Poulet à la moambe

the chicken and palm fruit stew both Congos claim, thick with pressed cream and eaten with cassava leaves and a starch

Origin: Kinshasa, Brazzaville & the Congo Basin

From the journey of Oil Palm.

Moambe names the sauce, not the bird, and both Congos call this their national dish with equal conviction. Neither will concede and the atlas takes no side: the Kikongo and Lingala word, the tree, and the cooking are all older than the border, which was drawn along the river at the Berlin Conference in 1885 and split a single cultural region between a Belgian and a French administration. The sauce is the pressed cream of boiled palm fruit, the same preparation Gabon calls nyembwe and Angola muamba, and the differences between the three national versions are smaller than any of them would like. What is common to all is the texture: this is a thick, clinging, deep orange sauce rather than an oily one, and the fruit should be tasted before the fat. It is eaten with pondu, the long-cooked cassava leaf, and with chikwangue or rice. The full spread of moambe, pondu, and a starch is what a Congolese household sets out for a Sunday or for guests, and the three dishes together use the same tree twice: palm oil goes into the cassava leaves as well. The industrial history behind that tree is grim and worth knowing. In 1911 the Belgian administration granted Lever Brothers an enormous concession in the Congo, operated as the Huileries du Congo Belge, to supply palm oil for Sunlight soap. Its palm districts ran on labour compelled through taxation and force, and the arrangement lasted for decades whilst the soap was sold in Britain on a promise of hygiene and domestic virtue.

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg chicken, jointed into small pieces
  • 1.2 kg fresh palm fruit, or 600g tinned palm nut concentrate
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 5 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 3 scotch bonnet chillies, whole
  • 2 tbsp groundnut oil
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 stock cubes
  • 1 tsp grated nutmeg
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1.5 litres water

Method

  1. Boil the palm fruits until soft, thirty to forty minutes. Pound, extract the cream with hot water in two pressings, and strain. You want around 1.2 litres of thick orange liquid. With concentrate, whisk into the same volume of hot water.
  2. Season the chicken with salt and nutmeg. Brown it in the groundnut oil in a heavy pot, in batches, and set aside.
  3. Soften the onions and garlic in the pot, add the tomato purée and cook it out for three minutes, then the chopped tomatoes and cook down for ten minutes.
  4. Pour in the palm liquid, return the chicken, and add the bay leaves, whole chillies, and stock cubes.
  5. Simmer uncovered for forty minutes, stirring occasionally. The sauce should reduce noticeably, deepen in colour, and thicken enough to coat the chicken rather than pool around it.
  6. Taste for salt. Lift out the chillies, or break one into the pot for real heat.
  7. Serve with pondu, chikwangue, plantain, or rice, and spoon plenty of the sauce over.

Notes

Nutmeg is a small but genuine part of the Congolese version and is worth not skipping. As with every dish in this family, the pot stays uncovered and the sauce is finished by reduction rather than by thickening agents. Smoked or dried fish can replace the chicken and needs only twenty minutes. If tinned concentrate is your only option, buy the one that lists nothing but palm fruit and water.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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