Central Africa · Volume 08, The Forest Larder
Makayabu
Kinshasa and Brazzaville
Illustration
- Time
- 36 hours 30
- Researched
- Researched from 103 sources in the brief
Salt cod arrived on Portuguese ships, and Congolese heritage writing treats it as a Lusitanian inheritance that became Congolese. The etymology from bacalhau is neat enough to be suspicious, and neither Congolese source making the case could be read directly.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 24 to 36 hours soaking, then 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 600 g salt cod or saithe, thick loin pieces
- 3 tomatoes, chopped
- 2 onions, sliced
- 3 garlic cloves
- 100 ml red palm oil
- 2 small bitter aubergines, quartered (optional, Gabonese dissambu na mbologou style)
- 1 chilli
Method
- Soak the salt cod or saithe in several changes of cold water in the fridge for 24 to 36 hours, depending on thickness. This decides the dish and it is the commonest single failure in home Congolese cooking in Britain. Under-soaked makayabu is inedible and no sauce will rescue it.
- Drain, pat dry, tear into large flakes, discarding skin and bone.
- Fry the onions and garlic cloves in the red palm oil, add the tomatoes, cook down to a thick base, 10 minutes.
- Add the fish and the small bitter aubergines if using, and simmer gently 15 minutes. Do not stir hard: the flakes should stay whole.
- Chilli, and taste before you salt. It very likely needs none.
Notes
Serve with pondu and rice, or with chikwangue.
What a modern chef changes
Soak by measurement, then treat it as a cured fish rather than a salty one
Rungs 5, 3 and 6
Method
- Soak to a target, not a clock. After 24 hours, cut a sliver from the thickest part and taste it raw. It should read as seasoned, not salty. If still aggressive, change the water and give it another 6 hours. Thickness varies by a factor of three between loin and tail and one soaking time cannot serve both.
- Keep the last soaking water and reduce it. It carries real cod flavour with the salt. Reduce 200 ml to about 30 ml and season the tomato base with that instead of salt. You have made a fish glaze out of what everybody pours away.
- Confit the flakes rather than simmering them. 60°C in warm red palm oil for 12 minutes, then folded into the finished sauce off the heat. Salt cod protein is already denatured by curing and toughens fast in a simmering sauce. This keeps the flakes silky and perfumes the oil at the same time.
- Acid, deliberately. Rung 5. Salt cod is high salt and high umami, and acid multiplies the perception you already have. A hard squeeze of lime at the table means less fish for the same intensity.