West African Chicken and Peanut Stew with Chiles, Ginger, and Green Onions

Categories: January2011, South Beach-Phase 1, chicken, dinner

Ingredients

• 1-2 T olive or canola oil (the recipe called for 2 T, but I think you could use less)
• 1/4 cup finely diced red onion (could also use regular onion)
• 1 T finely minced ginger root (I wouldn't use ginger from a jar for this dish)
• 2 tsp. finely minced jalapeno (I used pickled jalapenos which worked fine. Increase if you want it spicy.)
• salt to taste (I used about 1/2 tsp. sea salt)
• 1 tsp. chile powder
• 1 cup chicken stock (chicken broth from a can is fine)
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter (use natural peanut butter without added sugar for South Beach Diet)
• 2 T tomato paste
• 1 T cider vinegar
• 3 cups diced, cooked chicken (use white meat or carefully remove fat from dark meat for South Beach Diet)
• fresh ground black pepper to taste
• 3-4 green onions (scallions) thinly sliced

Directions

1. Finely chop the red onion, ginger, and jalapeno, and roughly chop the chicken. Heat oil in a heavy pan, add finely diced onion, ginger, and jalapenos, season with salt, and saute about 2 minutes. Add the chile powder, stir into other ingredients, and saute about 1 minute more.

2. Add chicken stock, peanut butter, tomato paste, and apple cider vinegar, stir, and bring to a slight boil. As soon as it starts to boil, lower heat to a very gentle simmer, add roughly chopped chicken, gently stir to combine, and let simmer 10-15 minutes. (Resist the urge to stir it very much, or the chicken will shred apart, which you don’t want here.)

3. While mixture simmers, wash, dry, and slice green onions. After 10-15 minutes, gently stir again if the oil from the peanut butter has separated. Serve hot, with a generous handful of green onion slices on each serving.

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