🇲🇱 Malian Cuisine

Nambassa

Smoked Fish Stew

Prep Time 50 min

Servings 6

Difficulty Medium

Calories 364 kcal

A deeply smoky and savoury stew built around dried smoked fish, tomatoes, and leafy greens, delivering an intense umami flavour unique to Sahelian cooking.

Ingredients

300g smoked fish, deboned and flaked
3 large tomatoes, blended
2 cups chopped spinach or amaranth leaves
1 large onion, chopped
3 tbsp shea butter
2 scotch bonnet peppers
2 tbsp dawadawa
2 bouillon cubes
Salt to taste
3 cups water

Instructions

1 Heat shea butter in a pot, sauté onion until golden.
2 Add blended tomatoes and cook 10 minutes until reduced.
3 Add dawadawa, scotch bonnet, and bouillon cubes. Stir well.
4 Add water and bring to a simmer. Add flaked smoked fish.
5 Cook for 20 minutes on low heat until flavours meld.
6 Add chopped greens, cook 5 minutes. Serve over toh or rice.

Did You Know?

Smoked fish is so essential to Malian cooking that markets dedicate entire sections to vendors selling nothing but different varieties of dried and smoked river fish.