Slow Cooker Sephardic White Bean Stew

It is almost slow cooker weather in Florida!  Granted, that means Highs below 85 degrees, but still, it makes me happy.  In an effort to use expand my slow cooker repertoire to a more healthy variety, I decided to turn to vegetarian cookbooks and happened upon Gil Marks' Olive Trees and Honey.   In it, was a recipe for Sephardic White Beans with Leeks.  While I was making it, it looked more like a side dish than the main dish, so I bulked it up with some zucchini and eggplant I had in the refrigerator.  It made the house smell fantastic and is great over rice for a hearty vegetarian meal. 

I didn't take any pictures of it while cooking, but I do have photos of the finished product.  I made this in between building a sukkah at my synagogue and celebrating a friend's new baby - not a whole lot of time left over for photography.  Speaking of which, if you are Jewish, Happy Sukkot!  I won't go into the details of the holiday here, so if you would like more information, here's a link. 

Sephardic White Bean Stew - Up Close and Personal

Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Knowing that I have to work late this week, I wanted to make sure that I don't have a repeat of the last two weeks' funk fest and got ahead of the game with a slow cooker adaptation of a old family favorite.  My mom used to work in an Italian restaurant as a teen, so I had the strange childhood comfort food pairing of Italian foods and Eastern European Jewish foods.  At a favorite restaurant in the area, The Refinery, my hubby and I enjoyed a fantastic rendition of Chicken Cacciatore.  So good, I felt like I was back in grade school and sitting down to the table for a plate of my mom's cooking!  So good, I've been craving it ever since and felt the need to make a slow cooker version of my mom's Chicken Cacciatore.

With a nod to my mom, it's not cooking until there's garlic sauteing in oil. 

To me, chicken cacciatore is a braised stew of chicken and bell peppers in tomato sauce.  To adapt this to a slow cooker, I sauteed the onions, a red and green bell pepper, and a half pack of mushrooms with a small can of tomato paste and white wine with some oregano, salt and pepper to taste. 

After cooking this mixture with a can of tomato sauce to get all of the flavors to mingle before pouring this tomato love over chicken thighs. If you had the time, you should sear the chicken parts first. 

I just took a pack of chicken thighs I had in the freezer and put the tomato mixture over the top and stored it in the fridge until the next morning when I set the slow cooker up to cook for the day.

After cooking on LOW for 6-8 hours, here is the final result.

Ingredients:

1 package chicken parts, or thighs (skinless)
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 medium sized yellow onion, sliced
1 red and green bell pepper, sliced
1 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1/2 package of white button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup of white wine
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons dried oregano

Recipe:
Saute sliced garlic in olive oil until tan.  Add onions and bell peppers to the pan.  Cook until the onions become translucent and the bell peppers brighten and lose their crispness. Add the tomato paste to the pan and saute it with the pepper mixture for one minute.  Add the white wine to the pan and cook until the tomato paste is cooked into the wine.  Add the tomato sauce, with oregano, salt and pepper, to the pan and cook for five minutes - while scraping the pan to ensure that no bits get left behind.  Pour this mixture over chicken parts and into the slow cooker.  Set on low for 6 - 8 hours and serve over pasta or with garlic bread.

Southwestern Stew Quesadillas

Looking in the fridge, I noticed that I had two open containers of salsa left over from a holiday party potluck.  This started clean out the fridge madness which lead to clean out the kitchen madness - refrigerator, freezer and pantry.  Necessity being the mother of invention, I decided to see what would happen if I experimented with a slow cooker salsa chicken stew and made it into quesadilla filler like I had done years ago as part of a self-imposed budget eating challenge. 

I honestly can't remember what was in the slow cooker salsa chicken stew last time beyond salsa and chicken, but I remember liking it.  In the picture above, the only thing that was bought for this recipe was the chicken.  This post should really be called Kitchen Clean Out Southwestern Stew for Quesadillas but that's really just too long.  I picked up some "Mexican" Shredded Cheese and Whole Wheat Tortillas when I picked up the chicken thighs at Publix to round out the meal.

I love a recipe when I get a lot of product from a little bit of work, and this one fits that bill!  Into my large slow cooker went a package of boneless skinless chicken thighs, both jars of salsa, the can of tomatoes with green chilies, a can of pinto beans (rinsed), a can of black beans (rinsed), a quarter of the bag of frozen corn, three lonely sweet potatoes and not pictured are the Swiss Chard stems and half of a small white onion that got added when I remembered they were in the fridge too.  To the mix, I added some salt, freshly ground black pepper and Cuban oregano that I dried in the food dehydrator last summer when Hydro Harvest Farms had a few vines that were close to becoming the next Audrey a la Little Shop of Horrors. To make the stew vegetarian, just sub the chicken for some additional root vegetables or more beans depending on your preference.  The stew could even be vegan, but I just don't trust vegan cheese to make vegan quesadillas. 

I set all of this up in the slow cooker last night so that all I had to do today was put the crock in the slow cooker on the way out the door to work and come home to the delicious smells of dinner. 

Not much to look at yet, is it? Just add cheese and greens!!!

After preheating the oven to 350 degrees, I put three tortillas on a baking sheet. On top of the baking sheet went enough hand torn Swiss Chard leaves to make a thin and even layer over one half of each of the tortillas - this turned out to be about 3 leaves per tortilla.  Some well drained stew went onto the greens and some cheese went on top before the tortillas got folded and put in the oven until the cheese melted.

Here's the final product - Kitchen Clean Out Southwestern Stew Quesadillas!  One and a half quesadillas were enough for me and hubby to be full and happy.  

"Recipe"
1 package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 can of black beans
1 can of pinto beans
1 can of tomatoes with green chilies
1 1/2 cups of frozen corn kernels
2 jars of salsa, minus 1/2 of each from a recipe made for a potluck
1 half of a small while onion, roughly chopped
2 cups of swiss chard stems, roughly chopped
3 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into eighths
1 tablespoon of dried cuban oregano*
Salt and Pepper to Taste

Whole Wheat Tortillas
"Mexican" Shredded Cheese - about a 1/4 cup per quesadilla

Yield:  A lot of stew

Final verdict:    I loved it and cleaned my plate - I was full by the end of the first one and went back for half of the second anyway.  Tempted by Brew polished off the the quesadillas, but by the end he was picking out the stew and cheese and left the plate with the rest of the greens on the tortilla.  I think Swiss Chard in a quesadilla was just too much produce for him.  Some of the rest of the stew will most definitely become quesadillas later in the week, and the remainder will get frozen for a night when cooking energy is nowhere to be found in the Seduced by Produce house.  The stew all alone is going to be great for lunches!

*Do not use regular oregano, the flavor will not be the same - just leave it out if you don't have it.