Name: Senegalese Festive Rice and Fish (Diebou Dien)
Yield: Serves 8 to 10
Cuisine: Senegal
Ingredients: 2 dried red chiles; 1 pound carrots; ¾ pound juicy cherry tomatoes or 1½ cups drained canned tomatoes; 1½ cups packed flat-leaf parsley leaves, coarsely chopped; 1 tablespoon tamarind paste, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water, or ½ Maggi cube, crumbled; ¾ cup tomato paste, diluted with ½ cup water; 1 medium or 2 small eggplant (about 1 pound); 1 pound turnips or white radishes; ½ pound small green Thai eggplant or tomatillos (optional); 1 large or 2 medium red or yellow onions, coarsely chopped; 4 cups Thai jasmine or other long-grain rice, well washed and drained; ½ pound cabbage, cut into small chunks (optional); 3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped; About ¼ pound salt cod, soaked for 12 to 24 hours in several changes of cold water and drained; 1 tablespoon salt, or more to taste; 5 scallions, coarsely chopped; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper; ½ cup peanut oil

Preparation info

Serves
8 to 10

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

Seductions of Rice

By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Published 1998

About

Before leaving for Senegal, I was given advice by a number of people. On the subject of diebou dien, a friend of a friend, Mamadou Seck, was very explicit: “The best diebou dien is made in Saint-Louis—you must go there and learn from a Saint-Louisienne.”

So near the end of my stay in Senegal, I took a bush taxi up the road from Dakar to Saint-Louis, a four-hour trip through a hot, spare landscape of red earth and silhouetted baobab and acacia trees. The speed of our pa