Abdoulie's Mafe, a Gambian stew

Mafe, Maafe, mafé, maffé, etc is a stew prepared in plenty of variants in lots of West African countries. This particular one is from Abdoulie, hailing from Gambia, a very experienced cook.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg lamb ((shoulder used) or beef)
  • 7 onions
  • oil
  • 50 g tomato puree
  • lemon juice (of about 1 lemon)
  • 2 Maggi cubes
  • white pepper (or any other. Normally the very hot Habanero is used)
  • cummin (milled)
  • salt
  • For: 5
  • Preparation: 10 min
  • Cooking: 1 h 10 min
  • Ready in: 1 h 20 min

Instructions

  1. We shall use the following ingredientsAbdoulie' Mafe ingredients
  2. Cut the meat in smaller pieces and salt it
  3. Heat some oil in a biggish pan and add the meat pieces and let this slowly get fried. You will need to turn this after sometime.
  4. Chop the onions in the meantime.Chopping onions
  5. As the lamb almost gets cooked through and browns, stir fry the onions in a separate pan until glassy
  6. Add the lamb with its oil and mix well
  7. Add crushed Maggi cubes, tomato paste, lemon juice, pepper and cumin.
  8. Mix well, cover and continue cooking on low heat for a couple of minutes. It might be necessary to add some little water, if that subsequently coming from the onions is too little. Since the meat basically gets ready during the frying process, this does not need to be long.
  9. Eat with rice, potatoes, chapati, fufu, ...

Notes

The meat is deliberately fried slowly …

There are lots of variants of Mafe as a picture search with Google will show. There are no iron-clad rules for preparing it or what you add to it. Feel free to make some adjustments to your taste.

Abdoulie’s Mafe Recipe