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Recipes
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Domada, also written Domoda, is Gambia's national dish and one of West Africa's most comforting stews, a rich, thick groundnut (peanut) based stew cooked with chicken or beef, tomatoes, sweet potato, and cabbage. The peanut paste dissolves into the broth as it cooks, creating a silky, deeply flavoured sauce that coats every piece of protein and vegetable in the pot. The dish belongs to the family of West African groundnut soups found across Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon, but Domada has its own character, sweeter from the potato, more mellow than the spicier Ghanaian versions, and always generous in the quantity of groundnut used. In Gambia it is eaten at celebrations, family gatherings, and as everyday home cooking.
Dried white beans cooked until tender, then finished with red onion and sliced tomatoes into a thick, soupy stew. It is Malagasy, and it is served everywhere on the island.
It is laoka, which is the useful word here. In Malagasy eating, rice is the meal and laoka is whatever accompanies it, the thing that goes on top of, or beside, a large plate of rice. Tsaramaso is one of the most popular laoka in the country, and it is eaten as a matter of course rather than as an occasion dish.
It is very often not vegetarian. Zebu meat, the humped cattle that are central to Malagasy life, makes it hen'omby sy tsaramaso, and pork makes it tsaramaso sy henakisoa. The shank is the cut the source recommends. This version is the plain one, which is also widely eaten.
The technique in the recipe is worth noting: the beans are cooked separately in water, seasoned only at the end, and a cup of their cooking liquid is kept back. That liquid is what the finished stew is loosened with, and it carries starch and flavour that plain water would not.
The source compares it to cassoulet, which is a reasonable shorthand, beans and meat cooked long and slow, though the seasoning is entirely different.