Cook this: Beef baguette — ‘an African street food invention’ — from Saka Saka

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Our cookbook of the week is Saka Saka: Adventures in African Cooking, South of the Sahara by Anto Cocagne and Aline Princet. Over the subsequent three days, we’ll characteristic extra recipes from the e-book and an interview with one of many authors.

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For Anto Cocagne (a.ok.a. Chef Anto), beef baguette is a style of childhood.

Rising up in Gabon, “Each lunch, it was beef baguette,” says the Paris-based chef, inventive director of Afro Cooking journal, president of the We Eat Africa meals pageant, and star of the TV collection Rendez-vous avec Le Chef Anto.

She and her associates would spend their highschool lunch breaks washing down beef baguettes with Coca-Cola. Maimouna, the seller they purchased them from, continues to be promoting the road meals specialty on the identical spot 20 years later.

“It’s one thing you will discover in lots of nations in Africa,” provides Cocagne. “For me it’s simply good recollections.”

There’s no set recipe for the “African avenue meals invention,” she says. Any mixture of roasted or grilled meat, uncooked greens, mayonnaise and scorching chilies is honest recreation.

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The recipe calls for 2 of Cocagne’s bases: ntorolo and purple nokoss. The latter is a seasoning paste used to marinate meat; the previous a condiment “utilized in the identical approach as mustard or mayonnaise,” she writes.

“Place it on the desk to thrill company who love spicy meals.” (In case you choose a milder paste, swap the new chilies for a gentle or candy selection, Cocagne suggests.)

Beef Baguette

2 purple onions
1 tomato
1/3 cup (35 g) do-it-yourself or good-quality mayonnaise
1 tsp ntorolo (recipe follows)
1 tbsp purple nokoss (recipe follows)
Vegetable oil
9 oz (250 g) floor beef
Salt and pepper
3 small baguettes
A handful of lettuce leaves, to serve

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Step 1

Peel and thinly slice the purple onions. Lower the tomato in half and slice it into half-rounds.

Step 2

Combine the mayonnaise and ntorolo collectively.

Step 3

In a frying pan, sweat the purple nokoss in somewhat oil, add the bottom beef and prepare dinner for quarter-hour. Season with salt and pepper. Put aside.

Step 4

Lower the baguettes in half after which break up them open. Unfold the ntorolo mayonnaise over the baguettes. Add some lettuce and tomato and onion slices to every baguette, then add the bottom beef and any juices. Serve instantly.

Serves: 6

Observe: Beef baguette is an African avenue meals invention. There is no such thing as a set recipe. The thought is to make a baguette with roasted or grilled meat, contemporary greens, mayonnaise and chili.

NTOROLO

Chili and herb paste

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1 3/4 oz (50 g) scorching chilies
1 white onion
5 garlic cloves
3/4 oz (20 g) contemporary ginger
1/3 cup (90 mL) vegetable oil
1 tsp salt

Step 1

Lower the tops off the chilies, then roughly chop.

Step 2

Peel and roughly chop the onion, garlic and ginger. Mix in a blender with the chili.

Step 3

Mix all the things right into a easy paste, add the oil and salt, then mix once more.

Step 4

Hold the paste in a glass jar within the fridge.

Observe: Ntorolo is a condiment that’s utilized in the identical approach as mustard or mayonnaise. Place it on the desk to thrill company who love spicy meals. In case you discover it laborious to eat actually spicy chilies, select delicate or candy chilies, or add purple wine vinegar to your jar and the combination will pack much less of a punch.

RED NOKOSS

For meat

1 purple candy pepper
2 delicate/candy purple chilies
1 purple onion
3 garlic cloves
3/4 oz (20 g) contemporary ginger
1 tomato
1 celery stalk
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
1 tbsp soumbala powder (see notice)

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Step 1

Deseed the candy pepper and chilies. Peel and roughly chop the onion, garlic and ginger. Roughly chop the tomato and celery.

Step 2

Utilizing a blender, mix the candy pepper, chilies, onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, celery and herbs right into a easy paste. Add the soumbala and three tbsp water, then mix once more.

Step 3

Hold the paste in a glass jar within the fridge (see notice).

Notes: Soumbala is a conventional condiment utilized in West African cooking and is an ingredient that’s broadly used, in the identical approach that fish sauce is utilized in Southeast Asia. It’s made by processing the seeds from the pods of the néré tree. It may be discovered with completely different names: “nététou” in Senegal, “moutarde africaine” in Togo, “soumbala” in Guinea and Mali, “soumara” in Ivory Coast, and “dadawa” or “iru” in Nigeria and Ghana. Discover it on-line (e.g., Etsy) or at African grocery shops.

Nokoss is a paste used to season sauces, meats and fish. It’s going to preserve longer in the event you add a layer of vegetable oil to the jar. Retailer it within the fridge for as much as every week. To maintain the paste for longer, use an ice dice tray (that you just use for nokoss solely) and freeze the entire batch.

Recipes and pictures excerpted from Saka Saka: Adventures in African Cooking, South of the Sahara by Anto Cocagne and Aline Princet. First American version printed in 2022 by Interlink Books. Copyright © Mango 2019. Reprinted with permission of the writer.