Attiéké with fish

Ingredients

• Attiéké500 g
• Tilapia or sea bream — whole, gutted4
• Onions3
• Tomatoes3
• Chilli2
• Garlic5 clove
• Ginger30 g
• Stock cube1
• Lemons2
• Vegetable oil80 ml
• 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

   Grind the garlic, ginger, chilli, stock cube, salt and oil into a paste.

   8 min

2. 2

   Slash the fish at the sides and rub the paste inside the cuts and over the skin. Leave it twenty minutes.

   25 min

3. 3

   Break up the attiéké with your hands, sprinkle it with hot water and salt it.

   5 min

4. 4

   Cover it and let it steam ten minutes, in a steamer or simply covered somewhere warm.

   12 min

5. 5

   Slice the onion, tomatoes and chilli and mix them with lemon juice, salt and a spoon of oil.

   10 min

6. 6

   Grill the fish over coals or in a griddle pan, seven minutes a side.

   16 min

7. 7

   Serve the attiéké, fish and salad on one plate, with a wedge of lemon.

   4 min

About the dish

Attiéké is cassava grated, fermented and dried into a couscous-like grain. The ferment gives it a light sourness that distinguishes it from couscous and from plain cassava.

The grain is only steamed, never boiled: hot water is poured over it and it sits covered for ten minutes. In water it turns to paste.

The fish is grilled whole over coals, slashed at the sides. A raw onion salad with tomato and chilli comes separately — its acidity is needed against oily fish and a neutral grain.

Worth knowing

• — Add the water to the attiéké a little at a time. Overwetted, the grain fuses into a lump that will not break up again.
• — Turn the fish once. Every extra move tears the skin and the flesh sticks to the grate.
• — Attiéké is sold dry and moist. The dry kind needs ten minutes' soaking; the moist kind only needs steam.

Nutrition

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

Calories

560 kcal

Protein

40 g

Fat

20 g

Carbs

58 g

More from Ivory Coast

• Kedjenou — Chicken cooked in a sealed clay pot without water. An Ivorian dish of slow heat.