Benachin

the Gambian one-pot: rice cooked in the tomato broth its fish and vegetables were simmered in, until the grain has taken up every drop

Origin: Banjul & the Gambia River

From the journey of Rice.

Benachin is Wolof for one pot, and the name is the whole method. Fish or meat and a great quantity of vegetables are simmered in a tomato broth, lifted out, and the rice is then cooked in that same liquid until it has absorbed all of it. Nothing is drained away and nothing is cooked separately. What arrives is a single dish in which the rice tastes of everything that preceded it. The Gambia is the river valley with a border drawn around the water, and its cooking runs across that border into Senegal, where the same one-pot is thiéboudienne. Gambians will tell you the two are not identical and they are right on the details: benachin is more often made with meat as well as fish, the vegetable list is longer and more variable, and the rice is usually cooked somewhat softer. The red version with tomato is the everyday one; a white benachin without it, closer to a plain stock rice, is cooked alongside. It is the national dish of the Gambia and it is treated as such: eaten from a shared bowl on the floor with the right hand, with the best pieces of fish pushed towards the guest, and cooked in quantities that assume more people will arrive than were invited. The rice beneath it has an unusually deep history here. Oryza glaberrima, African rice, was domesticated in the inland delta of the Niger some three thousand years ago, independently of the Asian species, and the Senegambian coast has been a rice-eating region for the whole of its recorded history. The expertise taken from this coast to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry built the American rice economy.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 600 g firm white fish steaks, or 600g beef in chunks
  • 500 g long-grain rice, rinsed
  • 4 tbsp groundnut oil
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 4 tbsp tomato purée
  • 4 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies, whole
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 stock cubes
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1.5 litres water

Vegetables

  • 1 small cabbage, in wedges
  • 2 carrots, in thick lengths
  • 1 aubergine, in chunks
  • 300 g cassava or sweet potato, in chunks
  • 6 okra, whole

Stuffing

  • 1 small bunch parsley, chopped

Method

  1. If using fish, cut a slit in each steak and push in a paste of the parsley, half the garlic, and a little salt. This stuffing is standard on both banks of the river and it seasons the fish from inside.
  2. Heat the oil in a wide heavy pot and brown the fish or meat on both sides. Lift out and set aside.
  3. Fry the onions in the same oil until soft and golden, about ten minutes, then add the remaining garlic and the tomato purée and cook it out for four minutes until it darkens.
  4. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook down hard for twelve minutes, until thick and the oil separates.
  5. Pour in the water, add the stock cubes, whole chillies, and salt, and bring to a simmer. Return the meat now if using meat; fish goes in later.
  6. Add the vegetables in order of hardness: cassava and carrot first, then after ten minutes the aubergine and cabbage, then the okra for the last five. Lift each out as it becomes tender and keep them warm.
  7. If using fish, lower it into the broth and poach gently for eight minutes, then lift it out carefully.
  8. Taste the broth and correct the salt now. This is the only chance: once the rice goes in it cannot be seasoned properly again.
  9. Measure the broth. You want about 1.2 litres for 500g of rice. Add the rice, stir once, and cook covered on the lowest heat for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until every drop has been absorbed.
  10. Turn the rice out onto a wide platter and arrange the fish and vegetables over it. Serve from the middle, with the chillies for anyone who wants them.

Notes

Seasoning the broth before the rice goes in decides the dish. The ratio matters too: measure the broth rather than guessing, since too much gives a wet benachin and too little leaves the grain hard. Gambian cooks generally take the rice a little softer than a Senegalese cook would, so err that way rather than towards separate grains. Any firm white fish works; the traditional choice is a whole butterfish or barracuda cut into steaks.

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