Jabbo Goes to Africa

A friend of ours shared these two recipes. Both are muy delicioso.

West African Peanut Soup
This dish originates in Mali, where it's called Maafe (French) or Tigadenena (Bamana). It traveled to the US on slave ships and the name changed to Virginia Peanut Soup.

I used the recipe from Cookie and Kate:
http://cookieandkate.com/2013/west-african-peanut-soup/

It sounds a little gross, at first, but I was assured by said friend as well as a renowned papyrologist that it would be worth my while. It smelled gross: like peanut butter and chicken broth. But I served it over brown rice and garnished it with peanuts and it's one of the best dishes we've tried.

It's supposed to be vegan, but I used chicken broth. The available chicken broth at our grocery store has less sodium and cholesterol than the available vegetable broth, which sort of defeats the point. I could technically make my own vegetable broth, but who wants to spend that much time in the kitchen, am I right? Also, we used kale instead of collard greens, because kale is awesome.

Moroccan Chicken
This is a basic North African Tagine that uses eggplant and chicken. I cut this recipe in half and used a pound and a half of boneless thigh meat.

It uses basic spices, but in a distinct North African blend that makes this taste pretty exotic.

Here are the recipes:
http://www.eatgood4life.com/2013/01/moroccan-chicken.html
http://homecooking.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/r/blv291.htm

The completed dish tasted a little sweet. More sweet than savory, in fact, but that's common for North African cuisine, I think. I liked it. Aine liked it not as much as I did. But we'll probably do this one again.

By the way, eggplant basically tastes like a purple squash (or cucumber), although it's the same genus as the potato and the tomato. It stays firmer after stewing than squash does, so I might substitute this next time I need squash in a dish.

This Week for Lunch
Not African. Italian. A slightly modified Caprese Sandwich, based on the salad from Capri. The basic ingredients are whole wheat bread, pesto, basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes. We smear the pesto on the top bun like a condiment. Schnucks was out of fresh basil, so I used some crinkly Savoy Spinach. Also, Aine doesn't like tomatoes, so she substitues cukes.