Spicy Tomato Stew

First a quick life update… As you all (hopefully) have read from my previous post, things have been a little hectic for me. In addition to starting culinary school I also recently moved to a new apartment. It was hard to say goodbye to my wonderful apartment in Williamsburg, but Astoria has been treating me nicely (for the most part) too. As a result of moving we just got our internet connected a few days ago PLUS my cell phone wasn’t really getting reception in my apartment (but of course it decided to start working perfectly out of the blue Monday…), which meant my connection with the outside world has been sparse.  All this to say sorry for the lull in updates. Hopefully they’ll get back their somewhat more regular frequency, but I’m not making any promises. (P.S. Thanks to the random person who’s wireless I was able to “borrow” occasionally!)

For those long-time readers, you might remember me making a spicy tomato soup some months past. Well here’s another version that has a similar concept, but also yields a rather different result. Instead of pasta there’s potatoes and I substituted chicken for the Italian sausage. I used less liquid in this recipe as well, which places it more in the stew rather than soup category.

Ingredients:

• potatoes cut however you want (you already know I don’t remember exactly how many – I think I wanted to practice my tournage again for some strange reason)
• 1 jar of fire roasted tomato sauce + 1/2 jar’s worth of chicken stock
• 1 or 2 diced chicken breasts
• salt
• pepper
• sugar (I wanted the sauce to be a little sweet)
• red pepper flakes
• chili powder
• oregano
• parsley
• garlic powder
• diced scallions
• 1/2 bag of frozen peas
• sour or heavy cream (optional)

Procedure: Essentially just throw everything in a pot. Start with the liquids and potatoes (remember the larger they are the longer they will take to cook). Next you can add the chicken and once that has cooked (nobody likes salmonella!) you can then start tasting and adding the seasonings. The amount of seasonings of course will vary depending on the flavor that the sauce already has, but seeing as how this is meant to be spicy it is unwise to skimp on the red pepper flakes. I saved the scallions and peas for last because I wanted the scallions to add a little crunch and the peas only take about two seconds.  If you would like to cut some of the heat in addition to adding a little richness, then feel free to add some sour or heavy cream to the recipe.