Chicken Stew Provencal

I have been trying to work on the amount of food I am buying and cooking.  In the past I would ambitiously purchase food for a few different meals in one week then I would cook up one of the recipes and end up with piles of leftovers and still have all the food I had purchased for other recipes.  I eventually realized I will realistically cook at most two new meals in a week and sometimes only one depending on the current status of food in my house and what I have going on in any given week.  But, I also needed to cut down on the amounts I was cooking for each meal.  Most recipes are meant for a group and I went through a period of cooking way too much of every dinner.  I would end up with baking pans full of food and then I’d either force myself to eat it for days and get bored with it or throw it out and feel guilty.  Oh heavens, the waste! 

Now I spend a lot of time halving recipes and even quartering.  I still cannot make a small batch of red beans and rice and get the proportions right.  I also bought the book "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" by Judith Jones and never cooked one thing out of it.  It was a good one to flip through so maybe I will revisit and see if there is anything I want to make.  It’s a slow process but I am slowly getting better at making an amount that I want to eat and not wasting food.

I got this recipe for Chicken Stew Provencal from the Washington Post Cooking for One column. 

It’s a good column with some handy tips for cooking for one person but unfortunately there are not enough of them, columns or tips. The columnist, Joe Yonan published his own cookbook about cooking for one so when I have some money to spend I will definitely check it out.  “Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One”.  Another thing I like about this recipe is that the author claims the mix of carbs and protein is good for a post workout meal.  I work out a good bit so I definitely liked the sounds of that. 

Herbes De Provence was new to me.  I’d heard of it but never tried it, luckily my roommate had some.  I didn’t measure that so there might have been more than a tsp in there. 

Here’s the recipe:

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 (about 10 ounces) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut crosswise in half, then each half cut into thin strips
1 medium onion, cut into thin wedges
1 stalk celery, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
1 medium carrot, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
1 cup low-sodium, nonfat chicken broth
14 ounces canned no-sodium diced tomatoes, plus their juices
2 medium skin-on red potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence, crushed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook, turning the pieces occasionally, for 5 to 7 minutes or until they have browned on all sides.

Add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft.

Add the broth, tomatoes with their juice, potatoes, herbes de Provence, salt and pepper, stirring to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the potatoes are fork-tender. Serve hot.

I used one large chicken breast, I don’t own a kitchen scale so don’t know the weight. I also only used half an onion.  Next time I make this I will cut the potatoes smaller. They were a little large for my preference. Probably bite sized, but a big bite with only potato and I like getting everything into one bite. Other than that it was really tasty and nice to add something new to the repertoire.

Here’s the link: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2008/10/15/chicken-stew-provencal/