything else, I increased by +50% of what the recipe called for.
   
   
2. I used boneless, skinless organic free-range chicken thighs, mostly because I wanted to buy organic and that was my only option, but also because the recipe doesn't specify. However, in reading the Wikipedia on Botswanan cuisine, apparently serving organic, free-range chicken to guests is considered a great honor, so...yeah. I'll go with that. :)
   
   
3. I pureed the raw onion before cooking it. This is a trick I learned from my Indian cooking class a while back, a technique the teacher used or recommended as the basis for most northern India style "gravies" (as I discovered they're called colloquially in India), the type of dishes I think most Americans familiar with Indian food default to identifying as Indian. Mostly that was because I was cooking for someone who tends to pick chopped onions out of their food, but who doesn't seem to mind the flavor of onion--so I deduced it was likely a texture thing. By pureeing it, that issue would be negated.
   
   Plus, given its similarities to Indian gravies, I thought it a not-illogical step to take.
   
   
4. Since it said 'cook in vegetable oil', I used coconut oil, because I thought it would be in keeping with the food of that generalized (waves hand vaguely over a map of the Indian Ocean) area.
   
   
5. Since I couldn't remember for sure if who I was cooking for were anti-bell pepper (but thought it pretty likely), I swapped out the bell pepper for a roughly equivalent amount of diced Anaheims. They have some capsaicin in them, but they're milder than any of the other alternatives I had access to at the local megamart, with the additional benefit of I think missing the chemical in bell peppers that some people can taste that gives it a nasty flavor.
   
   
6. I cut back on the chili flakes by 33%. In my limited experience with them, they can pack a lot of heat, and I didn't want to make it so spicy myself or the people I was sharing with wouldn't be able to eat it.
   
   
7. Cooked in the crockpot. :) Well, I followed the directions as written up for #1 and #2, but when before step #3, I transferred everything in the chicken pan into a 4-quart crockpot before adding in the sauce and tomatoes. Since most of it had been cooked pretty well prior to that step, I only cooked it only low for the afternoon, about six hours.
   
   
8. My eyes glazed over the 'add salt if needed' instruction at the end, not helped by the fact that it wasn't listed in the ingredient list as written (I added it in to the list above). It really needed it.

Like I said above the cut--this turned out really well. From start to finish, steps 1-2 took about half an hour, and then the stewing occurred left unattended while I was at work to be ready when I got home.

Z-- was gracious enough to make some brown rice so I didn't have to worry about that part, and I additionally brought greens (baby kale sauteed in a garlic spread leftover from last week's dnner) and garlic naan, because, again, it felt vaguely Indian and I thought it appropriate.

The only changes I'd likely make next time would be to salt it this time (lol) and to go ahead and try it out with skin-on, bone-in thighs. Not that what I used wasn't tasty, but I think the low, slow stewing would do wonders to bone-in meat.