Chebb u jen

So yesterday, I was rather crabby if you read my previous post, when my family told me I should cook lunch tomorrow. Sweet! I realize this is a great way to be integrated into the family and all, but all I could think about is how the camera would come out, and how they would laugh when a toubab tried to cook and gasp, need to use her left hand! Whatev. I gave in.

So here’s how it started. My friend, Matar, was over for lunch yesterday and so he initiated this lovely idea of having me cook. So this morning he came over quarter after 11 and was like, where is the chef? Umm... I’m here (still hoping I was going to get out of it). Just after 11 is when we start cooking. People in America don’t have time for this! That’s what they said when Matar asked what is our national plate… sandwiches or hamburgers to go since “Time is Money”. Seems to be the one and only phrase the Senegalese know in English. I hate admitting that its true, but it is. By the way, what is our national dish?

So we got all of the food out of the fridge since someone must have gone to the market earlier in the week (obviously noted by the smell of the fridge). We pulled out the raw veggies and fish and stuck them in the same bowl. Keep reading if you want to see how many “rules of the kitchen” have been broken. I’ve worked in too many restaurants to know that cross contamination is bad and we must clean everything with bleach. HAHA – that doesn’t exactly get done here. So we moved all of the food out to the “garage” area, that’s more like a porch where the “gaaz” or propane tank is. There are buckets of water that have to be filled from the tap in the back of the compound and other buckets of water used as waste since there is no sink, not to mention counters. All of this is done on the sandy cement floor with 3 baby chickens running around our feet.

So we light the gaaz and pour some oil in. Then I crushed several baby tomatoes with my hands, which I wasn’t told to wash, and mix them with a bit of tomato paste. I started peeling the veggies and scaling the fish. The maid thought my mom and sister were crazy when they yelled at her for starting, and said, wait, “she can scale?!” (thanks mom for teaching me that way back when I used to play with the fish eyeballs when camping) So then it was time to throw in the tomatoes into the oil. Also, I crushed garlic, onion, hot pepper and some Jumbo (magic ingredient in Senegal, aka bouillon cubes) into a wooden mortar, and yes, got my picture taken by my sister. I’ll ask her for the photos. Peeled and prepared the rest of the carrots, manioc, cabbage, eggplant, squash and potato. After you know, a while, we put all the veggies and fish together into the oil, tomato and like 2 pots of water. I say pots since measuring cups don’t exist and she seriously used a pot normally used for cooking to put into the caldron on the gaaz.

What next? Oh yes, we had to pick through the dry rice to get out the black pieces. Don’t ask me why they are there. Can’t decide if its mice poop, dead bugs, or just black rice. There are probably not heavily enforced rules about importing rice from Thailand. Don’t worry though, I got it all out! So I got my picture again and my sister told me since I was being such a good Senegalese woman, she would give me a man to be my husband so I don’t have to go home to America. Excellent!

After all the rice was picked through, we washed it with water, and I don’t really understand why, but they have reasons for everything. Then we put it in a large metal strainer on top of the fish, veggie and tomato mixture to let it steam for, you know, a while. Who knows how long it takes! I’ll never be able to duplicate this in America, but I will sure try! When they just somehow know when the veggies and fish are cooked, we took them out, put them in the same bowl they were in when they were raw, but don’t fear, she rinsed it with tap water. Then we threw all the rice into the tomato and water mixture to let it fully cook. No such thing as minute rice. By the way, even though nothing was measured, the rice soaked up exactly enough of the tomato-water mixture.

When it was ready, we put all the rice into a large metal bowl. The crunchy rice that we scraped from the bottom was put into a separate bowl and is just as delicious and placed on top of the other rice like the veggies. It’s usually my favorite part until one of the birds jumped into it… but pretend it’s like the 10-second rule. (Yes we still ate the crunchy rice). All the fish and veggies were placed on top and we called Matar back and him, my sis, mom and maid and I ate an amazing chebb u jen meal (rice and fish) after 1:30 – only 2 and half hours! I feel like I should tell you this too: not once did I wash my hands, nor the maid. The maid and my mom both eat with their (right) hands, the rest of us with spoons, and they make sure to break up the 2 fish and all the veggies to be split 5 ways. So everything they touched, including their own mouths is shared with everyone. Now lets hope I haven’t jinxed myself for getting sick.