Recettes Senegal

Bassi Salté (Senegalese Millet Couscous)

Bassi salté is Senegalese millet couscous served with a meat and vegetable sauce, studded with raisins, chickpeas and white beans. Its full name is thiéré bassi salté, and it is one of the most demanding dishes in the Senegalese repertoire. The grain is the point of difference. This is not wheat couscous but thiakry, made from millet, the ancestral West African cereal, cultivated in the Sahel for thousands of years before wheat or maize arrived. That matters both culturally and practically: millet couscous is naturally gluten-free, and it needs a binder, which is where lalo comes in. Lalo is powdered baobab leaf, and it holds the steamed grains together in a way that wheat gluten would do on its own. It is festival food. Bassi salté is traditionally eaten at Tamkharit, the Senegalese observance of Ashura, and the effort involved, steaming the couscous twice, building the sauce over hours, forming the diaga meatballs separately, is part of what makes it appropriate to the occasion. Its defining flavour is the balance between savoury and sweet. Raisins and sometimes dates go in alongside the mutton and root vegetables, which is deliberate rather than incidental. The source's ingredient list is badly scrambled and its sauce timing is not credible; both are flagged below.

2 hr 45 minHardSenegal

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Yassa Fish and Shrimp

Poisson yassa is the fish version of Senegal's best known dish, and it works on the same principle as chicken yassa: a marinade of lemon, mustard, garlic and onion that becomes the sauce, with a very large quantity of onion cooked down into it. Yassa comes from the Casamance region in southern Senegal and is now made across the country and throughout the Senegalese diaspora. The mustard is a French ingredient absorbed entirely into a Senegalese idiom, and the resemblance the source draws to a French sauce à l'onion is fair as far as it goes, though yassa is sharper and carries far more onion. Four large onions to two and a half pounds of fish is the ratio, and it is not a mistake. The onions cook down into a soft, tangy mass that is as much the dish as the fish is. The technique is straightforward: marinate, cook the fish and set it aside, cook the onions in the leftover marinade, then return the fish to warm through in the sauce. Shrimp can go in alongside. It is served with rice most often, though this version suggests potatoes.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

40 minEasySenegal

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook

Senegalese Sombi

Sombi is Senegalese rice pudding made with coconut milk rather than dairy, rice simmered slowly with coconut milk, sugar and a little salt until it thickens. Its simplicity is the reason it is so widely made. Four ingredients, one pot, and no technique beyond stirring and patience. It is a household dessert rather than a restaurant one, and it appears at family meals, at celebrations and during Ramadan. Being made with coconut milk rather than cow's milk matters practically as well as culturally. It keeps better in a hot climate without refrigeration, and it is suitable for the many adults who do not digest lactose well. The salt is not incidental. A small amount sharpens the sweetness and stops the pudding tasting flat, and leaving it out is the most common reason a home-made sombi disappoints. It is served warm most often, though it is also eaten chilled in very hot weather, and it is usually garnished with toasted coconut chips. Sombi belongs to a broad family of coconut rice puddings found wherever rice and coconut are both grown, from West Africa through South and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

EasySenegal

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Salatu Niebe (Senegalese Black-Eyed Pea Salad)

Salatu niebe is cooked black-eyed peas tossed with finely diced cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, spring onion and chilli, dressed with lime juice and olive oil. It is Senegalese and is usually served after the main meal rather than before it. Niebe is the Wolof word for black-eyed peas, and the bean is not an import. Cowpeas were domesticated in West Africa thousands of years ago and travelled to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade, which is why black-eyed peas are as fundamental to Southern American cooking as they are to Senegalese. The direction of that journey is frequently reversed in the telling. The technique is in the cutting. Everything except the peas is diced very finely, so each spoonful carries a bit of everything rather than separate components. That is what makes it read as a composed salad rather than beans with vegetables in. It travels and keeps well, which is why it is a standard dish for feeding a crowd, made ahead, it improves as the peas absorb the lime and oil. The source credits Chef Pierre Thiam with popularising it outside Senegal, and that attribution is well founded. Its ingredient list omits the olive oil and parsley that its own description requires.

50 minEasySenegal

Recette de Blessing · Africook