Guinean Entree
KANSIYE
INGREDIENTS
¼ pound butternut squash or sweet potato
1¼ pounds beef (round, chuck, or sirloin) or lamb
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 tomatoes
2½ tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ teaspoons cloves
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup rice
2 cups beef stock or lamb stock (Should match the meat used)
¼ cup creamy peanut butter.
¼ teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon parsley, fresh
Serves 4. Takes 1 hours 10 minutes.
PREPARATION
Peel squash. Cut squash and beef into 1″ cubes. Mince garlic cloves, onion, and tomatoes. Add beef cubes and oil to large pan. Sauté beef for 5 minutes at medium-high heat or until completely browned. Stir enough to ensure even browning. Add cloves, garlic, onion, pepper, and salt. Reduce heat to medium. Cook for 3 minutes. Stir frequently.
Cook rice according to instructions on package. Add beef stock, butternut squash, tomato, creamy peanut butter, and thyme. Stir until well blended. Simmer at medium heat for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to low-medium. Simmer for 15 minutes or until squash cubes become tender. Stir enough to keep from burning Add rice to serving bowls. Ladle contents of pan over rice. Dice parsley. Sprinkle bowls with parsley.
TIDBITS
1) Pin the Tail on the Donkey has been a favorite party game for nursery schoolers and kindergartners for decades. Many people think the game originated in America, pointing to Edgar Allan Poe’s thrilling and eerie short story, “Pin the Tale on the Donkey.”
2) No, I say no. Pin the Tail arose in Guinea. Young kids would attempt to pin fresh parsley on the butternut squash cubes in a a bowl of Kansiye. Guinean boys and girls loved the game. Guinean mothers did not. They’d spend hours cleaning up splashed kansiye everywhere. Poe, in one of his travels to Africa, saw kids playing Pin the Parsley on the Butternut Cubes in a Bowl of Kansiye and had an idea. This idea would launch his literary career.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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