ADVENTURES IN DOMESTICITY: Domoda Edition

Last month, while watching Survivor: Gabon, I was inspired to cook an African dish in honor of the veteran reality series wrapping up its run. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to doing this until about a week and a half after Bob walked away with the million dollar prize. No matter, I was still up for the challenge, even if it didn’t still quite dovetail with my pop culture pleasures.
Anyway, I got in touch with my college friend Michelle, who spent several years in The Gambia as part of her Peace Corps service. There she met her husband, Malik, and conveniently, his mother happened to have a recipe for Domoda, which is sort of like a peanut beef stew. Michelle passed along details to me, and I valiantly attempted to bring a little piece of Gambia into my kitchen. Was I successful? Keep reading to find out.
My continued orange-colored culinary adventures after the jump…

First things first: my ingredients. As you can see, I’ve got some stewing beef, some tomato paste, olive oil, peanut butter, carrots, and yams. According to Michelle, the veggies used in this dish are often potato, eggplant, and squash. However, I’m not a huge eggplant fan, and I was too lazy to get squash; so I substituted yams and carrots — the latter of which Michelle said she uses. Also, there’s supposed to be okra, but I’ve never had it, and didn’t want to try a new vegetable in a new dish. -5 points for straying from the recipe. +3 points for feeling confident in my improv.

Peeling, etc.

A lovely chop, if I do say so myself. In the future, I would have added a second yam.

Meanwhile, time to heat up some oil.

I then add half my stewing meat. The other half gets frozen and repurposed for another adventure in domesticity, soon to be published.

And now we enter the wonderful world of tomato paste, Fresh & Easy style. My little spatula prepares for active duty.

After the beef has cooked a little bit (perhaps too long, regrettably), I add the aforementioned paste.

Next come the veggies.

And then peanut butter. Apparently in The Gambia, this dish is made with a peanut paste, but the closest I could come to that was organic PB.

I then add water. If you were to add okra, it would go in about now.

And now it’s time to let the stew sit and, well, stew.

About an hour later, the oil rises to the top, and that’s when it’s done.

I have achieved Domoda.

Served with rice, natch.

So how did it taste? Decent. I think I screwed some things up though. First, I added way too much peanut butter. I probably should have used half. Second, I should have seasoned the meat before I cooked it. Third, a second yam would have been great. The sudden sweet flavor of every yam piece contrasted nicely with the salty, savory taste of the peanut sauce. More of that would have increased the depth of flavor. Overall, a good first try, and considering that I had no real frame of reference as to what it should taste like, I think it was a marginal success. Plus, it lasted me about four meals, and it got better each time.
Thanks Michelle and Malik for the recipe!