Recettes Democratic Republic of the Congo

Makayabu

Makayabu is salted cod cooked with vegetables, and it is a fixture of Congolese home cooking. It is eaten across both Congos and in Gabon, and it turns up wherever Central African communities have settled, because salt cod travels and keeps in a way fresh fish does not. The fish arrived through trade rather than from local waters. Salted and dried cod was a European preservation industry, carried into Central Africa through colonial supply routes, and it was adopted so completely that it now reads as a Congolese ingredient. That pattern repeats across the continent: stockfish in Nigeria, salted cod in Angola and Congo, dried fish traded far inland from every coast. Rehydrating it properly is the whole technique. The fish is packed in salt and has to soak before cooking, with the water changed, or the finished dish is inedible. After that it is straightforward: the fish is fried until golden, set aside, and the vegetables built up in the same pan before everything comes back together. Cassava or rice goes alongside. The vegetables here are cabbage, courgette and bell pepper, which is one common combination among many, and Congolese households vary it freely according to what is in the market.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

45 minEasyDR Congo

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Fumbua (Congolese Wild Spinach Stew)

Fumbua is chopped wild greens cooked with smoked fish, peanut butter and palm oil into a thick, savoury stew. It comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is eaten in Angola too. **It contains peanut butter, which the title gives no indication of.** The greens the dish is named for are fumbwa, the leaves of *Gnetum africanum*, the same wild forest vine known as eru in Cameroon and afang or okazi in Nigeria. That single plant supports a whole cluster of Central and West African dishes, each with its own name and its own treatment, and fumbua is the Congolese one. Its distinguishing feature within that group is the peanut butter, which thickens the stew and gives it a richness that eru and afang do not have. Peanuts and palm oil doing the work together is characteristic of Congo basin cooking generally, and it is the same combination that underpins moambe, the Congolese national dish. The source is realistic about substitution, and rightly so. Genuine fumbwa leaves are hard to find outside the region, and it recommends spinach, kale or collard greens instead. That is a fair compromise, the texture will be softer and the flavour milder, but the dish still works. The source's low-carbohydrate framing has not been carried across.

55 minEasyDemocratic Republic of the Congo

Recette de Nympha · Africook