Peanut butter soup and the phenomenon of "Riz Couché"

This is one of my favorite dish ever!


It's highly consumed in the Ivory Coast and could easily rival garba in popularity!


What makes this dish special, is the tradition of "riz couché" and the relationship that exist with foutou banane and sauce arachide.


Riz couché (literal translation: the sleeping rice, but essentially means leftovers) is when you keep leftovers of any stew, specifically sauce arachide (peanut butter soup) in the fridge to eat it in the morning with garba, rice, placali or even foutou banana.


Most Ivoirians prefer having riz couché in the morning rather than a European style breakfast. They favor this early morning ritual of riz couché because it's thought to prevent hunger for most of the day.


Some friends told me that the tradition of riz couché  started when poor families used to cook plain rice at night to eat the next morning, only adding palm oil to enable them to work all day long without feeling as hungry as possible.


I leave you with a recipe and as we say in Cote d’Ivoire, “baraka!”*


*Baraka means bon appétit in Dioula.

Name: Peanut butter soup, sauce arachide, mafé

Eaten in: West Africa

Foodie: Elodie

Peanut butter soup is one of the easiest of the soups commonly found in Côte d’Ivoire, and in neighboring countries such as Mali, where it is often known as mafé. I also found it to be a wonderful comfort food especially during the cold months of winter. Peanut butter is available in every grocery store in America, but most people consume it as is.

This is something that I definitely was not used to until moving to this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I remember being at first reluctant to trying the national peanut butter and jelly sandwich. However, I eventually got over it, and I found that I quite enjoyed it. So I invite you to try to step out of your “peanut butter comfort zone”! You might find that peanut butter soup becomes one of your favorite staple one pan dish to prepare.

Recipe (for 2-3 people):

- one cup and a half (1 ½) of creamy peanut butter ( both reduced and non reduced fat work)
- ½ cup of tomato paste
- 4-5 chicken drumsticks and/or chicken breasts bones in
- salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper to taste
- adobo powder ( if available)
- half a green pepper, chopped (optional)
- oil

• put enough oil in the sauce pan to cover the bottom of it, once the oil is hot, add the chicken
• add some garlic and salt and adobo
• let the chicken brown, turning it from time to time to allow all the sides to brown
• once all the chicken pieces are a golden brown, add about 2 cups of water and turn the heat up
• once the water is boiling add the tomato paste and the peanut butter
• turn to allow the tomato and peanut butter to be uniformly distributed
• add the chopped green pepper, if using one
• turn the heat on medium and let the soup cook. This is the step where your chicken will cook, so make sure to allow enough time (20-25min).
• it is ready when there is some oil on the surface. You can poke through the chicken a little bit to make sure it is cooked through. If not, leave the soup on the stovetop on low heat for a little while longer.
• serve with white rice

The left overs can be refrigerated or frozen. The soup can be easily warmed up in the microwave. 

Source of the recipe: http://www.tropicalfoodies.com/2011/01/17/you-cant-go-wrong-with-peanut-butter-soup/


By Ali Latifa Fakhry, a communication and media expert living in Ivory Coast: aafakhry@gmail.com