Tigadegena

Ingredients

• Beef or lamb — in pieces900 g
• Peanut butter — unsweetened350 g
• Onions2
• Tomato paste3 tbsp
• Cabbage300 g
• Carrots3
• Potatoes400 g
• Aubergines2
• Chilli1
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• Rice — to serve450 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

   Brown the meat in oil, add the onion and fry until soft.

   15 min

2. 2

   Stir in the tomato paste and cook five minutes, until it darkens.

   7 min

3. 3

   Add a litre and a half of water, season and cook forty minutes.

   42 min

4. 4

   Slacken the peanut butter with two ladles of the broth until smooth and lump-free.

   5 min

5. 5

   Pour the paste into the pot in a thin stream, stirring continuously.

   5 min

6. 6

   Add the vegetables in large pieces and the whole chilli and stew thirty minutes, stirring.

   32 min

7. 7

   Wait for the peanut oil to rise to the surface, remove the chilli and serve with rice.

   12 min

About the dish

The name translates literally: tiga is peanut, dègèna is sauce. The paste here is the base rather than an addition, and no less than three hundred grams go into a pot.

The paste is slackened with broth and poured in as a thin stream, with stirring. A lump dropped into hot broth seizes and stays a dense knot to the end.

The sauce cooks until peanut oil rises to the surface. As in Congolese moambé, that is the sign of doneness rather than of overcooking.

Worth knowing

• — Stir often: peanut sauce catches faster than tomato, and the burnt taste runs through the whole pot.
• — The sauce thickens a great deal as it cools. Reheat it with broth rather than water.
• — The vegetables in tigadegena are cut large and served in whole pieces. Cooked to a purée, they count as a mistake.

Nutrition

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

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

44 g

Carbs

54 g

More from Mali

• Grilled capitaine — Nile perch grilled whole over coals, with a yet onion sauce and fried plantain.