asakiyume | Concoction Rice

With a whole bottle of palm oil to use, I clearly need to make more Nigerian recipes, so on Flo's advice, I decided to tackle Concoction Rice, which has lots of traditional ingredients in it.

Of course, having lots of traditional ingredients in it means that it has lots of things in it not easily obtainable in a semi-rural town in western Massachusetts. Fortunately, a nearby city has this shop:

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I went there and got several of the ingredients I needed, including a lovely smoked mackerel--a whole fish. They were all stacked up in the fridge (or freezer? Not sure), and I was told to just reach in and pick one out, so I did. A lovely silvery fish, long and slim. I do love mackerel.

I put everything but the head in to cook.

Can you see the jar of ground dawa-dawa? Also known as carob bean, and it has a couple of other names in Flo's recipe. And do you see the bouillon cube wrapper? Bouillon cubes can be manufactured pretty much anywhere, but *these* ones were made in Cameroon.

And here it is, nearly done:

I added a little too much water, but it was still **delicious**. I don't know how well I captured the authentic flavor, and I did have one substitution (I used salt pollock instead of dried cod, because I had bought it before going to the African market), but I'm hoping it was more or less right. Anyway, I loved it and will make it again.

Plus, I'm going to get smoked mackerel way more often now. We usually have tinned mackerel about once a week--it would be *wonderful* to have smoked mackerel instead.