4 - 5 pieces of chicken, 1 kg of soft tomatoes, 1 onion and a little garlic! Simple and delicious...
Recipe for tomato stew (or tomato stew) with chicken, pork or beef and garlic. Since I have softer tomatoes in the fridge, I immediately prepare it. It is delicious with warm polenta on the side!
Ingredients (~4 servings):
• 1 kg of well-ripened tomatoes – they can be softer
• 650 g of chicken meat with bone, or any other meat you have
• A large onion
• 3 tablespoons of oil
• Half a teaspoon of sugar
• A teaspoon with a tip of starch
• 4 cloves of garlic
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Parsley for serving
Prepare the tomatoes. If they are ripe, you will be able to peel them immediately, without effort. Then chop the pulp into cubes. Leave aside 2-3 tomatoes that are firmer, chop them into cubes as well, but keep them separate from the others.
Chicken - brown it nicely on all sides, because that way it will give much more flavor to our food. We take a frying pan or a saucepan and brown the meat by adding a little oil beforehand; or if you have an airfryer, put the meat in it without anything else and cook at 195 degrees for about 25 minutes.
In the meantime, chop the onion finely, then in another frying pan, put it to cook with three tablespoons of oil. Add about half a glass of water, and cook over very low heat, stirring often, until the liquid evaporates and the onion becomes very soft, turns yellow and begins to caramelize. This will take about 20 minutes, I repeat cooking over low heat, and it will be ready at about the same time as the meat. This way of cooking will make the onion sweet and tasty, and will count a lot for the final taste of the food, you will see.
Over the onion, add the soft diced tomatoes, another half a glass of water or chicken broth, add the nicely browned meat and let everything simmer for about 10 minutes over low to medium heat.
Because we have a large amount of tomatoes and little fat, the stew can come out acidic to the taste, so the best thing to do is to temper this acidity with half a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of starch. This will also thicken the sauce a little. Dissolve these two ingredients in a tablespoon of water, until everything resembles milk. Then add a little hot sauce to this mixture, mix, and pour directly into the stew. Homogenize everything.
Then add those firmer diced tomatoes. You will see that the sauce enriched at the end with some fresh tomatoes is more aromatic and tasty.
Let it simmer for 2 minutes, until the starch thickens the sauce a little (but don't expect the dish to thicken very much, because I added a small amount of starch).
Then at the end we adjust the taste with salt, freshly ground black pepper, and garlic pressed through a press. We turn off the heat, so that the garlic doesn't cook completely, and retains some of its spiciness. We stir and the dish is ready.
Serve hot sprinkled with chopped parsley and with hasty polenta!