Liboke de poisson

Ingredients

• Tilapia or carp — whole, gutted4
• Banana leaves12
• Tomatoes4
• Onions2
• Garlic6 clove
• Ginger30 g
• Pili-pili chilli2
• Lemons2
• Spring onions4
• Cassava — to serve500 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Slash the fish at the sides and rub it with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

   12 min

2. 2

   Grind the garlic, ginger and chilli to a paste and work it into the cuts and the cavity.

   10 min

3. 3

   Pass the banana leaves over a flame so they turn pliable and stop cracking.

   8 min

4. 4

   Lay tomato and onion slices on a leaf, the fish on them, then more tomato and spring onion.

   10 min

5. 5

   Wrap in three leaves into a tight parcel and tie it with a strip of the same leaf.

   10 min

6. 6

   Set the parcels on the coals and bake them fifteen minutes a side.

   32 min

7. 7

   Serve them still in the leaf, with boiled cassava or rice.

   12 min

About the dish

The parcel goes straight onto the coals rather than on a grate. The leaf chars outside, but inside the fish steams and stays moist.

No oil and no liquid go inside. The fish and the tomatoes supply everything needed, and added water turns liboke into a boiled dish.

Wrap in two or three leaves. One burns through in ten minutes and the fish ends up on the coals, beyond rescue.

Worth knowing

• — In an oven liboke takes forty minutes at 200 °C. There is no smoke, but the texture holds, and that is an honest city version.
• — Do not pierce or open the parcel before the end. Steam that escapes means dry fish.
• — The same method works with chicken and with prawns. The timing changes: chicken needs an hour, prawns fifteen minutes.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

12 g

Carbs

46 g

More from DR Congo

• Poulet moambé — Chicken in a sauce of palm fruit pulp. The national dish of the Congo.