Our Daily Spread : Peanut Butter: A Stirring Tale : World Affairs: Chunky or smooth, peanut butter is loved around the globe.

Pity the peanut. It’s not a pea and it’s not really a nut. Even so, most people around the world insist on treating it as one or the other. They roast it (here and there--in China, parts of Africa and the American South) or they boil it.

When it’s ground fine enough, though, this oil-rich cousin of the fava bean shows its real potential. Our national taste for peanut butter (See “E Pluribus Chunky,” H10) has made it a basic element in American cookie-, candy- and cake-making. In Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Africa, ground peanuts show up in sauces and stews.

The peanut is a South American original, a shrub whose flowers send tendrils into the ground where they grow into seed pods. It was domesticated about 4,000 years ago in the eastern foothills of the Andes, somewhere around the border between Bolivia and Argentina. And very thoroughly domesticated; it’s one of the few plants in the world that is never found in the wild. By the time of Columbus, it had spread throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ground peanuts enter into cooking throughout this area today. In Peru, rich peanut butter-based sauces cover aji de gallina (a peppery chicken dish), papas arequipena (potatoes in peanut sauce) and carapulcra (ditto, with Andean freeze-dried potatoes). In Ecuador, cheesy fried potato patties ( llapingachos ) come in spicy peanut sauce. Bolivian cooks make a chicken soup with peanut dumplings, sopa de mani.

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And so on. The Brazilian dish peixe com molho de amendoim is fish simmered with peanut butter, spices and chiles. Mexico puts ground peanuts into certain moles and in stews with names like pollo encacahuetado. In the Caribbean, they stew rabbits with peanut sauce. To say nothing about the many Latin American sweets made with peanuts, or the Caribbean peanut milk cocktail.

Europeans first came across the peanut in Haiti, where the Taino people called it mani (the Portuguese word amendoim comes from a related Brazilian language). Mani became the word for peanut in Colonial Spanish, and that’s why Bolivians call it by a name imported from Haiti, even when they’re descended from the people who domesticated the plant in the first place.

During the 16th Century the Spanish took the peanut to the Philippines, where it is still called mani. In most of eastern Asia, however, it was the Chinese who spread it. The peanut is known as “Chinese bean” in Japan and Indonesia, and as far away as India, to the Bengalis it’s chinabadam , “Chinese almond.”

The peanut was a big hit in Asia (today 85% of the world’s peanuts are grown in Asia and Africa), but in large chunks of that continent the peanut rarely, if ever, winds up as peanut butter. The Chinese boil peanuts plain or toss them into stir-fries, but to China the peanut is primarily an oil seed. In fact, Chinese cookery is hard to imagine without the flavor of frying peanut oil, which is why China is the largest peanut grower in the world today. But Chinese peanut butter? Not that you’d notice.

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India also raises peanuts primarily for oil, though the southern part of the country has more interest in them for their own sake. Whole or chopped peanuts show up in pilafs, salads and tamarind-based sauces in South India. Ground peanuts do play a role in Indian snack foods, though.

For anything like a peanut butter cuisine, you have to stop halfway between India and China, in Indonesia. One of the most famous Indonesian dishes is satay, little skewers of grilled meat served with mildly spicy sweet-sour sauces made with peanut butter, chiles, coconut milk and fish sauce. Satay has spread around Southeast Asia as far as Sri Lanka, off the southern tip of India. In Indonesia there’s even a salad ( gado-gado ) with a rich satay-style peanut sauce.

Southern Thailand has peanut butter dishes of its own, such as pra ram long song (beef and spinach stewed in something rather like a satay sauce) and gai thua (chicken in a peanut butter and coconut milk curry). But the farther you get from Indonesia, the smaller the role peanuts play. In places like Cambodia and Burma, they go back to the same sort of role they play in China, getting chopped up and tossed into soup or salad.

