The sublime joy of cooking with peanut butter
I think we can all agree that peanut butter is one of the most perfect foods ever invented.
And it doesn’t have to be in a sandwich. Surrounded by chocolate, it is one of two great tastes that taste great together. It is an excellent choice in a cookie.
But what about using peanut butter in dishes that are not sweet?
For these recipes, I used the natural peanut butter that has to be stirred the first time you open the jar, not the more familiar, homogenized type that’s also been sweetened.
Cold Noodles with Chicken and Peanuts, first of all, comes from Beijing. This dish, which is an appetizer, mixes a fairly large amount of noodles with a relatively small amount (but just the right quantity) of sauce: peanut butter, peanut oil, red rice or wine vinegar, soy sauce and water, flavored with a bit of sugar and sesame oil. Add cooked chicken, chopped peanuts, a sprinkling of sesame seeds and an all-important dash of green onions, and you have a savory dish that instantly expands your peanut-butter horizons.
I next turned to hummus. Tahini, usually added to hummus, is made of crushed sesame seeds. Peanut butter is made of crushed peanuts. The flavors are different but complementary, so hummus made with peanut butter tastes fine.
My next dish brought the peanut back to its roots, so to speak. Though peanuts are apparently native to South America, they are closely related to the Bambara groundnut of West Africa. So they were a natural in an African Sweet Potato-Peanut Stew.
This is a hearty, vegetarian stew that masterfully blends the flavors of sweet potatoes, peanut butter and chickpeas. These ingredients are lightly simmered together for hours in a slow cooker, along with cumin and cinnamon — because nothing goes better with sweet potatoes than cumin and cinnamon — and a bit of cayenne pepper for heat.
Green beans are added at the end for the perfect fresh counterpoint that binds the flavors together.
I next turned my attention to Peanut Butter Tofu Stir-Fry. This dish is vegetarian, but you could easily make it with chicken or pork, or even scallops.
Cauliflower Lime Curry exhibits the successful blending of cauliflower, curry, coconut milk and peanut butter. And the final recipe, Scallops with Snow Peas, Cauliflower and Peanut Panade, puts peanut butter with an unlikely partner: scallops. But it works. The recipe is from Grant Achatz, of Chicago’s famed Alinea and other restaurants.