Ecuador: Seco de Pollo (Chicken Stew)

Preparation:

- without a blender: 35 mins
- with a blender: 20 mins
- with a toddler and a baby in a front pack: 50 mins, faster with a blender, probably

Cook time: 3 hours

Serves: An adult per chicken thigh cutlet

Serve with:  sliced avocado, jasmine rice, fresh coriander, and if you have the ingredients handy, some kind of delicious holiday cocktail.

Olivier's: ★★★★

The first thing that I want to say about this chicken stew is: Even if you have never been to Ecuador, or anywhere similar, but need a holiday, cook this stew! The first thing that Olivier said was "This tastes like holiday."

The second thing about this recipe is that the chicken alone, while tasty, has some difficulty standing in isolation. It is nice, but not amazing. BUT: add a bit of rice and some avocado as sides, and... [imagine the sound of exploding happiness]. The sides really bring out the flavours of the stew.

Anyway, having no real idea what Ecuadorian flavours are like, it seemed safest to follow the recipe that I chose for this as closely as possible. I can't say if more salt or pepper or chilli or the proper juice would have made the stew better alone, but, an extra jalapeno may have given it a bit of extra tang. And by extra tang, I mean some tang.

I had the small problem of my food chopper not working, and while waiting for a replacement blade, the avocados ripened, so, I had to cook this anyway. Instead of pureeing the sauce at the beginning, I just chopped everything as finely as possible and hoped that by the end of slow-cooking, my broken blade would be able to make its way through the softened vegetables. It did.

So, crank up your slow cooker, and simmer your way to a holiday.



Atomic Toddler Meltdown + newborn crying = hastily cut avocado. Also, I mostly just want to eat coriander.

Ingredients

1.8kg of chicken thigh cutlets
2 teaspoons of ground cumin
2 tsp smoked paprika (here Laylita suggests ground achiote or annatto, but says that paprika is fine if you haven't got those)
oil
1 onion, diced finely
7 garlic cloves, grated or chopped finely
300ml beer¹ (Laylita says chicken broth or wine or chicha are good too)1 cup of orange juice, though if you can get naranjilla (lulo) juice, as per the original recipe, that would probably be better.
5 medium tomatoes, chopped finely
2 capsicums, seeds removed and chopped finely
1 jalapeno or more
1 bunch of coriander, chopped finely, keep some to sprinkle on the stew at the end.
1 bunch of parsley, chopped finely
3 sprigs of thyme, chopped finely (should be oregano, but I didn't have any)
Salt and pepper


Method

1. Salt and pepper the chicken, and using enough oil to coat the bottom of your pan, fry it on medium heat until it is a lovely crispy brown on all the sides. Don't overcrowd the pan, or you will boil the meat. Put into your slow cooker.

2. If you have a blender or food processor, blend the rest of everything together. If you don't, then chop everything as finely as possible. If you are really keen, you could use a mortar and pestle to make everything into a paste. I guess you could try and mash the solids after they have cooked - after removing the chicken of course.

3. Put your puree (or each finely chopped ingredient) into the slow cooker with the chicken, and cook it on high for 3 hours.


¹ We used Little Creatures Pale Ale

Notes

- If the sauce is too thin at the end, remove the chicken pieces from the stew, transfer it to a big saucepan and simmer it down until it is thickened.



Next Stop: Poland