It was in Africa that the peanut found its heartiest welcome. The Portuguese brought it to West Africa in the early 1500s, and in 1564 the traveler Alvares de Almada reported it was already an established crop in Senegal and Gambia (which are still among the world’s greatest peanut-exporting countries). Within 200 years it had spread on its own all the way across Africa to Angola, without Portuguese help.

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This was an amazing speed in the pre-modern age, particularly in Africa, where long-distance travel was difficult. The reason the peanut spread so fast was that the idea of a nut/bean growing underground was not unfamiliar in Africa. There were already a couple of indigenous African “groundnuts.”

The most important was Voandzeia subterranea, an underground cousin of the cowpea that is one of the tiny handful of food plants the Central African rain forest and savannah have contributed to the human diet. It was one of the five crops the Bantus had with them 3,000 years ago when they began the expansion that eventually made half of sub-Saharan Africa Bantu-speaking.

Peanuts and Voandzeia are much alike. They’re both foot-high shrubs (peanut leaves comes in fours, though, while Voandzeia leaves come in threes) and they both ripen their “nuts” in underground pods. But Voandzeia has only one largish seed to a pod, and while a peanut is 40%-50% oil, Voandzeia is only 8% oil.

Some African nationalities seem to have retained a taste for a less oily groundnut. The Hausas of northern Nigeria often cook with peanut cake, the residue that remains in the press after the oil is squeezed out of peanuts. The 14th Century Arab traveler Ibn Battuta reported being served a snack of fried Voandzeia paste. The present-day Hausa snack kuli kuli is much the same thing, only these days it’s made from peanuts with as much of the oil removed as possible.

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In short, the peanut apparently spread so widely in Africa because it was able to move into an existing culinary niche, as shown by the fact that throughout Africa it has taken over the local names that had formerly been used for Voandzeia. The Hausas, for instance, still often use the same name ( gujiya ) for peanut and Voandzeia. To the Kikongo of Zaire, peanuts are nguba and Voandzeia is nguba zi Kongo , “the groundnut of the Congo.” Voandzeia, being less oily, is harder than the peanut, so in a number of languages it’s called “hard groundnut.” That’s what the Swahili word njugumaye means; the peanut, which the Swahilis got from Malawi (the former Nyasaland), is njugunyasa .

From Senegal in West Africa to Tanzania and Mozambique in East Africa, peanuts are added to stews with meat, onions, tomatoes and chiles. In West Africa, it’s particularly characteristic to add dried shrimp or fish. (In Cameroon, though, peanut sauce is served on fresh shrimp.) In East Africa, vegetables are often stewed with peanut butter--spinach or squash in Kenya, cornmeal or beans in Zambia.

In southern Nigeria, the Ijaw people smoke some of their peanuts, drying them on racks over a smoking fire. In northern Nigeria, the Hausas stew meat with chiles and onions in the usual way, and they also coat skewered meat ( tsire ) with peanut cake and ginger, more or less making satay with the sauce cooked right on. They make a sort of jerky ( kilishi ) by coating meat with peanut cake and spices and drying it in the sun.

It’s well known that peanuts accompanied African slaves to the New World; the old American name goober clearly comes from one of the Congolese languages that use the word nguba. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the African habit of stewing meat with peanut butter, tomatoes, onions and chiles found its way to the Caribbean.

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But what a pity--there were some places the peanut just couldn’t spread. Cool climates, for instance, because the peanut needs warmth. It also needs a fair amount of water during its summer growing season, which effectively rules it out for most of the Mediterranean. In the Arab world, peanuts are known only as a sidewalk snack--peanut-growing entrepreneurs from the Sudan roast them on street corners, the same way chestnuts are roasted in this country. As a result, the Arabs call peanuts Sudan beans, or Sudan pistachios.

But what would have happened if the Near East had been a suitable environment for growing peanuts? Would peanut butter have replaced sesame tahineh? Would we be eating hummus made with peanut butter?

We’ll never know. It might have been the greatest thing since satay.

