Caldo de Mancarra

Name: Caldo de Mancarra
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 20 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Guinea-Bissau
Ingredients: 250 g smooth unsweetened peanut butter or groundnut paste; 700 g chicken thighs or beef, in pieces; 150 g smoked or dried fish, flaked, optional; 2 large onions, chopped; 4 cloves garlic, crushed; 4 tomatoes, chopped; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 4 tbsp red palm oil; 1.2 litres water or stock; 1 scotch bonnet, whole and pricked; 1 bay leaf; 1 stock cube; 1.5 tsp salt, to taste; 300 g sweet potato or cassava, in chunks, optional

Guinea-Bissau's groundnut stew, peanut paste cooked down with tomato, palm oil, and fish or chicken into a thick red-brown sauce eaten over rice

Origin: Bissau and the Bijagós coast, Guinea-Bissau

From the journey of Peanut.

Caldo de mancarra is the groundnut stew of Guinea-Bissau, and mancarra is the Portuguese Creole word for the peanut that dominated the country's economy for a century and a half. Peanut paste is loosened and cooked down slowly with onion, tomato, and palm oil until the oil separates and the sauce turns thick and red-brown, with chicken, beef, or the smoked and dried fish of the Bijagós Archipelago through it. It is always eaten over rice. Groundnuts came to West Africa from Brazil with Portuguese shipping in the sixteenth century and took to the Sahelian soils so completely that they reshaped the region. Under colonial administration Senegal and Guinea-Bissau were pushed hard towards groundnuts as an export monoculture, which made the crop central to the economy and, in lean years, precarious. The dish belongs to a family that runs across the whole of West and Central Africa: Senegalese mafé, Malian and Ivorian groundnut sauces, Nigerian and Ghanaian groundnut soup, Zambian ifisashi. What marks the Bissau-Guinean version is the palm oil alongside the peanut and the Portuguese Creole layer sitting over Mande and Balanta cooking.

Ingredients

Base

250 g smooth unsweetened peanut butter or groundnut paste
4 tomatoes, chopped
2 tbsp tomato purée

Protein

700 g chicken thighs or beef, in pieces
150 g smoked or dried fish, flaked, optional

Aromatics

2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed

Fat

4 tbsp red palm oil

Liquid

1.2 litres water or stock

Seasoning

1 scotch bonnet, whole and pricked
1 bay leaf
1 stock cube
1.5 tsp salt, to taste

Vegetables

300 g sweet potato or cassava, in chunks, optional

Method

Brown the meat in the palm oil in a heavy pot, in batches, and lift it out.
Soften the onions in the same oil for ten minutes, add the garlic, then the tomato purée and chopped tomatoes, and cook for eight minutes until darkened.
Loosen the peanut paste in a bowl with 400 ml of warm water, whisking until completely smooth and pourable.
Return the meat, pour in the slaked peanut paste and the remaining liquid, add the bay leaf, stock cube, and whole chilli, and bring to a gentle simmer.
Simmer uncovered, stirring every ten minutes, for forty minutes. Add the sweet potato or cassava after fifteen minutes if using.
The stew is ready when it has thickened considerably and a layer of reddish oil has risen and pooled at the surface.
Stir in the smoked fish, season with salt, remove the chilli and bay leaf, and serve over plain white rice.

Notes

Use unsweetened peanut butter with no palm oil or sugar added, or proper groundnut paste from an African grocer. Red palm oil is what makes this Bissau-Guinean rather than generically West African. It is sold in African shops and there is no substitute for its colour and scent. Senegalese mafé is the closest relative and usually omits the palm oil; Zambian ifisashi takes the same paste in an entirely vegetable direction.

The Gastrographer

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control