I feel a little bad about this one.

There’s a dish that’s mentioned on a lot of sites as the national dish of Mali, which is a stew called Tiguadege Na.  I found a recipe with a reasonably promising looking source.

But – I feel like we just didn’t quite DO enough.

Also, it’s remarkably similar to the dishes we made for Chad, the Gambia, and the Central African Republic, so I wonder if we should have tried harder to find something a bit more unique?  There’s lots of reasons why the African countries are frequently challenging, and also somewhat problematic, which I talk about a bit on the CAR page.

So anyway, Mali.  Fascinating country with a lot of really interesting history.  Timbuktu is in Mali.  You can learn more about that in this video. 

All that said, here’s the dish.

Brown some meat, then add onions and garlic until they’ve softened.  Our local Save On Foods had some wildly varying sizes of stew meat on offer, but since we were going to braise it forever, it didn’t really matter.

Add tomatoes, broth, peanut butter, and Herbes de Province. I’m assuming the latter is due to the fact that France was the colonial aggressor in this part of Africa.

Finally, toss in carrots and potatoes and stew forever.

It ended up being tasty, but much more watery than in the recipe photos.  If you try this one, I might consider doubling the peanut butter at least.

And that’s Mali.  They can’t all be huge production numbers, I suppose.  Next up, Malta!

Recipe:
Tiguadege Na

It’s been a few months since we did one of these meals.  Can’t imagine why.

Oh wait – see the preceding 24 entries on this blog for the reason why.

But we’re back, and it’s time to get back on our nonsense.  Heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient?

Chec… oh no wait, that’s tuna.  OK, as I said – unknown specialty ingredient?

Chec… no, hang on, also tuna. One more try.

OK, this is ALSO tuna, but it is, nonetheless, a heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient.  Specifically, it’s dried tuna flakes.

I’m sensing a theme here – where IS this country?

Ah.  That explains all the tuna.

The Maldives have a population of half a million people, concentrated on a surface area the size of Fresno, making it the second most densely populated country in Asia. (after Singapore.) On the other hand, that surface area is spread out over a region the size of Maine, making it one of the most spatially dispersed countries in the world.  So that’s neat.

Also, they apparently eat a lot of tuna, because the two plausible dishes I could find as the most iconic are (checks notes) a tuna soup, and a cold tuna salad.

Good thing we LIKE tuna, then, innit?

OK, let’s make the salad, which is called Mas Huni. It is frequently eaten as a breakfast dish. You can find a bunch of different versions of it online, but some of them are so simple it didn’t feel like we’d be putting in sufficient effort. This one at least meant I had to get in the car to go get the dried tuna flakes.  (While I was at it, I also got some South Asian spices I’d been meaning to pick up, and then I went across the street and got donuts.)

And even for this, maximally complicated version, the process is “put everything in a bowl and mix it up.”  Everything in this case being canned tuna, tuna flakes, coconut, grated onion, green chilis, coconut milk, and some cilantro.

Bam. Done.  What next?

The tuna soup is called Garudhiya, and there’s basically no difference in the recipes I found online.  First you poach the tuna for a bit, then you toss in some onions and curry leaves and poach it some more.

Salt to taste.  Is that all?

Well, we did one more thing, and it was the most time-consuming, but only because it’s a flatbread, so you have to cook them one at a time.  To make these Huni Roshi, you make a simple dough of flour, water, coconut milk, and shredded coconut, and then you just cook them in a pan.

Like any batch cooking item (looking at you, pancakes) the first couple didn’t turn out so great, but they got better as we went along.  And that was it.  Here’s the full spread.

Tuna, tuna, and bread for eating tuna.  And you know what?  It was pretty good.  The tuna soup was subtle, but that meant the tuna and curry leaves got to speak for themselves.  And the Mas Huni was extremely flavorful – the lime juice, coconut, and chilis really perked up the tuna to make something really tasty.  The leftovers got polished off for lunch on the next two days, which says something.

And that’s the Maldives!  They were tuna-riffic.

Next up, Mali!

Recipes:
Mas Huni and Huni Roshi
Garudhiya