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The word “nyeleng” comes from the Mandinka language of West Africa, but the Mandinkas’ peanut-farming neighbors, the Wolof people of Senegal, now make this dish as well. Jamaica (pronounced hah-MY-kah) is the Spanish name for the dried blossoms of an African shrub, Hibiscus sabdariffa. It is sold in Latin markets and many supermarkets under the name of jamaica, but you can also find it in Caribbean markets (as sorrel) and Near Eastern import stores (as karkadeh). Though it’s best known in this country as an herbal tea--it’s what makes teas such as Red Zinger tart and red--in Africa this hibiscus is often used in cooking. For that matter, okra is also an African hibiscus.

BEEF AND PEANUT GUMBO (Nyeleng)

2 pounds beef, cut in pieces

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons ground dried shrimp

6 cups water

2 pounds okra, sliced

1 cup minus 1 tablespoon chunky style peanut butter

1 cup jamaica flowers

1 onion

2 chiles, not seeded

Steamed millet or cornmeal mush

Place beef in pot. Add salt, dried shrimp and boiling water. Reduce heat and simmer 3/4 hour, skimming as needed. Add okra and cook until seeds turn reddish, about 1/2 hour. Add peanut butter and jamaica and cook additional 1/2 hour.

Chop onion and chiles and add, stirring briskly to develop sticky texture. Simmer 15 minutes and serve with millet or cornmeal mush. Makes 2 1/2 quarts or 4 to 6 servings.

Each of 4 servings contains about:

693 calories; 1,582 mg sodium; 100 mg cholesterol; 40 grams fat; 33 grams carbohydrates; 55 grams protein; 4.02 grams fiber.

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Llapingachos are fried Ecuadorean potato patties flavored with cheese. In this case, there’s a sweet leavening of cilantro as well. The traditional peanut sauce that goes with them tastes so much like a Southeast Asian sauce (just add a little coconut milk and fish sauce and you’d be there) that the dish becomes something like an extremely rich vegetarian satay. From “South American Cooking” by Barbara Karoff.

CHEESE AND POTATO PATTIES WITH PEANUT SAUCE (Llapingachos)

2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut in half

Salt, pepper

Butter

1 large onion, minced

1/2 cup minced cilantro

1/4 pound Muenster cheese

Salsa de Mani

In pot cover potatoes with cold water and bring to boil. Cook until tender and drain. Mash potatoes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in pan. Add onion and saute until tender. Add sauteed onions, 1/3 cup butter, cilantro and cheese to potatoes. Mix well.

Spread mixture in lightly buttered gratin dish or shallow casserole and place under broiler until little flecks of brown appear on potatoes. Cut into 12 squares. Serve with Salsa de Mani. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

489 calories; 514 mg sodium; 66 mg cholesterol; 34 grams fat; 36 grams carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 1.60 grams fiber.

Salsa de Mani

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons minced onion

1 tablespoon minced seeded jalapeno chile

1 tomato, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter

3 to 4 tablespoons water

Salt, pepper

Melt butter in pan. Add onion and saute 2 minutes. Add jalapeno and tomato and cook until sauce becomes mushy. Add peanut butter and mix well. Remove from heat and slowly add water to make pourable consistency. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

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On paper, this Caribbean recipe looks like one of the usual West African peanut butter-flavored stews, except that it contains no tomatoes or greens. Amazingly, however, the effect is quite French, as if somebody had substituted peanut butter for the mushrooms in a cream-enriched sauce champignon (and added a dose of hot pepper). In “The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking,” Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz credits the recipe to the former British Leeward Islands--now the independent nations of St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda--but we note that they’re pretty close to Guadeloupe, which is so French it actually votes in the French parliament.

