Yes, we’re about to give you a recipe for another African chicken stew (Cote d’Ivoire’s kedjenou) , but this one is a bit different because a) it doesn’t include any peanut butter, b) it also traditionally doesn’t include any oil — the chicken cooks in its own juices in a pot called a canari, which is not dissimilar to a more well-known African cooking vessel, the tagine.
(Image source: La Maison de l’Afrique)
However, we used a large Dutch oven rather than a canari, so we took a leaf out of 196 Flavors’ book and used a bit of oil, just to be on the safe side. We also lazily used a tin of tomatoes instead of fresh ones, which added some liquid, but it was still quite incredible how saucy this was without any other form of liquid in the recipe. We wish we’d taken a ‘before’ photo!
Kedjenou
Ingredients
1 whole chicken, portioned
4 large tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and diced (or a tin of chopped tomatoes)
3 onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 aubergine, cut into large chunks
3 tbsp cooking oil
2 chicken stock cubes, crumbled
1 inch of ginger, grated
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp paprika
3 hot peppers, deseeded and finely diced
Salt and pepper
2 tbsp chopped parsley, to garnish
Rice, to serve
Method
1. Put the chicken pieces in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot.
2. Pour the oil over the chicken.
3. Add the other ingredients and mix well.
4. Cover the pot and cook on low heat for 45 minutes, stirring and turning the pot every 15 minutes.
5. Garnish with the parsley and serve with rice.
Serves 4-6
Well that has to be one of the shortest methods for any recipe we’ve posted so far! It doesn’t get much simpler than ‘chuck it all in a pot and cook it). Don’t panic if you’re making this and it looks like the chicken is never going to cook — to begin with, we thought we were going to be standing over the stove for a lot longer than 45 minutes but, like magic, it came good.
However, we don’t feel like we’ve done kedjenou justice. We read that a good kedjenou is always quite spicy, and we once again left out the chilli so we could serve it to the kids. We commented while we were eating it that we’ll have to make all of these West African dishes again in the future when we can actually turn up the heat!
That said, we enjoyed it even without the chilli — we were actually surprised by how much we enjoyed it, considering how simple it was. The aubergine gave it a Mediterranean character which, as mentioned above, made it feel very different from the other chicken stews we’ve made recently. Also, miraculously, both of our children actually ate a piece of (beautifully tender, you’d-be-crazy-not-to) chicken. Maybe the fact that we were able to eat out in the sunshine contributed to the Mediterranean feel and put them in a cheerful holiday mood. If only we could read their minds.
Good Food on Bad Plates 