African Bean & Chicken Stew

Chicken is one of the most popular ingredients among our students. If you are looking for a quick and easy dinner option, chicken is a winner. It's versatile, and reasonably priced, particularly if you shop the sales. All this makes it a popular choice with time-strapped students on a budget. This recipe takes pantry ingredients to produce an unusual entree. It's super-easy and the beans stretch more expensive boneless chicken to feed six. You may not think boneless chicken is that expensive, but it is still 3-6x more expensive than the canned beans. And for convenience, a can of beans is hard to beat.

Peanuts are a New World food, originating in South America. But they grow very well in Africa and are a popular ingredient in West African stews. That's why this is called African Bean and Chicken Stew.

African Bean & Chicken Stew
(6 servings)

1 ½ cups of brown rice
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs, cut into ½" chunks
2 - 3 green onions, chopped
½ cup Fajita sauce (see Note)
3 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter
2 cups frozen corn or 1 12 oz. can corn kernels, drained
1 15 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15 oz. can red beans, drained and rinsed
1 14.5 oz. can petite-diced tomatoes, undrained
4 to 5 drops hot sauce, such as Tabasco
¼ cup chopped peanuts

Bring 3 ½ cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add brown rice, reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 50 minutes until rice is tender. When rice is nearly done, heat oil in a large pan; add chicken and sauté over medium heat, stirring and turning frequently until almost all pink color has disappeared. Add green onions; sauté 2-3 minutes longer, continuing to stir frequently; reduce heat to low. Blend fajita sauce with peanut butter, drizzle over chicken and onions. Add corn, beans, tomatoes and hot pepper sauce; stir well to combine ingredients. Simmer mixture a few minutes longer to heat throughout, stirring occasionally. Spoon over brown rice in individual serving bowls. Garnish with chopped peanuts.

Note: This recipe uses liquid fajita sauce. There are a number of brands; we like Frontera skillet fajita sauce. One packet of Frontera skillet fajita sauce contains enough sauce to make this recipe twice.

Greek Vegetables

This is a great recipe when you have bits of Mediterranean vegetables languishing in your fridge. I threw this together for Christmas Eve dinner with some fresh veggies and some garden veggies that I had stashed in the freezer. Consider this a template for getting more vegetables onto your plate. If you don't like eggplant, add more of the other things you do like.

The use of olive oil is generous, as is typical in Greece, though I've cut back from traditional Greek recipes that would call for even more. Olive oil makes vegetables delicious. Vegetables on their own are very low in calories but high in many other things that are good for you. If some olive oil gets you to eat more vegetables, I'm all for it.

Greek Vegetables
(serves 8)

4-6 Tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 cup chopped onion or leeks
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 bell peppers, whatever color you have, large dice
2 cups peeled eggplant, large dice
2-3 cups zucchini, large dice
1-2 cups frozen artichoke hearts
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 teaspoon oregano or summer savory
about 1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper

Heat up a dutch oven or large deep skillet over medium heat and add 2 Tablespoons olive oil. Add the onion/leek, garlic, and bell peppers, and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt. Cook for 10 minutes until onions are quite soft but not browned. Add the eggplant and cover. Cook for 10 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients along with another 2 Tablespoons of olive oil. Bring to a simmer. Then reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook gently for 30 minutes until all the vegetables melt together in olive oil goodness. Check for salt. Before serving, drizzle on remaining 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, if desired.

Recipe adapted from Ikaria by Diane Kochilas, Rodale, 2014.

Photo: By Dana Payne (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Sausage and Vegetable Stew

I recently visited Chicago to take in a baseball game at the oldest major league ballpark: Wrigley Field. The food there is very old-school. Unlike my local ballpark Coors Field, the fare is as traditional as...well...baseball! Classic Chicago hot dogs and one of my favorites, sausage and peppers and onions on a roll. This inspired me to create this stew. There's a little bit of sausage but the bulk of it is veggies from my garden - some eggplant, zucchini, and Italian peppers. You can serve this on a hoagie roll or Italian bread. Or you can serve it over rice, like my dinner in the photo. We also ate it stuffed into a pita, though that's a pretty messy container!

You can choose the type of sausage you like best: spicy or mild, chicken or pork. You want a flavorful Italian sausage because the flavors in the sausage provide a lot of flavor in the stew.

Sausage and Vegetable Stew
(serves 6)

1 large sweet onion, sliced
2 Italian sweet peppers, cored and sliced crosswise
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 Tablespoons olive oil + ½ Tablespoon
¾ pound Italian sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 14-oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 pound zucchini, cut into ½" dice
½ pound eggplant, peeled and cut into ½" dice
salt and pepper
healthy pinch of crushed red pepper (optional)
about 20 large fresh basil leaves, chopped
¼ cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Heat up a large skillet with a lid over medium heat. Add the 2 Tablespoons oil and the onions. Sprinkle with about ¼ teaspoon salt. Cook until golden and very soft, about 20 minutes. After 10 minutes of cooking, lower heat to medium-low to keep the onions from burning. Stir occasionally. This step takes time but this is how you get delicious onions. Add the peppers and garlic. Stir to mix and cook for 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the onion mixture to a bowl and set aside.

