Senegal – Mafé

By Breila Jack

Senegal is among of the western African countries to have many delicious dishes, like the one we are about to prepare here.

Mafé dish is originated from Mali specifically to Mandika and Bambara people, yet it became famous in the country because of the agricultural factor of cultivating it’s basics ingredients that is ground nuts.

The cuisine is the stew of meat mixed with nuts and Bambara. Meat used can be of cow, goat, sheep, pork or chickens while the nuts are of peanuts. We will use beef meat in our cuisine as porks are rare in our country, many are Islamic religious.

The cuisine is simple to prepare as we will see from here, Welcome.

Things to consider for preparation;

• ½kg of beef meat.
• 5 tea spoons of butter.
• Tomato paste.
• ¼kg of cooked Bambara.
• 2 bulb onions.
• 2 Carrots.
• Grinned garlic.
• Salt.
• Oil.
• pepper powder

Bambara may not be necessarily but it holds the means of the cuisine, also you are allowed to add other meats ingredients like curry powder but you’ll need to fry meat at first.

Cooking steps;

• Prepare onions into pieces.
• Cut carrots into a wider pieces as the ones you’ll do for the beef meat.
• Cut beef meat into sizable pieces, wash meat and put into clean plate. Mix meat with little amount of oil, garlic and salt, wait for 10 minutes.
• Take pan, add little amount of reasonable oil, heat it.
• Add onions and cook till transparency-like colour observed normally it’s about 2 minutes.
• Add meat and carrots at the same time, fry for 5 minutes till meat start dried.
• Add Bambara in case you used them, keep fry for 3 minutes. Add butter and stir.
• After about 3 minutes add tomato paste of 5 tea spoons. Add pepper powder for taste and salt, take hot water and add for soup amount. Cover the top, lower heat and boil for 8 – 10 minutes.

After the time, our cuisine will be ready for lunch meal or dinner. In Senegal we normally take Mafé with rice, it tastes much sweeter than ever. Potatoes may taste good with this cuisine, enjoy.