Cooking Yassa with Ami
by Marame Gueye
You will need to wait for this recipe. My teenage daughter, who is a budding chef, will give it to you in careful steps. This is the pandemic; we’ve got time. Time to rediscover each other, time to amble around the house moving from one device to the next, time to ride bikes around the neighborhood or go for walks, and still find more time on Saturdays to shoot a cooking show for her YouTube channel: Simple Meals for Teens.
From March to June, I had erected in our dining room a remote learning station, helping three kids—a teenager and two preteens—figure out how to follow instructions, upload completed assignments on Google Classroom, and attend Zoom sessions. I too was teaching three courses online. It was a chaos that I managed, confident—as so many of us were—that it would soon be over. I had a few revelations: my math skills still sucked, and it was harder to teach young children than adults. I was humbled by the strength and resilience of my children’s teachers who emailed reminders, called to offer help, and even encouraged overwhelmed parents like me.
By July when the days got longer and the Southern heat started to make being outside unbearable, we were spent and frustrated. In our family, summers are for travel. We usually go to Senegal, where I was born, but this time, we spent our days binge-watching Downton Abbey, The Masked Singer, and the many cooking shows that my daughter, who is fourteen, religiously follows. The Great British Baking Show is her favorite, but we watched a lot of Beat Bobby Flay too. My daughter loves to cook and wants to become a chef. I said college first, then culinary school. We compromised on a YouTube Channel.
She opened the account herself and created a logo: a heart pierced by a fork and a spoon. Hearts are important to her, to us. She has a special one, having been born without a left-ventricle. By the time she turned three, she had undergone three open-heart surgeries. In our family, every mention of a heart brings a melancholic echo of her condition as well as uncertainty for what is next for her. We are used to her taking medication daily, skipped heartbeats, and occasional palpitations that make her pause and curl up for a few seconds. When it happens during board games, all of us hold our breaths in silence. When it passes, we proceed without a word.
We are her bodyguards, the secret service that watches over her. We hold meetings to remind everyone how important it is to keep ourselves safe from the virus, We must keep it from her because it might be more fatal to her than anyone else. The boys nod. They are eleven and nine, and I hate to put this much responsibility on them, but they’ve always known that their sister has a fragile health condition. They’ve learned to pick up the heaviest bag of groceries, give her breaks when they’re riding their bikes, walk a bit slower during evening strolls in the neighborhood because they do not want to tire her up. She hates this compassion, so we try to be discreet about it.
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She ties her apron around her waist, a gift from an aunty from the Facebook group of three-thousand-two-hundred Senegalese women living in the U.S. that I created over three years ago. Women from our diaspora— many of whom dream of returning home to Senegal but, just like all of us during this pandemic, are waiting. Waiting for a financial breakthrough, for children to grow up, for a divorce, to finally muster their courage and leave. In the meantime, Covid-19 has confined them to their homes. Some closed their hair salons and are braiding at home, underground. Others, like me, are teleworking from home while caring for young children.
These women are sisters, my salvation during confinement, #MySistersKeepers, our slogan that we often use at the end of our comments. They keep me company, make me laugh, cry, salivate over the food they post. Food, just like fashion, is important in Senegalese women’s lives. Just like their sañse, an art of dressing up that is uniquely Senegalese, they go all the way in adorning their dishes, each a work of art on the screen. They cook different iterations of yassa in our virtual kitchen at 6 pm every Sunday. One yassa is decorated with boiled eggs, green peppers, perfectly round slices of cucumbers, and tomatoes. We congratulate the cook and drop emojis. They are the majority of my daughter’s two-hundred-six followers. A village of women who offer compliments to the junior chef. Some want their own children to watch, others contact my inbox to tell me how beautiful she is and pray for her. They know about her heart condition.
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She hands me her phone and instructs me to make sure to hold it horizontally each time I shoot a segment (a tip from one of the women from our Facebook group who is a cook and a YouTube star). I use my thumb to signal to her that I am starting to record. She clears her voice before I hit the record button.
