Jamaican Chicken Stew.

As we Sri Lankans, our stew’s taste pepper flavor more.  But, this Jamaican Stew has all ground spices on it. It’s nothing much pretty easy to make. This can be a main dish for a family lunch or a dinner.

Main Ingredients:

• 600 g of boneless chicken (You may use whole chicken or drumsticks)
• 01 cups of long rice (Will be serving the stew with steamed rice in a hot pot)
• 02 tsp of Sun flower oil (Can be use any, which you prefer)
• 01 cups of nicely diced onion
• 03 tbs of chopped garlic
• 02 tsp of chopped green chilies
• 01 tsp each of curry powder, black pepper powder, chili powder
• 01 tsp of crushed dried chilies 
• 01 tsp of dried thyme
• ¼ cup of dry red wine
• 01 cups of chicken stock 
• 02 types of capers (Can be used green peas if it’s hard to find capers)
• 01 cup of Kidney beans (Boiled Kidney beans)
• ½ cup of almonds (Can be use peanuts instead)
• 02 or 03 tomatoes nicely chopped

Making of Stew:

• Cook the rice and leave it separately. 
• Season the chicken pieces with all the spices, salt, chopped green chilies, crushed dried chilies and thyme. (Jamaican’s they do the seasoning one day before it cooks. Even I prefer that way. But, if you are running out of time to manage everything at once, so I do recommend to season it at least one hour before cooking.)
• Heat oil in a large pan over medium high heat. 
• Add garlic and onion, then stew it until tender.
• Then add the chicken mixture and fry them for 5 minutes.
• Stir in wine, chicken stock, capers, kidney beans, almonds and chopped tomatoes.
• Cover the pan and reduce the heat to simmer for 15 minutes until it’s tenderly cooked.  
• Once it's done serve it with rice.