Dried fish on manioc leaf sauce, by Awa Sambou.

Let’s discover together this recipe from Senegal: a dried fish-based preparation with a palm nut and manioc sauce, and served with the local Niamone rice.

Awa Sambou is the one teasing our taste buds here. On beautiful footage by Muriel Lutz, she introduces the ingredients and utensils, and unveils her cooking secrets, in Baynunk language from Casamance.

Watch all videos in Baynunk

Linguist: Sokhna Bao-Diop

Image & sound: Muriel Lutz, assisted by Cheikh Tidiane Sall

Editing: Caroline Laurent

Video created within the ANR Sénélangues project

To make this at home:

Ingredients:

An armful of manioc leaves

A basketful of palm nuts

A few tomatoes

A few cloves of garlic

Three small cabbages

An onion

An eggplant

Dried red hot peppers

4 big fresh hot peppers (red and/or green)

Dried fish

Salt

Crushed rice for the side dish (if possible from the paddies of Niamone…)

Recipe (make sure you don’t lose track…):

– Cut off the manioc leaves from their stems and crush them to a pulp. Add salt, put into a big pot with a little water, cover and cook.

– Crush the palm nuts while adding water once in a while to extract the sap. Drain well several times to retain the fibers and pits. Add this juice to the manioc leaves and let it boil.

– Rinse the rice well and steam it in a couscous pot.

– While the sauce and rice are nicely cooking, prepare the vegetables: peel the cabbages and slice them – as well as the eggplant – lengthwise into quarters. Peel the onion and garlic. Rinse all vegetables in fresh water.

– Once the sauce has already reduced a bit, add the eggplant, cabbage and 4 fresh hot peppers, and leave it to cook.

– Crush the tomatoes, onion, garlic and dried hot peppers all together, and add them to the sauce.

– Finally, prepare the fish: make sure you bone the fish! Separate the fillets, rinse them in fresh water, add to the sauce and let it thicken.

– When the rice is precooked, transfer it into a big pot, separate the grains and add salted water (up to 1 inch above the top of the rice). Cover and return to the fire until the water has been absorbed.

– Now back to the sauce: add salt, taste and let it simmer with a lid half way across the top so it can thicken nice and slowly…

Then all you have to do is serve the fish and vegetable sauce on a bed of rice, and enjoy!

Fed up with dried fish? Feel free to try variations: beef, chicken, fresh fish, crab, prawns… Actually, as Awa puts it, it works just as well with anything!