Recipes from The Gambia

As some may have noticed, I've been slacking on this blog a bit lately, but I'm going to try to get back up and going!

Here we have some recipes from The Gambia. The two we will be looking at today are 'Chicken and Beef Benachin,' and 'Chakery,' a dessert of couscous with a creamy sauce.

The Chakery doesn't take very much time to make, so you don't have to worry about that until near the end. You can always make up the sauce and couscous a while beforehand as well. The main focus of this meal is the Benachin.

The Chicken and Beef Benachin is basically a 'one pot meal.' It contains all the meat and vegetables you can eat, in a tasty tomato-base sauce. A note here: This recipe lasted our family of 6 for three nights. If you have a smaller family, you will probably want to make only half or a third of the recipe. That is unless you want endless leftovers (a mixed blessing in this case, as this meal IS tasty, but may lose its appeal after 4 or 5 days running).

The recipe takes about 2 and a half hours in total to finish, so give yourself a good amount of time for cooking before dinner. To start, the ingredients for the CHicken and Beef Benachin are as follows:

2 lbs chicken thighs
½ lb beef, cubed
4 tsp chicken soup broth powder
¼ cup vinegar
1 onion, diced
1 tsp fresh minced ginger
1 hot chili pepper or jalapeno, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, peeled and diced
7 cups water
1 small cabbage, roughly chopped
2 green bell peppers, diced
1 small winter squash (acorn or butternut, etc), halved, seeded, placed on a plate with a small amount of water in the bottom and microwaved for 5 – 10 minutes, until soft.
2 bay leaves

To begin, get your chicken and beef out of whatever wrappings they're in, and put them in a large dish. Pour the vinegar over them, and then sprinkle with the salt, pepper, and chicken soup broth powder. Put it in the fridge to marinate for 30 minutes.

The recipe sums up the next step pretty well, so I'll quote it here:

"Heat oil in a large, heavy-bottomed stock pot. Add chicken and beef and brown on all sides. Remove meat from pan with a slotted spoon and set aside."

Depending on how much meat you have, you may have to do these in batches. Take the meat out of the pot when you're done, but leave the oil in it. Add onion, ginger and chili pepper and saute for 5 minutes. Add in the garlic for a minute, and then throw in the tomatoes and water.

Bring the mix to a boil, and then reduce it to a simmer. Make sure you've scooped the squash out of its shell, and then add in the cabbage, bell peppers, and squash. The original recipe called for eggplant, and I think this is probably where you would add in the eggplant, if you wish to use it. (Bleck.)

Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Add in the meat, bay leaves, salt, and pepper, and cook for another 25 minutes. Before you deem the Benachin done, make sure to chekc the center of the chicken and beef to make sure it's thoroughly cooked.

Next, on to the Chakery. There's really not a whole lot that needs to be done, but here's a basic idea.

First of all, for ingredients:

1/2 box couscous mix

1 cups vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup of sour cream
1/2 12 oz can evaporated milk
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla flavoring

The process for making it can be easily summed up by the recipe in two steps:

1.Cook couscous according to directions on box and place into individual serving bowls.

2.Mix together sauce ingredients and pour over individual portions. Serve immediately.

The Chakery sauce in the process of being made:

The finished Benachin served over rice:

The Benachin is quite good on rice, so if you think you need a little extra something with your meal, rice is a good choice. It works quite well on its own as well, though. Almost like a nice soup if served in a bowl.

That's it for The Gambia. Next we'll be going farther south in Africa, down to Swaziland.