Kedjenou (Ivorian Sealed-Pot Chicken)

Kedjenou is chicken and vegetables sealed in a pot and cooked slowly with almost no added liquid, so the bird cooks in its own juices. It is Ivorian, and the source associates it particularly with the Baoulé. The method is the entire dish and it is genuinely unusual. Traditionally it is cooked in a canari, an earthenware jar with a narrow opening, which is sealed and set over a wood fire or coals. Because so little liquid goes in and almost none escapes, everything the chicken releases stays in the pot and concentrates. The result is intensely flavoured rather than diluted, the opposite of a stew, where liquid goes in and draws flavour outward. The name reflects the technique too. Kedjenou is generally understood to refer to shaking, the pot is shaken periodically rather than opened and stirred, because lifting the lid would let the steam out. This recipe reproduces that with foil under a tight lid in a low oven, and it works. Eggplant, tomato, onion, chilli, ginger and thyme are the standard vegetables. Guinea fowl is as traditional as chicken and arguably more so. The source's ingredient list gives almost no quantities and splits garlic across two lines. Working amounts are given below.