Ketoun is typical Guinean (Guinea-Konakry) porridge/pottage with a mixture of root vegetables, mostly sweet with some fish and palm oil. If you love sweet and salty, you’ll love Ketoun. Normally the texture of Ketoun resembles a sweet potato pottage, but it can also be prepared chunkier depending on the size you cut your sweet potatoes/yams. Ketoun can be made with only sweet potatoes (as here) where I’ve mixed white and orange varieties or you can mix yam and sweet potato.
Prep Time: 15 minutes/Cook Time: 75 minutes/Serves: 4
Ingredients:
Main Ingredients:
3 Sweet potatoes (use a mix of colours)
1 Cassava root
1 Tarot (cocoyam) corm
2 tbsp dried Fish powder
5 tbsp Peanut butter
80ml (1/3 cup) red Palm oil
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
6 Spring Onions (scallions)
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1 scotch bonnet chilli, or to taste
Sea Salt, to taste
1 Maggi bouillon cube
Optional:
1 Plantain, peeled and finely diced
Fresh fish (eg Tilapia) (whole or Fillet), cleaned and scaled
generous pinch of freshly-ground Black Pepper
1 Maggi Cube
Method:
Wash and peel the vegetables then cut the sweet potatoes, yams, cassava and taro into medium sized-chunks. Set these aside for now.
If using fresh fish, place in a large pot with 750ml (3 cups) water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes then remove the fish and set aside. Add the root vegetables to the liquid remaining in the pot, pour over enough water to just cover and return to a boil. If you are not using fish, just add the vegetables to a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil.
Blend together the onions, spring onions, chilli and garlic to form a paste (you may need to add some water). Scrape this into the pot with the vegetables, dried fish powder, peanut butter, Maggi cube, salt, palm oil and black pepper. Return to a brisk simmer, cover and cook for about 40 minutes, or until the liquid has almost all evaporated away.
At this point, if you used fresh fish flake and de-bone the flesh. Add this to the pot along with the diced plantain (if using). stir well to combine, adjust the seasoning and continue cooking gently until the dish thickens, the plantain is soft and the oil separates (about 10 minutes).
Serve hot.
