Central Africa · Volume 07, The Hinge of the Continent
Kilishi
Northern Cameroon, and contested with Nigeria and Niger
Illustration
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Researched
- Researched from 90 sources in the brief
- Reviewed
- Awaiting a reader from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Awaiting a cook report
Beef sliced paper thin, sun dried, painted with a groundnut slurry, dried again, then roasted over coals. It keeps six months without refrigeration and is taken with hot sweet mint tea or with kossam, the fermented milk. A source warning before the numbers. The single detailed source for the figures below carries a precision that raises suspicion and contains at least one factual slip elsewhere. They are coherent and plausible, they rest on one source, and they are printed as that source's specification rather than as established fact. See the final section.
As tradition built it
Makes 40 to 50 slices from 1.5 kg. Two days.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg lean beef, round or topside, all fat and sinew removed
- 150 g ground roasted peanuts (kulikuli)
- 3 tbsp cayenne
- 2 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 tbsp dried onion powder
- 1 tsp ground grains of Selim
- 1 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1½ tsp fine salt
- 100 ml hot water
- 100 ml neutral oil and 3 sliced onions, for the finish
Method
- Semi-freeze the beef 30 minutes, then slice across the grain at 3 mm, thin enough to be semi-translucent.
- First dry. Racks in direct sun, 4 to 5 hours, rotating hourly, or in Britain a dehydrator or oven at 60 to 70°C for 4 to 6 hours. Target roughly 70 per cent moisture loss: 1.5 kg down to 600 to 700 g. Leathery and pliable, never brittle.
- Labu-yaji paste. Combine the peanut and spices, then add the hot water gradually to a thick yoghurt consistency.
- Apply with bare fingers, not a brush, in a 1 mm layer on both sides. Body heat softens the peanut oil matrix so it grips.
- Second dry. 2 to 4 hours in sun, or 70°C with the door ajar for 2 hours, until the crust is matte, granular and mahogany.
- Onion oil. Fry the onions in the oil 12 to 15 minutes to deep amber, discard them, brush the oil thinly on both sides.
- Final roast over white coals at 10 to 12 cm, or under a 180°C grill: 5 to 8 minutes the first side to dark brown with black edges, 3 to 5 minutes the second. Rest, and serve at room temperature.
What a modern chef changes
The dehydrator used for what it is actually good at, and the slurry treated as an infusion
Rungs 6 and 4
Method
- Use the dehydrator and stop pretending it is a compromise. Ngaoundéré sun runs at 38 to 42°C between November and March, which is a dehydrator temperature. A British dehydrator at 40°C reproduces the northern dry season more faithfully than a 70°C oven, it just takes longer.
- Dry to weight, not to the clock. Put the tray on scales. 70 per cent loss is a number and you can hit it exactly, which no amount of poking will do for you.
- Toast the groundnut properly and grind it to order. Rung 6. Kulikuli is the flavour of the dish, and ground the same day it is a different product from a bag opened last month.
- Treat the second dry as an infusion. The slurry is wet on dry meat, and over those two hours water migrates inward carrying soluble spice compounds with it. Slower and cooler is better, because the transfer must happen before the surface seals.