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West African Couscous

West African Couscous is a traditional West African recipe for making couscous from scratch and then steaming with baobab leaf powder and peanut butter as flavourings. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic West African version of: West African Couscous.

prep time

20 minutes

cook time

80 minutes

Total Time:

100 minutes

Serves:

4–6

Rating:

Tags : Vegetarian RecipesWest-africa Recipes

This is a West African variant on the staple North African pasta dish, couscous. The traditional method of preparing couscous is to steam-cook it in a special pot called a couscoussière which consists of a cooking pot, generally with a rounded base, with a second pot that fits snugly on top of the bottom pot. This upper pot is lidded and has holes in its bottom that admit steam from the lower pot. The lower pot is used to cook the soup or stew that accompanies the couscous that's cooking in the upper pot. If you have a cooking pot with a steaming basket then you can use this. Alternatively you can line a colander with muslin and use this to cook your couscous.

Ingredients:

500g finely-ground sorghum or millet flour (or a combination)
3 tbsp ground baobab leaf powder
6 tbsp peanut butter
salt, to taste

Method:

To prepare the couscous wet the flour with cold water, adding just enough water so that the flour comes together as a very stiff dough. Force the mixture through a fine-meshed screen (1.5mm mesh). Line a perforated pot with cloth and place the grains in this. Set this pot over a pot of boiling water, cover and steam for about 15 minutes. The grains will form a large clump. At the end of this first cooking time take out the clump and break into smaller aggregates. Return these to the cooking pot and cook for a further 15 minutes.

At the end of this cooking time break the flour chunk into smaller aggregates and pass these through a 2.5mm sieve. Spread out on a baking sheet and dry in the sun or in an oven heated to abut 50°C. Once completely dry you can store in a jar for future use. If you have dried the mix properly it will keep for several months.

When ready to cook, sprinkle water over the grains and mix with your fingers. Add the baobab leaf powder and peanut butter and mix-in thoroughly. Steam for 15 minutes (using the process above) then allow to cool slowly. You can now either serve the dish with a sauce-based stew or you can dry it out completely and store as a convenience food (just steam for 10 minutes and you have yourself a main-dish staple).