Ceebu jën

As tradition built it

Serves 6. About 2 hours.

Ingredients

• 6 small whole white fish, gutted and scaled
• 1 bunch parsley
• 3 bird's eye chillies
• 6 garlic cloves
• to taste salt
• 2 onions, chopped
• 400 g tomatoes, crushed, plus 2 tbsp concentrate
• 30 g guedj
• 15 g yeet
• 1 aubergine
• 1 cassava
• 1 carrot
• 1 sweet potato
• a wedge cabbage
• 6 okra
• 800 g broken rice

Method

1. Pound the parsley, chillies, garlic and salt to a coarse, bright green, wet paste. Do not over-blend it: a blender weeps water out of the leaf and thins the paste. This is rof.
2. Cut a pocket into each fish and pack it with rof, or score deep incisions and fill them directly.
3. Soften the onion in oil, add the tomato and concentrate, and cook down hard until the raw smell is gone and the fat begins to separate.
4. Add the guedj and yeet, pounded, then water, then the harder vegetables: aubergine, cassava, carrot and sweet potato. Simmer.
5. Add the fish gently, cook through, then lift out and set aside. Add the softer vegetables, cabbage and okra, to finish in the same broth.
6. Add the broken rice to that same coloured, fat-enriched liquid. It cooks by absorbing the liquid entirely, not by boiling in separate water.
7. In the last ten minutes, do not stir. Let the base form the xoon.
8. Return the fish and vegetables on top to serve.

What a modern chef changes

The xoon engineered, the two ferments separated and dosed, and the fish chosen for structure

Rungs 1, 2 and 6

Method

1. Use genuinely broken rice and a genuinely flat, heavy pot. Rung 1. This is not negotiable if you want the crust.
2. Build a concentrated guedj and yeet stock separately, then dose it. Steep both, gently, off the boil, strain, and add back in a controlled quantity rather than pounding whole pieces into the pot and hoping. You get the same double fermentation system with a repeatable result.
3. Choose your fish for the job. Rung 6. A sustainably sourced hake or coley, firm enough to stuff and hold through a long simmer, does the dish's actual job better than a wild grouper bought on the strength of its name.
4. Listen for the xoon rather than timing it. The sound changes from a wet simmer to something drier just before the crust sets. That sound, not a clock, is the cue to stop stirring.