CARIBBEAN RABBIT AND GROUNDNUT STEW

2 ounces salt pork, cubed

2 1/2 pounds rabbit, cleaned and cut into serving pieces

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 cups chicken stock

1 bay leaf

1/4 teaspoon ground thyme

1/4 teaspoon ground marjoram

Parsley

Salt, pepper

2 serrano chiles

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Hot pepper sauce

In heavy pot, melt salt pork. Remove crackling and brown rabbit pieces in melted fat. Add onion and garlic and saute until tender. Add stock, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook at low heat until rabbit is tender, about 1 hour.

Ladle off 2 cups cooking liquid. Place 1 cup in blender or food processor with chiles, peanut butter and nutmeg. Process until smooth. Put second cup cooking liquid in saucepan with peanut butter mixture and simmer gently 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste. Add rabbit pieces and simmer on very low heat just long enough to heat meat through. Serve with rice and pass hot pepper sauce. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Each of 4 servings contains about:

573 calories; 891 mg sodium; 110 mg cholesterol; 38 grams fat; 13 grams carbohydrates; 46 grams protein; 1.46 grams fiber.

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This very rich Mexican candy is something like a giant peanut butter cup made with dark chocolate and slightly grainy, freshly ground peanuts. As the name indicates, it is a Mexican adaptation of marzipan, substituting peanuts for ground almonds.

CHOCOLATE-COVERED PEANUT PATTIES (Mazapan)

4 cups unsalted roasted peanuts

1 cup sugar

6 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate

Grind peanuts fine in food processor. Add sugar and process into compact paste. Divide into 12 equal pieces. In 2 1/2-inch-diameter ramekin, mold each piece into thick disk. Remove disks from mold carefully.

Melt chocolate in double boiler and keep warm. Spoon 1 generous tablespoon melted chocolate onto wax paper. Carefully place 1 peanut disk on top and move around to cover entire bottom of disk with chocolate. Then enrobe top and sides with melted chocolate. Repeat process to enrobe remaining disks. Place candies, still on wax paper, in refrigerator until ready to serve. Makes 12 candies.

Each serving contains about:

424 calories; 3 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 28 grams fat; 36 grams carbohydrates; 13 grams protein; 2.48 grams fiber.

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The United States gets the last word with two peanut butter cookies developed by The Times Test Kitchen staff. The first was developed by Mayi Brady, the second by Staci Miller.

MAYI’S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups chunky peanut butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup light-brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

In bowl cream butter with peanut butter. Add granulated and brown sugars and beat until fluffy. Add eggs and beat. Mix in flour and baking soda.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto greased baking sheet. Flatten slightly with palm of hand. Bake at 350 degrees until light-golden brown, about 15 minutes. Makes about 30 (3-inch) cookies.

Each cookie contains about:

193 calories; 70 mg sodium; 31 mg cholesterol; 13 grams fat; 17 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams protein; 0.33 gram fiber.

STACI’S GIANT PEANUT BUTTER AND CHOCOLATE COOKIES

1 cup butter

1 cup light-brown sugar, packed

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 cup chunky peanut butter

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup large chocolate chips or chocolate chunks

1/2 cup peanut butter chips

In bowl beat butter until light and creamy. Beat in brown and granulated sugars. Beat in eggs, 1 at time, until blended. Beat in peanut butter. Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir into peanut butter mixture. Stir in chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Spoon about 1/4 cup dough for each cookie onto lightly greased baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees 14 to 16 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven. Let stand on baking sheet few minutes, then remove to wire rack to cool. Makes about 1 1/2 dozen cookies.

Each cookie contains about:

415 calories; 187 mg sodium; 53 mg cholesterol; 22 grams fat; 50 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.41 gram fiber.

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Plates in Caribbean rabbit photo, H9, and in beef and peanut gumbo photo on this page from Bonnie Fratis showroom, L.A. Mart.

A Discouraging Word

It’s true, as George Washington Carver emphasized, that pound for pound peanuts contain more vitamins, proteins and minerals than beef liver. However, They also contain more fat. The average eating peanut is about 40% oil.