Instead of making yet another peanut-based stew for our dish from The Gambia, we decided to cook thiakry. Thiakry is a couscous pudding which is arguably a dessert food, but we decided we’d make it for breakfast because the recipe we found first seemed relatively healthy and hearty. Since making our thiakry, we’ve found other recipes that use a lot of condensed milk, which admittedly sounds more delicious (condensed milk makes anything more delicious), so we’re not sure which is correct. Probably the condensed milk version… maybe we’ll have to make it again.
Technically this should also be made with a special millet couscous, or, failing that, millet grains. We didn’t have either so we used regular wheat couscous. We also didn’t have a vanilla pod so used vanilla extract. And we didn’t have shredded coconut so we used desiccated. But hey, other than that, we were spot on.
Thiakry
Ingredients
1 cup dry couscous
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 vanilla pod, scraped
1/4 coconut sugar, or to taste (because we were having this for breakfast, we just used 1 tbsp of caster sugar)
1/2 pineapple, chopped
Grilled pineapple, yoghurt and shredded coconut, to serve
Method
1. Cover the couscous with boiling water for 5 minutes or until the water is absorbed. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the yoghurt, milk, sour cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, scraped vanilla pod and sugar.
3. Stir in the couscous and chopped pineapple.
4. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
5. Serve topped with grilled pineapple, yoghurt and shredded coconut.
Serves 4
Now, here is the story of our breakfast:
Baby Mash had had a late night but woken up at a normal time so was already cranky. Ash had made the thiakry in advance, but forgotten about the grilled pineapple, so whilst he thought he was organised, he wasn’t. Meanwhile, Preschooler Mash was gallivanting in the garden.
We were about to sit down to eat in the garden when Miranda noticed a trail of fox excrement smeared about the patio, where — we soon discovered — Preschooler Mash had stood in it and then run around with it on the bottom of his shoe. Ash then set to work disinfecting the patio and the shoe.
Faced with thiakry, Baby Mash decided it wasn’t for him and proceeded to throw it to the floor. Miranda removed his plate before he could throw too much of it (a small mercy being that sticky couscous is a lot easier to wipe up than individual grains), but that made him astutely aware that he was confined to his chair rather than roaming the garden. Not wanting him to go and sit in the big puddle of water from the aforementioned cleaning mission, we tried to keep him at the table, which resulted in deafening, screaming rage. It was definitely still sleep-in hour for normal people on a Saturday, so Miranda whisked him inside to try to protect the neighbours.
This meant that Preschooler Mash was left outside on his own, and at this point he started wailing because he was lonely. Sorry, neighbours. The good news is that he did actually eat quite a lot of his thiakry, amused by the fact that he was eating couscous for breakfast. Meanwhile, Baby Mash’s tantrum continued indoors until we eventually persuaded him that going to sleep might be a good idea.
As for Miranda and Ash, well, we grabbed mouthfuls of thiakry here and there amidst all the chaos. We liked it, but didn’t love it. Adding the full quota of sugar might have made it more enjoyable as a pudding, and using vanilla seeds instead of extract would have made the flavours more balanced. We really do have no idea whether this is even close to the original dish, though. It very closely resembles the picture on the recipe we used, but another recipe we looked at showed something much runnier, looking more like rice pudding. Any Gambians reading this, please do feel free to chime in — we’d love to get it right!
Good Food on Bad Plates 