Kedjenou recipe

Chicken sealed in a clay pot with no water and no fat, cooked in its own juices and shaken every quarter hour without ever lifting the lid.

1 hour and 50 minutesmedium10 ingredients

Ingredients

• 1500 g chicken
• 4 african eggplant
• 2 onions
• 3 tomatoes
• 3 clove garlic
• 15 g ginger
• 1 fresh chili pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bunch thyme
• 2 tsp salt

How to make Kedjenou

1. Cut a 1.5 kg chicken into 8 pieces. Guinea fowl or a farm bird is what is used at home; a battery chicken releases less juice and the dish depends on that juice.
2. Rub the pieces with 2 tsp of salt, 3 crushed garlic cloves and a 2 cm piece of grated ginger, and leave 30 minutes.
3. Layer everything in a clay canari or a heavy cast iron pot with a tight lid: the chicken, 2 sliced onions, 3 quartered tomatoes, 4 halved african eggplants, 1 whole chili, 1 bay leaf and a sprig of thyme.
4. Add no water and no oil. This is the definition of the dish: all the liquid comes out of the meat and the vegetables.
5. Seal the pot, traditionally with banana leaves under the lid, and set it on the lowest heat or in embers for 45 to 60 minutes.
6. Never lift the lid. Every 15 minutes take the pot in both hands and shake it; kedjenou means to shake in Baoule, and that is the only stirring there is.
7. Open at the end: there should be a small amount of very concentrated sauce. Crush the chili into it if you want the heat released.
8. Rest 5 minutes off the heat and serve with attieke, rice or boiled yam.

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