Vegetarian recipes from Senegal

Senegalese cooking rests on a grain served in quantity — rice, millet or fonio — and a sauce that wets it. Without meat or fish, groundnut and cowpea carry the body of the dish: peanut paste gives its density to vegetable mafe, while the black-eyed pea stands alone in stewed cowpeas with vegetables. The seasonings are few but constant: a great deal of onion, garlic, chilli, black pepper, bay leaf, and sourness from tamarind or lime. Oil is frankly present and binds the sauce; root vegetables and cabbage cook whole in it rather than apart.

The meal is eaten from a shared dish, the grain spread underneath and the sauce poured in the middle, each person eating what is in front of them. That explains the shape of the dishes: vegetable rice in the tiep manner cooks the rice in the vegetable broth, so the seasoning sits inside the grain rather than on top. Local grains keep their place beside imported rice: fonio couscous with vegetables is steamed in several passes, and millet lakh with peanut paste turns millet into a sweet porridge eaten at breakfast or in the evening.