Return the skillet to the stove and turn up the heat to medium-high. Add the ½ Tablespoon oil. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the sausage. Brown the sausage. Add the diced and crushed tomatoes, scrapping up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan (this is the good stuff!). Add the zucchini, eggplant, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon black pepper, and crushed red pepper, if you want a spicy sauce. Stir to mix and cover. Cook for 10 minutes. Remove the cover, add the cheese, and cook for another 5 minutes to thicken the sauce a bit. Stir in ½ the chopped basil. Taste and add more salt and black pepper, if needed. To serve, mound onto a roll, and garnish with onions and remaining chopped basil.

Sweet Potato & Bean Stew

This recipe is really Mark Bittman's from his excellent The Food Matters Cookbook. That recipe starts with dried beans, cooks the beans with some seasoning and pork product, and then proceeds to the stew. I think it's wonderful to start with dried beans; I usually do that myself. But, there are plenty of days where I'm just running behind and a can or two of cooked beans can save your dinner. If you start with dried beans, dinner will take a few hours. If you start with canned beans, you can pull this off in an hour.

The sausage in this recipe is garnish, not the main event. I made it with 1 link (about 6 oz.) of andouille, so everyone gets two to three small slices of sausage with their stew. You get the flavor of the meat without adding much to the cost.

Sweet Potato and Bean Stew
(serves 6, cost $12)

1 teaspoon oil
2 oz. bacon or pancetta, diced
1-2 links andouille or hot Italian sausage
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
a pinch of cayenne
1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes with juice
2 15-oz. cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 large sweet potatoes, about 2 pounds, cut into 1" chunks
1 ½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
vinegar-based hot sauce (like Tabasco) or juice of ½ a lime

Heat up the oil in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the bacon or pancetta and cook until it renders its fat. Remove from the pot and set aside. Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the sausage. Sauté until browned. Remove from pot and set aside to cool slightly. There will be a bit of fat in the pot and it will add lots of flavor to the dish. But, you don't need more than a couple of tablespoons and remove some if there is more than that.

Reduce the heat to medium. Add the onion, peppers, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, allspice, and cayenne. Sauté for 5 minutes, scraping the bottom to keep the spices from burning. Add the tomatoes and stir to combine. Add the reserved pancetta, beans, sweet potatoes, salt, and pepper. There should be enough liquid to nearly cover the beans and potatoes. If not, add some water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Cook for 30 minutes until sweet potatoes are tender. Slice the sausage while the stew is cooking and add back to the pot so the sausage can finish cooking. Add hot sauce or lime juice, stir, and serve.

Reheats very well.

BBQ Beef and Beans in the Slow Cooker

Here's a recipe for your Super Bowl celebration. You can get it going long before the game starts so you don't need to fuss over it at all. Involves a little chopping, then you layer everything in the slow cooker and let 'er rip. Though slow cooker don't really rip. The idea is to go long and slow, transforming even tough cuts to tender goodness.

BBQ Beef and Beans in the Slow Cooker
(serves 8)

1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 15 oz. can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 15 oz. can navy beans, rinsed and drained
2 green peppers, cored, seeded and chopped into ½" pieces
2 large onions, chopped into ½" pieces
2 ½ pounds chuck roast cut into bite-size pieces
1 ½ cups BBQ sauce (here's one or bottled)
salt to taste
1 teaspoon black pepper

Pour all the beans in a slow cooker. Cover with green peppers and onions. Then put on the pieces of beef. Do not stir. Pour on ¾ cup of the BBQ sauce. Cover and cook on high for 1 ½ hours. Reduce the heat to low and cook for another 6 hours, covered. Pour on the remaining BBQ sauce, remove the cover, and cook for another hour. Season with additional salt, if needed, and black pepper. Serve over mashed potatoes or rice. You could also serve it over crunchy bread, but it's too soupy to put in a sandwich you can hold.

Adapted from 365 One-Dish Meals by Natalie Haughton, Harper & Row, 1990.

Chicken Pot PIe

Here's the second chicken dish from our last class. It's a very simple chicken stew, served up on a crispy pillow of puff pastry. Puff pastry is one of our favorite prepared foods. Check out these recipes for samosas and a spinach and cheese appetizer that we posted previously. They are two great ways to use up any extra puff pastry.

