Banku with tilapia

Ingredients

• Maize flour — fermented for three days400 g
• Cassava dough200 g
• Tilapia — whole, gutted4
• Tomatoes4
• Habanero chillies3
• Onion2
• Ginger30 g
• Garlic4 clove
• Vegetable oil80 ml
• Saltto 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

   Mix the maize and cassava doughs with a litre of water and salt to a smooth, lump-free batter.

   10 min

2. 2

   Set it over medium heat and work it with a wooden paddle without stopping. It starts to thicken after five minutes.

   8 min

3. 3

   Keep working it for twenty minutes, pressing it against the sides, until it turns dense and glossy.

   22 min

4. 4

   Shape balls with wet hands and wrap each in film or a banana leaf.

   8 min

5. 5

   Rub the fish with salt, ginger and garlic and grill or pan-fry it eight minutes a side.

   20 min

6. 6

   Grind the tomatoes, habaneros, onion, salt and a spoon of oil in a mortar to a coarse sauce.

   10 min

7. 7

   Serve a ball of banku, the fish and a bowl of sauce. It is eaten by hand, pinching off dough and dipping it.

   4 min

About the dish

The dough ferments for three days, which is why banku is sour. The sourness is the point rather than a side effect: it balances oily fish and a fierce sauce.

Banku is worked in the pot with a wooden paddle, continuously and hard, for about twenty minutes. A lump means it was underworked, and there is no fixing it later.

The pepper sauce is ground in an asanka, a clay mortar. A metal blender gives a different texture — too smooth and too watery.

Worth knowing

• — Ready-fermented dough is sold in African shops. At home, cover maize flour with water and leave it three days somewhere warm, stirring once a day.
• — The paddle has to be wooden and wide. A spoon cannot move a mass this stiff, and metal scores the pot.
• — Make the sauce genuinely hot. A mild one does not work: sour banku needs a sharp contrast.

Nutrition

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

Calories

640 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

20 g

Carbs

78 g

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• Waakye — Rice and black-eyed beans cooked with sorghum leaves, which turn it deep red.