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RECIPE 1: African Peanut Stew | CHIOMA 🥜
INGREDIENTS
• 2-3 pounds chicken legs, thighs and/or wings
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 large yellow or white onion, sliced
• 3-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
• 6-8 garlic cloves, chopped roughly
• 2-3 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 15-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup roasted peanuts
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
• Salt and black pepper
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro
•••
RECIPE
1. Brown the chicken:
Heat the vegetable oil in a large soup pot set over medium-high heat. Salt the chicken pieces well, pat them dry and brown them
in the oil. Don’t crowd the pot, so do this in batches. Set the chicken pieces aside as they brown.
2. Sauté the vegetables:
Sauté the onions in the oil for 3-4 minutes, stirring often and scraping any browned bits off the bottom of the pot. Add the ginger
and garlic and sauté another 1-2 minutes, then add the sweet potatoes and stir well to combine.
3. Cook the stew:
Add the chicken broth, crushed tomatoes, peanut butter, peanuts, coriander and cayenne and stir well to combine. Add the
chicken. Bring to a simmer and taste for salt, adding more if needed.
Cover the pot and simmer gently for 90 minutes (check after an hour), or until the chicken meat easily falls off the bone and the
sweet potatoes are tender.
4. Remove bones and chop the cooked chicken:
Remove the chicken pieces and set them in a bowl to cool, until cool enough to touch. Remove and discard the skin if you want,
or chop it and put it back into the pot.
Shred the meat off the bones and put the meat back in the pot.
5. Adjust seasonings:
Adjust the seasonings for salt and cayenne, then add as much black pepper as you think you can stand—the stew should be
peppery. Stir in the cilantro and serve by itself, or with simple steamed rice.
INTERVIEW 1 | CHIOMA 🥜
Chioma: That was the first time we read something in a classroom where I felt seen.
Lu: Oh what was it?
Chioma: Hang on, let me find it.
•••
Originally
by Carol Anne Duffy
We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didn’t live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.
All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.
But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.
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