Chicken Pot Pie
(serves 4, cost is $9.50)

3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
3 cups chicken stock
3 medium carrots, cut into 1" pieces
2 stalks celery, into 1" pieces
1 medium onion, cut into chunks
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 pound chicken, cooked and shredded
½ cup frozen peas, thawed
¼  - ½ teaspoon salt
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed (see Note)

Melt butter in a large covered saucepan. Stir in flour and cook for a few minutes over medium heat until mixture is a light golden. Whisk in chicken stock, and whisk for another minute to make sure there are no lumps. Add onion, carrots, celery, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper. Stir well. Bring to boil and reduce heat to medium-low to maintain a simmer and cover. Cook until carrots are tender, about 20 minutes. Add shredded chicken and peas and cook for another 5 minutes. Taste for salt. You may not need to add any depending on the saltiness of the stock and your own salt tolerance.

While stew is cooking, preheat oven to 400℉. Unfold puff pastry and cut into 4 squares. Place on a baking sheet making sure they aren't touching. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and puffed up. This step can be done up to a few hours ahead. Store the baked puffed pastry squares at room temperature.

To serve, place the puff pastry in a large soup bowl, break a hole in the pastry and ladle on the chicken stew.

Note: A package of frozen puff pastry contains two sheets of puff pastry. They come apart easily while still frozen. Separate the two sheets. Wrap one sheet well in plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight to thaw. For this recipe, you can even thaw it for 30 minutes at room temperature, but this method isn't recommended for most puff pastry recipes. The pastry gets too soft to work very quickly. Since we are just unfolding it and cutting it up, the quick thaw works just fine.

Wrap the other sheet well and return to the freezer. Or thaw that one too and make one of our other delicious recipes that use puff pastry.

Growing Your Own Herbs Indoors

Ronnie and I both have outdoor herb gardens, so we can run outside and pick what we need, at least in the summertime. But, what if you live in an apartment and have no yard? What if you live in a cold-winter place like me, where all the herbs go dormant in the winter? You can still grow a few herbs inside. Herbs don't require a lot of sun so a window with a few hours of sunshine will do just fine. Don't have a sunny window? No problem. You can grow herbs under lights. As you can see in the photo above, I have a small florescent fixture. Florescent lights are nice for a number of reasons:

• They don't generate a lot of heat so you can put the plants really close to the lights, assuring that the plants get enough.
• You can get special grow-lite bulbs which provide light like sunlight. These are expensive but they work very well. If you have a 2-bulb fixture, a cheaper alternative is to get a warm white bulb and a cool white bulb and use both in your fixture. That's what I do. The combination of the two bulbs provides the same quality of light as the grow-lite bulbs.
• The bulbs last much, much longer than incandescent bulbs.

You can set your light fixture on a timer so that it comes on in the morning and goes off at night. Since indoor lights are not as strong as sunlight, you need to run your lights a bit longer. Mine run for 16 hours every day.

Most herbs don't need a lot of water, so if you forget to water them sometimes, they will probably do just fine. They don't need fertilizer either. When they grow too tall for your lights, give them a trim and freeze what you pick. Check out our article on preserving fresh herbs.

Not all herbs grow well in pots indoors. We recommend you try thyme (English or lemon), spearmint, oregano, chives, basil, or rosemary. Many markets now sell little pots (like the ones in the photo above) which are very cost-effective. No messing with potting mix, no waiting for your herbs to grow big enough to harvest. My little pots were big enough to use in a recipe right away and they are already growing back, ready for another small harvest.

Here's a basic chicken and vegetable stew that will use up some of your little harvest. You can use skinless, boneless thighs or bone-in, skin-on thighs, whichever you prefer.

Skillet Chicken and Vegetables
(serves 4, cost $7.15)

4 chicken thighs, about 1 ½ to 2 pounds
salt & pepper
1 Tablespoon paprika
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
2 onions, cut into ⅛ 's
3 carrots, peeled and cut into 3" lengths then cut in half lengthwise
1 ½ Tablespoons flour
1 ¼ cup chicken stock
2 Tablespoon cider vinegar or lemon juice
6 sprigs of thyme or lemon thyme
1 cup frozen peas

Sprinkle chicken thighs with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to skillet and saute until golden brown. Remove chicken to a plate. Sprinkle with paprika and set aside while you cook the vegetables. Add the onions and carrots to the skillet and saute for 5 minutes. Sprinkle onions and carrots with flour. Stir around for 1 minute. Add chicken stock, vinegar, and thyme sprigs. Stir to combine well and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and return chicken to the pan along with any juices that collected on the plate. Cover and cook for 30-45 minutes (less time if using boneless thighs, more time if using bone-in thighs). Remove the cover and add the peas. Stir and cook for 5 minutes. Taste the sauce for salt and add more if needed. Serve over rice or egg noodles.

Hint: Don't have a cover for your large skillet? Use a cookie sheet as a cover.