Ghana peanut butter soup

Ghanaian peanut butter soup.

So, met this woman and she kept going on an on about her favorite dish. Ghana peanut butter soup.
The food in Ghana is simple. Usually it revolves around something called "fufu".
Fufu from the documentary I saw is made with.

(Foto from treehugger- thanks)

 a root called Cassava.

The root is boiled and pounded into a consistency of a dough.


This is a woman doing that labor, by the looks of it in the documentary it seems to be a workout
and barely worth the calories.
Since I don't have the tools or the inclination to spend two hours pounding something I made Amaranth.


But back to the soup.
The recipe is simple.
1/2 peanut butter - I got mine from whole foods they have a machine that grinds it fresh.
2 pieces of chicken leg - I skinned then de-boned them then de-grisled them then chopped them to bite size
1 potato
10 mushrooms quarters - this is optional I just added mushrooms cause it is winter.
1 hot pepper - I used a Fresno pepper but you can use stronger ones
http://missvickie.com/howto/spices/peppers/peppersdict.html
The above is a link to peppers so you can recognize them.
1/2 cup of cilantro -  I just like adding some green.
2 garlic cloves
2 small onions - I don't go for sweet ones but you can.
1 can of tomatoes- I used chopped so I could have some tomato texture.


The cooking is simple.
Fry the chicken for 5. You can add oil I skipped this as it is new years diet.
Add the chopped onion fry for 3
Add the vegetables you want, just make them small
add the potato, make it small.
I ground the pepper, cilantro, 1/4 onion in a food processor however it died in action so I ended up working
on my fine chopping skills.
Add this concoction too.
Then add the tomatoes and water.
The last part is the peanut butter simply melt it with hot water and add it too.
Adjust the seasoning and leave it for 90 minutes.

Now, some pieces of advice.
Don't touch your eyes after working with hot peppers (I never listen to this one)

So after 90 minutes you should have delicious soup.
In Ghana they eat the soup with the pounded Kassava root that took 2 hours of pounding.





I skipped it and simply made Amaranth.
1 part amaranth to 3 parts water on low heat.

Yum, try it.
I am going to get me another serving.

Amaranth with a side of coconut chicken breast

Let's see.

Cooking, well let's cook something.
Today's theme is Amaranth. Amaranth was a staple in America before the Spaniards came in and brought their food. I have never seen it in real life though, so for now I am content with getting the end result. Amaranth is easily available in most health stores and "Whole Foods" which is one of the better supermarkets in America.
I think the fascination with the ingredients in Whole Foods is what started my attempt at elevating my cooking. My wife was a Trader Joe but she was soon converted.
Some might say only the rich can afford to shop there but to be honest if you have great food at home you cut down on the restaurant bills and the Doctor bills.


The end result was the picture above.
Basically Amaranth with a side of chicken breast in coconut milk.


Amaranth has a nutty taste and it has a nice consistency similar to a porridge which takes some getting used to if you are too used to cooking rice (dry) , Quinoa and Couscous.
The ratio is 1:3 1 Amaranth to 3 water. I usually replace one water with soup stock to get more taste.
Simply put all in a pot place on low heat and 30-40 minutes later it is ready.
I recommend stirring it every 10 minutes to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the pot.

The chicken breast was a nice bird. As a child I grew up in an area that was sorrounded by agriculture.
So there were a lot of factory bird growers, they lacked employees so we would always go and work there as teenagers for some change. To be honest if I were a bird I would have not been happy there. The conditions were not the best. So these days I try to get "happy" chicken. My current fix is Eataly as they have Amish and Memmonite chicken, both are grown by "decent" farmers who let their birds run around a bit. You can get similar items at Whole Foods, just look at the stickers they have a ranking system on which had a better life.
So prep
Simply cut the breast into bit sizes.
Chop onion
Chop hot pepper, I used the tabasco one so it wouldn't be that hot.
I wouldn't worry about the hotness as the coconut milk will calm it down.

Cooking
I used coconut oil but vegetable oil would be fine.
Add the onions and fry for 4 minutes for some color
Add the hot pepper for another minute
Then drop the chicken breast.
Your goal is to get color on the breast, just a little color. By color I mean a slight sear
the sear is the taste. Simply  sear=color=taste.
After 2-3 minutes add some coconut milk, you won't lose much in the cooking so
simply as much milk as you want the consistency of the sauce. More milk means more watery sauce (which would be great for rice)    but in this case the amaranth has its own moisture so I added less.
Leave it on low heat while you wait for the Amaranth.

Presentation
simply scoop the Amaranth on the plate and add the breast on the side.
The color is a bit brown, so simply chop any herb you have to give it some nice "green" fresh look.
I used dill but cilantro would be great too.
Then stick your fork into the breast and then move the breast around the amaranth to coat it. After that sink it again in the coconut sauce then eat.

Yum, yum.