Green Bean and Chicken Stew

Here's another fabulous recipe I tried from Najmieh Batmanglij's wonderful cookbook.  I have become obsessed with this book! If you haven't already read my post on her chicken and apple stew I highly recommend you give it a try this weekend. You won't be sorry!

This chicken and green bean stew was a huge hit and was easy enough to prepare for a weeknight meal.  The flavors of the tomatoes and lime perfectly compliment the green beans and made for an ideal hearty meal.

I've been trying to incorporate green beans into my cooking these days due to the plethora of health benefits they have to offer:

Green beans are very rich in vitamins A and C both of which are important in fighting free radicals in the human body. The beta carotene in green beans are also thought to be an important element in the fight against cancers such as colon cancer.  It is said that the folate present in green beans helps prevents against mutations in colon cells and thus reduce the possibility of disease. 

You don't have to use chicken for this recipe.  You can use any other type of stew meat as well such as lamb or veal.

Persian Chicken Stew with Apples (Khoresh e-sib)

I love Persian food.  If I could eat one type of cuisine for the rest of my life, I really think I would pick Persian cooking over any other.  However, despite my love for the food I've always shied away from making Persian dishes - I thought that they would be very difficult to make and would require cartloads of ingredients that I didn't already have in my kitchen.  For years I would just visit Persian restaurants for the occasional indulgence and was too intimidated to do the cooking myself.

This all changed recently when I came across a wonderful cookbook by Najmieh Batmanglij.  She makes Persian cooking so accessible and breaks everything down so easily.  I wish I had bought this book earlier!

This is the first recipe I try out of this book (because this stew is my husband's favorite) and I will definitely be making many more.

This apple stew is truly scrumptious - it calls for few ingredients and is quite easy to make.  Moreover, as an added bonus you'll find that this is quite light and is very healthy too - many stews are heavy and are too rich thus leaving one in a food coma but this is quite the opposite - it's perfect!  My only complaint is that cooking time is rather long (patience was never my strong-suit) but really all you have to do is throw a few ingredients in a dutch oven and enjoy the fantastic aroma that is filling your kitchen.  This recipe calls for minimal manual labor, I promise.