Got Tomatoes?? A Recipe for You - West African Peanut Chicken

Today after school I went out and looked at our "garden." Our garden consists of 2 Topsy-Turvies and a bunch of random containers with tomatoes, bell peppers, and cayenne peppers as well as a window box that used to have lettuce in it (it all went to seed), a couple of containers with basil, and a container that used to have cilantro in it but it all died. Oh, and our citrus tree that looks a bit different from when we first got it. (This all reminds me... I really need to take pictures of our garden before it all dies since it looks a lot different than when we first planted it.)

Today's garden pickings - yum!

That was not what I was intending to write about.... what I was intending to write about is: if you have extra tomatoes you're looking to use up do I have a recipe for you - West African Peanut Chicken! We had it tonight (for probably the 2nd time ever - it needs to happen more often - it is SO delicious!!) and this is all that we had left:

It's delicious, even if it doesn't look that great!

I found the recipe when reading Family Feasts for $75 a Week that I checked out from the library. It has some great thrifty recipes many of which can be found at the author's website.

West African Peanut Chicken


Ingredients
1/2 cup peanut oil (or any cooking oil)
2# chicken in bite sized pieces (I actually only used 1 chicken breast but then again we treat meat like a condiment around here.)
3-4 onions, minced or pureed in food processor
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 cups pureed tomatoes (or 3 c. tomato sauce and 1 c. water) (I pureed tomatoes just picked from my garden in my blender = delicious!!)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup water
1t cayenne pepper or red pepper
1/2t black pepper
1/2t salt
Directions
Heat oil in a deep pot or very large heavy skillet. Add the chicken and fry on both sides until it is nicely browned. If your pan isn’t quite as wide as mine, you might do better frying half the chicken at a time, to keep the pieces separate and to let them get nicely brown. Remove the chicken and set aside.
Fry the onions and garlic in the same pot. When onion is soft and starting to brown, stir in tomatoes and water. Reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes. Return chicken to pot. Stir in peanut butter. it will look clumpy for a minute but will mix in nicely once it heats up. Add red pepper, salt, and pepper to taste. Simmer on low heat for 10-15 minutes.
Serve with rice.

The last time we made this recipe we used canned tomatoes from the grocery store which worked but fresh tomatoes make this delicious! Enjoy!