Chicken Stew and Chicken Soccer Powerhouses

Ivory Coast

KEDJENOU
(chicken stew)

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 eggplant
3 tomatoes
2 jalapeño or other hot peppers
3 garlic cloves
2 onions
3 tablespoons peanut oil
¾ cup chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon thyme

Takes about 2 hours
makes 8 bowls

SPECIAL UTENSILS

large oven proof pot or casserole dish with tight fitting lid
tin foil, if lid does not fit tightly

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Peel and cut eggplant into ½” cubes. Seed and dice tomatoes. Dice chile peppers, garlic cloves, and onions.

Combine all ingredients into large, oven-proof pot. Stir. Cover pot with lid. If the lid doesn’t make a tight seal, cover pot with tin foil and then the lid. DO NOT remove lid while baking. Bake at 325 degrees for 90 minutes. Use oven mitt to shake pot every 10 minutes to prevent chicken and other ingredients from sticking to the bottom and sides.

After the 90 minutes of baking has passed, check to see if ingredients are tender. If not, replace foil and lid, bake for another 30 minutes, and check once more for doneness. Again, use oven mitt to shake pot every ten minutes. Goes well with rice or attiéké, made from grated, fermented cassava. Attiéké can be found in African food markets.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe call for skinless chicken breasts.

2) It would have been exciting if one of the ingredients were shinless chickens.

3) I don’t know if chickens have proper shins.

4) Or even improper shins.

5) You need to wear shin guards if you play soccer.

6) This advice holds if you are human or a chicken.

7) Have you ever beheld a chicken playing soccer without shin guards?

8) No, I don’t think so.

9) Ivorians, people from the Ivory Coast, love to play soccer and often play in the World Cup.

10) They also love chicken.

11) So we can conclude they love to see chicken play soccer.

12) Of course, chickens can play soccer. Their tiny size enables them to dribble the ball easily through the legs of any defender.

13) And my gosh, chickens sure can head the ball into the net. Their brain is so tiny that concussions really can’t damage their intellect. And the best chickens can fly for up to  200 feet. They can indeed get to any ball in the air. One flick of the hen’s head and there’s another goal for poultry.

14) Ivorian chicken soccer is of the highest level.

15) Ivorian chickens would play in the World Cup except for the fact that the men’s national soccer team is still somewhat better than the poultry squad and a nation may only enter one team in the tournament.

16) Greenland’s human soccer team garners few victories and never qualifies for any international tournaments. The land’s chickens hatch from the shell with moves that would have put Pele to shave. One would think that the Greenlandic chickens might have a good chance for soccer fame.

17) Unfortunately, it’s a tough life for any chick yearning for soccer glory. Actually, it’s a short life. Greenland’s arctic freezes one chicken after another. Sure, they could survive playing indoor soccer, but as of press time, no Greenlandic municipality has budgeted for an indoor poultry soccer arena.

18) This isn’t so much of a concern for human soccer players, but Greenlandic chickens are terrified of being eaten by polar bears on their way from the coop to the indoor soccer arena.

19) An obvious solution would be to send Greenland’s soccer chickens to a country without a top-level human team, Albania for example. However, the process of navigating the bureaucratic mazes to get poultry visas to Albania has stopped everyone so far. We can only dream.

– Chef Paul

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