Thai Salmon Salad with Peanut Sauce

A great salad with lots of nutrition and the peanut "saucy" flavor of Thailand and Southeast Asia. Well suited for lunch or a light meal. This salad is meant to have some heat from the chilies, but if you do not like heat, you can certainly replace the hot chilies with mild peppers, like some chopped red or green bell pepper. 

Ingredients (5 to 6 servings):

1 pound salmon in 2 or 3 fillets (can have skin, which will be removed after cooking)
1 tablespoon peanut oil for the fish
1/2 cup shredded or grated carrot
1 cup shredded cabbage
4 green onions, chopped with the green part
1 firm mango, peeled and chopped (not completely ripened)
2 chili peppers, sliced (serranos or jalapeños are good)
1/2 cup chopped fresh mixed greens, like spinach and kale
2 medium tomatoes, chopped (or 8 to 10 grape tomatoes, halved)
juice of 1 large lime
2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, lightly toasted, or finely chopped roasted peanuts
(optional) salt to taste (keep in mind, the dressing has salt from some ingredients)
lime wedges for serving

Dressing/Sauce:

1/3 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 1/2 inch piece of ginger, peeled
1 hot chili pepper, stem and seeds removed  
2 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons honey
a little water

For the dressing/sauce: put all of the ingredients, except water, into a blender; blend together well. If the sauce is too thick, add a tablespoon of water and blend, continue to repeat this step until the desired consistency is reached. 
For the salmon: heat the peanut oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat and fry the salmon on both sides until it is cooked through and is able to be flaked. Set aside to cool.
For the salad: in a large bowl, add the carrot, cabbage, green onions, mango, chili peppers, mixed greens and tomatoes; toss to mix. Squeeze the lime juice over the salad. Flake the salmon and toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet for about 1 minute (or chop some store bought roasted peanuts and heat them briefly in a dry skillet). Top each serving with some flaked salmon pieces and either some toasted sesame seeds or chopped peanuts. Drizzle some of the dressing over each salad and serve with a wedge or two of lime on the side.

WORD HISTORY:
Dwindle-This word is related to "dead," "death" and "die," all words from Germanic, with the verb "die" either coming to Old English as a borrowing from Old Norse, itself a Germanic language, or as an original English word and receiving emphasis and reinforcement from Old Norse to help it prevail as the primary word for "to lose one's life." "Dwindle" goes back to Indo European "dheu," which meant, "to die." This gave Old Germanic "dwinanan," meaning, "to lessen, to diminish, to waste away." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "dwinan," meaning, "to waste away, to fade away." This then became "dwinen" and then "dwine," with the "dwindle" form showing up in William Shakespeare's play "Henry IV, published in about 1598." Exactly why the suffix was added is a mystery to me. Shakespeare's use of "dwindle" certainly boosted overall usage of the word. Some relatives in other Germanic languages: Low German "verdwienen" (to disappear, to lessen), Dutch "verdwijnen" (to disappear), West Frisian "ferdwine" ("to disappear"), Icelandic "dvina" (to diminish, to lessen, to decrease). NOTES: 1) I have found "reference" to a Danish form "tvine," meaning "to pine away," but sources are few and sketchy, so I can't confirm it as a modern form. Old Norse, the forerunner of the modern North Germanic languages, had "dvina" (to diminish, to lessen). 2) I cannot find a form in German, including in Old High German, the ancestor of modern German, but that "might" be because the word did not come into extensive use before the dialects that became German pushed southward. Further, there was obviously no later borrowing of the word from Low German.

Sierra Leonean Chicken Groundnut Stew

Sierra Leone is a small country located along the central west coast of Africa. Its capital is Freetown. Portuguese and Spanish trading ships began visiting the area in the 1400s, later followed by English ships. Sierra Leone came under strong British influence through freed slaves during the latter part of the 1700s, and it became an official colony in 1808. The name "Freetown" was from the notion of freed slaves settling there, which was the site of a previous settlement that had been destroyed a couple of year earlier. The name of the country traces back through English to Spanish to Portuguese and Portuguese "Serra Lyoa" ("Lion Mountains"). 
  
This is a super tasty stew. The word "groundnut" is used in various parts of the world for "peanut." Traditionally a scotch bonnet pepper is used in this recipe. Scotch bonnet chilies are VERY hot, and one pepper, slit through, is the usual "dosage," but if you don't have a scotch bonnet, you can substitute a habanero chili, or you can use other chilies, using one or two, depending upon your heat preference. You don't cut up the scotch bonnet or habanero pepper, but rather you simply cut a slit or two in the pepper to let the flavor and heat mix into the stew as the pepper cooks. You can do the same with other chilies, but if you like heat, you may want to actually cut up chilies of less heat to give you the "kick" you desire.   

