Thieboudienne recipe

Senegal's national one-pot dish: whole fish slashed and stuffed with pounded parsley-garlic rof, then broken rice cooked in the tomato and fish broth until a toasted crust forms at the bottom.

2 hours and 35 minutesmedium12 ingredients

Ingredients

• 600 g broken rice
• 4 whole white fish
• 1 bunch parsley
• 6 clove garlic
• 1 scotch bonnet
• 1 tbsp nététou
• 1 dried fish
• 150 g tomato paste
• 2 onions
• 3 carrots
• 1 cabbage
• 200 ml peanut oil

How to make Thieboudienne

1. Pound a large bunch of parsley with 6 garlic cloves, 1 scotch bonnet and salt in a mortar until it is a rough green paste. This is the rof; without it the dish is not thieboudienne.
2. Cut 3 deep diagonal slashes into each of 4 whole white fish (grouper is the classic thiof) and push the rof into the cuts. Leave 30 minutes.
3. Fry the fish in 200 ml of peanut oil, 6 minutes per side, and set aside. Keep the oil in the pot, it carries the flavour.
4. In that oil soften 2 sliced onions, then add 150 g of tomato paste and cook it low for 10 minutes until it darkens and loses its raw acidity.
5. Stir in 1 tbsp of ground nététou (fermented locust bean) and 1 small dried fish, pour in 2 litres of water and bring to a boil.
6. Cook the vegetables in this broth: 3 carrots, a quarter cabbage, plus cassava if you have it, 25 to 30 minutes, lifting each out as it turns tender. Return the fish for 5 minutes, then remove it too.
7. Pour 600 g of rinsed broken rice into the remaining broth, liquid standing about 2 cm above the rice. Cook uncovered 20 minutes, then covered on low for 10 more. The rice cooks in the broth, never in plain water, and that is what turns it red.
8. Leave the pot on low a few extra minutes to let the bottom layer catch and toast: that crust is the xoonq and it is served alongside, not scraped away.
9. Turn the rice onto a large platter, arrange fish and vegetables on top, and serve with lime wedges.

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