In Quite a Stew

According to everyone's fine friends at Merriam-Webster:
stew (n): 1: a hot bath; 2a: fish or meat usually with vegetables prepared by stewing; b: a state of heat and congestion.

Well, Gentle Reader, with May's arrival, summer has come to Central Texas, which means high humidity, temperatures in the 90s and, for several weeks, skies choked with smoke and other particulates drifted northward from mass agricultural fires in Central America. The mix is enough to make a person stew--so that's exactly what I did.

Chicken, Chickpea and Zucchini Stew1 t olive oil
1 C chopped onion
1 1/2 t minced fresh rosemary
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 C chopped zucchini
1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
1/8 t salt
1/2 lb. ground chicken
4 C fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/4 C dry white wine
3 T tomato paste
1/2 t crushed red pepper
2 15.5-oz. cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 14.5-oz. cans diced tomatoes, rinsed and drained
1 bay leaf
3/4 C (3 oz.) grated Parmesan cheese

1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.
   
2. Add the onion, rosemary and garlic, then sauté 2 min.
   
3. Add the zucchini, black pepper, salt and chicken, then cook 5 min. until the chicken is browned, stirring to crumble.
   
4. Add the broth, wine, tomato paste, crushed red pepper, chickpeas, diced tomatoes and bay leaf.
   
5. Bring the stew to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer 30 min.
   
6. Before serving, discard the bay leaf and sprinkle with cheese.

Yield: 10 servings (serving size: 1 cup of stew and about 1 tablespoon of cheese)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 173
Fat: 4.8 g
Sat fat: 1.7 g
Protein: 11.4 g
Carbs: 21 g
Fiber: 4.7 g
Cholesterol: 19 mg
Sodium: 592 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I found this recipe from the September 2006 issue of Cooking Light on MyRecipes.com recently while trolling for a zucchini cake recipe. Since the zucchini at HEB are affordable priced and of a quality worthy of purchase, I have a few of the lovely green veggies in my crisper just waiting to be prepared for their appearance sur la table du Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Of course, I prepared this recipe--a stew of all things!--on a day when the highs were in the mid-90s and the humidity percentage seemed to be around the same number. Needless to say, I was stewing in my kitchen right along with the zucchini, chickpeas and everything else. That said, I found the dish to strike just the right note on a hot, swelter Saturday. It's not overly hearty as some stews are wont to be: I mean, if you grew up in "America's heartland" (which seems to shift to whichever geographic part of the continental U.S. fits the bill of the media and the human interest story du jour), stews so often are composed of hunks of chewy beef, chunks of Idaho potato and perhaps some hunks of tomatoes, carrots or some other token vegetable so long as the brew's got beef and potatoes as the main ingredients. And that stew is served on the dark, frigid nights of winter to ward of the chill (that's already warded off by our central heating, microfleece apparel and all those other modern conveniences that make winters just an annoyance to our modern, busy lives instead of something to be endured and survived through preparation and planning and, sometimes, sheer good fortune).

So where was I before I got off track lamenting how people have gotten to be such wusses about winter? Oh yeah! My futzings!

But I really have none to report, Gentle Reader. The heat and humidity of the day and the crud filling my lungs didn't have me in the mood to futz too much, plus this recipe is ridiculously simple. Just a few points of pride to share with you:

• Even though I have two kinds of rosemary growing in pots on the yoga porch, the fresh rosemary I minced came from a small shrub growing as best it can beneath a hedge of...some traditional hedge kind of shrub located along a chain-length fence that encloses a backyard of a house the boy and I pass every day on our way to and from school and that all human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker passed Saturday morning on our way to the boy's school to vote for Austin's new mayor and a few city council seats.
  
• I used up the last of the zucchini I'd put away in the deep freeze last year. That meant, unfortunately, that two of the required three cups of zucchini were somewhat mushy because zucchini doesn't thaw well.
  
• I quick-soaked my own chickpeas rather than buy canned ones. I just don't get buying canned chickpeas.

A comment about the recipe's instructions: I don't understand why it calls for rinsing the diced tomatoes. Do you have any clue why that should be done, Gentle Reader? Wouldn't that further reduce the tomatoes' flavor? Or should the pieces be rinsed so as to remove any preservatives that might hinder their flavor?

Anywho, I didn't rinse my diced tomatoes, nor did I drain them because I had way too many chickpeas and thus needed more liquid.

Oh, speaking of liquid, here's an observation: One carton, which I think is equivalent of two cans, of chicken broth did not quite meet the required four cups of chicken broth. Perhaps the Central Markup brand of low-sodium chicken broth I use is on the small side, but I could swear it has the same amount as the cartons of Pacific Natural and Swanson chicken broth on the shelves. Luckily I had just a wee bit left in a carton I'd opened earlier for the spicy chicken couscous I made, and that topped off the four cups I needed. Hooray for having enough broth and making some space in the refrigerator!

Final verdict? The boy (predictably) rejected the stew because of the presence of (contamination by) zucchini, but he enjoyed sprinkling a ton of Parmesan atop his serving. The husband also reported enjoying Parmesan atop his serving, and he said the flavor of the cheese (well, the chemicals put into the crumbles of the-FSM-knows-what that are inside that little cannister) really came out despite the pretty well defined flavors of the chickpeas, tomatoes and crushed red peppers, respectively. I don't like cheese that much, so I can't comment.