Ingredients (6 servings):

6 medium to large chicken thighs, skin removed
4 tablespoons peanut oil
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 baseball size onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 mild green or red pepper, chopped (a bell pepper or a cubanelle is fine)
1 scotch bonnet or habanero, or 1 to 2 other hot chili pepper(s)
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup tomato sauce

Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper, then brown them lightly on both sides in the hot oil (you aren't cooking the chicken through at this time). Set the chicken aside. Cut a slit in the chili or chilies (I slit the chilies on two sides, but I don't detach the halves). Add the onion, garlic, mild green or red pepper and the chili(es) to the hot oil. Stir the vegetables while they cook for about 3 to 4 minutes to begin to soften. Add the tomato sauce and stir to mix it in. Now add the peanut butter, stirring and taking the time to get it blended into the sauce. Now return the chicken pieces to the skillet. Reduce the heat to low and keep the stew at a gentle simmer for about 45 minutes, until the chicken is thoroughly cooked and the sauce reduces and thickens somewhat. If you cover the skillet, the stew won't reduce properly, so I use a splatter screen to prevent any of the bubbling sauce from ending up all over the stove or even down the street.
   
Sierra Leonean Chicken Groundnut Stew (1 chicken thigh in sauce) with some salad ...

WORD HISTORY:
Gamut-This word for "the range of musical notes," probably most often used in the phrase, "run the gamut," meaning, "experience an entire range of sights, sounds or emotions of something," comes from the assignment of names to designate musical notes in the Middle Ages by musically talented Italian monk Guido d'Arezzo. "Gamut" is a contraction from Latin "gamma ut," with "gamma" being the name of the third letter of the Greek alphabet, a word Greek borrowed from Phoenician, and "ut" being the conjunction meaning "that," "likely" a distant relative of English "when," "where," "what," "why," all from the Germanic roots of English, but related to Latin "ut" by way of Indo European "kwo." It is also a likely relative of "quorum," a word borrowed by English from Latin, and of "quote," another Latin-derived word borrowed by English from French. To be clear, "ut" seems to be from Indo European "kwo," but that is not a definite.     

West African Peanut & Sweet Potato Stew (Slow Cooker)

Peanuts, also called groundnuts by some, were taken by the Portuguese to other parts of the world, including Africa, from areas of Brazil, and perhaps from Peru, in the early 1500s. Peanuts are really a type of pea, not a true nut. Sweet potatoes were another New World food product, and they were taken to other parts of the world, including West Africa, by the Spanish and the Portuguese. This wonderful stew is easily made in a slow cooker and then served with flatbread like naan or pita.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup chopped onion (you can also use scallions with part of their green, if you'd like)
2 to 4 hot chilies (I use serrano chilies), chopped (seeded, if you don't like much heat)
2 to 3 inch piece ginger, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 1/2 cups chicken stock (if the stew is too thick later, add a little more chicken stock)
1 can (14.5 to 16 ounces) diced tomatoes, with juice
1 can (14 to 16 ounces) chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or chunky)
3 cups kale (or collard greens), removed from stems, then chopped 

Put all ingredients into a slow cooker (crock pot), except the chickpeas, peanut butter and kale/collard greens. Cook on "high" for 90 minutes, then reduce to "low" and let cook for another 4 1/2 hours. 
During the last hour of cooking, add the peanut butter and gently stir to mix it into the stew, and then add the kale or collards (either of which will cook down pretty quickly) and the chickpeas and again gently stir to mix all ingredients together. If the stew is too thick for you, thin it out a little with more chicken stock at this time also.

WORD HISTORY:
Cola-This word goes back to the Niger-Congo languages,^ which have a large presence in Africa, including in part of West Africa (for example, in Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast), where the term was "kola/kolo," and it was used as the name for a tree and the nut from the tree, which contains caffeine and was used in beverages. "Apparently" the name spread through Spanish and Portuguese to South America and then elsewhere, but with the use of the Latin "c" for the ''k" sound used in some other languages, as both Spanish and Portuguese are Latin-based languages. The word was borrowed by English circa 1800, but the biggest boost to the word in English came in the 1880s in the United States with the invention of the brand name beverage "Coca-Cola," which used cola nuts in its preparation and which eventually became an internationally known drink and one of the world's best known brand names. This was followed not long thereafter by the brand name "Pepsi-Cola" and other drinks using cola nuts.    

^  The Niger-Congo family of languages includes many African languages and dialects, including Zulu, Swahili and Fulani. Niger-Congo is to these languages what Indo European is to, for example, English, German, Italian, Hindustani or Persian (and many others).