West African Groundnut Stew

Really, you expected a clever title to the post when that's the name of the recipe?

Shah, as if.

Here's what you start with. Note the distinct lack of meat. As I said to J when he came over to grub: "Unless you count crushing olives, nothing was killed to make this dish."

I can't wait until I have the real camera so I can take good pictures of finely diced ginger. I LOVE ginger. It's friggin' tasty. Such a great bite to it. It was nice here too with all the other flavors. I diced it small enough that no one would ever get a huge knob of ginger, but large enough that when you got a dice on your spoon, you knew it.

Welcome to three yellow onions being sauteed with cayenne and garlic.

So you sweat, and you sweat. And then you add your perfectly (heh, right) cubed sweet potatoes and cabbage to the pot. Throw in tomato and apple juice, diced tomatoes, cilantro, and ginger.

After about 20, throw in the okra and peanut butter.

It's normally just a bowl of good stuff, but C wanted some starch too.

Funny Side Note Here

I had one of those Near East whole grain sides. Pecan & Garlic I think. Didn't have a lid to the 4-quart pot because it was still at Mark's from Iron Chef. (Yes, that was a couple of months ago. No I haven't gone to get it.) So I improvised with foil and walked away for a few minutes.

Unfortunately for C, and the grains, instead of turning the front burner from high to three so it could simmer, I turned the back burner to three and left the front burner on high.

"Turd" was C's generous description of the remains of the grain.

So sad.

Yeah, so I made egg noodles.

It was a nice combo.

Orzo, rice, or couscous would be ideal. Couscous, yeah, that's the ticket.

Anyway, here it is plated.

Here's the review from my mouth.

The peanut butter flavor definitely comes through, but it's not uber-cloying. I already mentioned the ginger. The cabbage is soft without having totally disintegrated and the juices add a bit o' silk that keeps the PB and okra from totally gumming it all up. The sweet potatoes are, well, sweet and the texture adds a great mouth-feel to it all.

SM, e-mail me when you've stopped lauging.

The recipe is here.

I added a lot more juice to it all, but likely had an extra 2 cups total of vegetation in the pot. Measuring and I are working out a custody arrangement for the food I use. We'll see how that goes.