Beninese Recipe: My Favorite Lunch

K, I’m going to try to do this thing where I post updates on a delay – that way you don’t get 13 updates one week and none the next. If this works, you should be reading this sometime around the Oct. 7th.


1 c. dry rice
2 c. dry beans (basic, boring beans, the find you could find in baked beans cans)
2 bananas or plantains
Vegetable oil for frying
Every Tanti’s Red Sauce (Benin’s staple spicy tomato sauce, recipe to follow)


1. Soak beans overnight. Cook the following day, probably with salt and bouillon of some sort. Make rice. Set aside.
2. Make sauce. Set aside.
3. Heat vegetable oil in a pot. Slice bananas/plantains on the diagonal (so they look like rhombuses from the side). Each banana should give you 5-6 pieces, probably. When oil is hot, place banana slices in oil. Let fry until outside is dark brown and a little crunchy. Let cool.
4. Put everything on a plate, mix it up, and eat. Serves 2-3 Americans or 1 Beninese.


Every Tanti’s Red Sauce (from Cookin’N’Benin, the PC Benin cookbook)
4 T. vegetable oil
2 onions
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 c. water
12 small Beninese tomatoes or 4-6 American ones, pureed
2-3 piments (chili peppers), pureed
1 cube chicken bouillon
pepper


1. Heat oil and add tomatoes, onions, piment, and garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes.
2. Add water and bouillon. Cover and let simmer for 20 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. For extra spicy sauce, simmer with two more piments (whole) in the sauce.