Chicken in Peanut Sauce recipe from Guinea-Bissau

I am back to my first love, African recipes now. And though there will be other recipes presented over the next few days and weeks, there will also be new and never seen before African recipes.

I am going to be doing a culinary tour of those countries that few people know of in Africa, the Portuguese-speaking ones (most people know of the Swahili-speaking countries in East Africa, the Francophone countries of North, Central and West Africa and the Anglophone countries of West, East and Southern Africa.

But there are a number of countries colonized by the Portuguese that still use Portuguese as a main language. These countries are:

Guinea-Bissau, São Tome and Principé, Angola, Mozambique and the Comoros Islands.

Today's recipe is a classic peanut and chicken stew from Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.

Caldo de Mancarra (Chicken in Peanut Sauce)

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, cut into serving-sized portions

1 large onion, chopped

olive oil

250g peanuts (mancarra) or peanut butter

1 chicken stock cube

2 ripe tomatoes

salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

hot chillies, to taste

Method:

Season the chicken pieces with salt, black pepper and chilli (you can either use hot chilli powder, or as is more traditionally, pound hot chillies in a mortar then rub this paste over the chicken pieces). Set aside to marinate in a bowl for 10 minutes.

Heat a little oil in a large pot, add the chicken and chopped onion and fry briefly until the chicken is just coloured. Pour in 500ml water, crumble in the chicken stock cube, and cook over low heat for about 18 minutes.

In the meantime, if you are using fresh peanuts, grind finely in a coffee grinder. Turn into a blender, add the chopped tomatoes and process to a smooth paste.

Stir this peanut paste into the meat broth then bring to a boil. Cook for about 20 minutes more, or until the chicken pieces are cooked through and tender.

Serve hot, accompanied by white rice.

For an ever growing selection of traditional recipes from Guinea-Bissau, please visit the Celtnet Guinea-Bissau recipes page.