Ivorian Peanut Butter Tomato Sauce ala Vanda

Highly recommended by my best friend, Vanda. She sent these simple instructions in an email after telling me how yummy it was. I made it and my husband, who never has an opinion about what I should make for meals, actually told me that this is one dish he'd like to see very often :) So Vanda, as far as I'm concerned, this is a 5 star dish :)

Stir fry 2 sliced onions and 2 cloves crushed, minced garlic in oil. Put in 2 heaping spoons of peanut butter, stir, then add 4 fresh beef tomatoes cut in quarters. Add a little bit of water, and season with salt, pepper, and chili to taste. For non-vegetarians, put whole cooked chicken in.

Serve on top of nice sticky rice.

Tip from Vanda: You want the tomatoes to remain intact
and some tomato juice to be incorporated with the
peanut butter. May add small spoon of tomato pureee
for flavor & concentrated feel to sauce.

I halved the recipe this morning when making it for my husband's lunch and served it over brown basmati rice. This was actually one of my first posts but every time I make it I either forget to take the picture, or we make it at night when the lighting was bad at our house. So today, I figured if I wanted to post this recipe with the picture, I better take the picture today!

Bukky's Nigerian Tomato Sauce

My friend from forever, Bukky, shared her recipe for the tomato sauce that she makes all the time. It was very simple and very yummy so I'm sharing it here with you.









Cut in chunks and put in blender:

1 lb tomatoes (she said she fills up her blender)
1 medium onion
2+ cloves of garlic (to your taste, there's no such thing as too much garlic here)

Blend. Then heat a pot on the stove until it gets very hot. Add

1 T of oil or so

When it gets really hot, throw in

Some sliced onions just to flavor the oil, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of one.

When onions are translucent, pour the tomato mixture into the pot. Add:

1/2 small can of tomato paste
Meat (lb of ground beef or chicken pieces if you're not vegetarian, I threw in a can of mashed vegetarian Swiss Steak and it was great)
Chicken broth (powdered or cube like Knorr, to taste)
Curry powder (also to taste)
Thyme (to taste)
Hot pepper, chopped (optional, she uses 1-2 habaneros, I'm too chicken so I just put a bit of powdered cayenne pepper)
1-2 bay leaves
Salt to taste

Stir well, wait until bubbling, then cover pot slightly, lower heat and cook forever. Well, she said at least for 40 minutes until there's sauce splattered all over your stovetop, and then you know it's done. I waited, let it simmer and bubble for 40 minutes and sure enough, my stovetop was splattered all over with tomato sauce and I felt like I had achieved the proper Nigerian tomato sauce. And it was good. Especially served over cous-cous.