Konkoé

As tradition built it

Serves 6. About 1 hour 30 minutes.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The pot

• 1 litre water
• 2 konkoé (smoked catfish), in large pieces
• 3 onions
• 5 cloves garlic
• 5 stalks spring onion
• 1 chilli, seeded
• 1 tin peeled tomatoes
• stock cubes, crumbled
• 3 bay leaves
• 3 to 4 potatoes, peeled and halved
• 3 carrots, in large chunks
• 1 aubergine, in rounds
• 6 okra
• 1 glass palm oil
• to taste salt and pepper

To serve

• to serve rice

Method

1. Rinse the fish and cut it into large pieces. Bring the water to the boil and add the fish.
2. Blend the onions, garlic, spring onions, chilli, tomatoes and stock cubes in a food processor. Pour it into the pot with the bay and bring it back to the boil.
3. Add the potatoes, carrots, aubergine and okra, stir, and bring it back to the boil. Cover and lower the heat.
4. Simmer 15 minutes, then add the palm oil and check the salt. It is ready about 5 minutes later.
5. Serve with rice.

Notes

The recipe is Justin Morel's, for guineeconakry.online; it uses half the chilli for a milder sauce, and mashes cooked okra into the rice. Recettesafricaine.com fries the smoked fish in the oil with the tomato first, adds pumpkin, and uses no okra.

What a modern chef changes

The fish chosen for what smoking actually does to it, and the sauce built to carry that smoke rather than compete with it

Rung 6

Method

1. If konkoué itself cannot be sourced, choose a substitute for its texture and smoke intensity, not its species name. A hot-smoked mackerel or smoked eel, flaked, gives a comparable dense, oily, heavily smoked character that a milder smoked white fish does not.
2. Fry the groundnut version out properly, Rung 4, before adding the fish, so the sauce's own savoury base is not simply riding on the fish's smoke alone.