Hi, and welcome to my channel. Today, I am going to be making yassa, a staple from Senegal where both of my parents are from. Yassa is traditionally chicken or fish, marinated in lemon juice, mustard, and onions, served over white rice. And these are the ingredients: so, we have chicken, onions, salt, lemon juice, garlic, mustard, and we have the Eva’s Taste [a spice mixture sold by Awa, another member of the Facebook group] for marinating.
I tighten my grip around the iPhone. Her confidence startles me, yet before I register the feeling, pride overtakes me. The picture of her as a baby in an incubator, tubes all over her body, flashes in my mind. I quickly let it go. She is taller than I am now. I have noticed it before, of course, her commanding presence makes her look even taller, grown.
We’ve added all our ingredients and now we’re going to mix them so we can coat all the chicken in it. So now our chicken is coated in our marinade. You don’t have to use chicken. You can use beef, lamb, or fish. But we’ve decided to use a whole chicken which we’ve cut into quarters, and we’re just going to let it sit for thirty minutes to about an hour. And we’re going to put it in the oven. Some people like to add the onions at this stage, but I prefer to add it later. So, we’re just gonna let this rest.
We actually let it rest for two hours. In the meantime, we play several rounds of wure or mankala as it is known in Southern Africa. I bought the set in Senegal several years ago and taught them how to play. They’ve become very good at it. The pandemic has turned us into a “board game family.” We also needed to charge her phone; she is notorious for letting it die.
So now our chicken is done marinating. We gonna broil it, but you can also grill it, or sauté it in some olive oil until it’s brown.
She brings out the baking sheet and lines it with aluminum foil. The roll of foil is almost finished. I make a note to put that on the list for our next grocery delivery. I have been skeptical about grocery delivery services but lately we have been using one. When the shopper drops the groceries at our front door, I bring them in armed with a Lysol bottle and wipes. We clean everything, even frozen items, before putting them in the freezer.
The chicken is in the oven broiling, so we’re gonna add the onions to the leftover marinade.
She lifts the bowl of onions (I chopped those, and the sting still lingers in my eyes). I can feel the weight of the heavy bowl on her left hand, the side that was affected by the stroke she suffered a few hours after she was born. I am nervous behind the camera. I cringe. She has good command of her movements, and quickly starts mixing the onions into the marinade with her right hand.
And we’re just gonna mix it up in the marinade till it’s all coated. She gives it several strokes. The click-click of the spoon hitting the glass bowl is loud. We have coated it in the marinade. We’re just gonna let it sit while the chicken cooks. And then we’ll put it in some olive oil on very high heat, and then we’ll add the chicken and then we will be done.
I put the phone down and watch as she gingerly takes out the chicken from the oven. I create space on the counter for her to put the hot tray.
So now our chicken is really broiled, she says, holding off a laugh. This is the color you really want for yassa on both sides. And now we’re going [not “gonna” this time, I notice, she is growing up right here in my pandemic kitchen] to make our sauce.
We cut again. I bring out the Dutch oven. It is so heavy that even I get nervous carrying it. I put it on the burner and watch as she measures the olive oil. I think my stares make her nervous. “Good job,” I say. She cues me to start filming again.
Our chicken is done; we’re going to sauté our onions. We have four tablespoons of olive oil, and make sure your oil is very hot.
She pours a tablespoon of the marinated onions into the pot. It delivers a perfect sizzle. I am nervous the smoke alarm will go off, I look up. She tightens her jaws and drops another spoonful of onions. I stop filming and take the bowl of onions and dump everything in the pot.
We’re just gonna mix it up. She stirs the onions a couple of times. And at this stage if you wanna add more lemon juice or mustard, you can. And then we’re gonna add the chicken so that it can cook more and cook down together (with the onions, she means. Us Senegalese like our sauces thick and with as little water as possible).
Our onions have cooked down a bit, so you can see that there is a little juice. So, at this stage we’ve added the chicken so that it can cook down together, and then we will be ready to serve!
So, everything is cooked down now, and we’re ready to serve it over our rice.
I put down the phone. She gets a small glass bowl and fills it with white rice that was cooking in the rice cooker. She presses the rice into the bowl with a spoon and turns the bowl upside down on a white porcelain plate. It forms a perfect mound. She carries it on the other side of the kitchen isle and dishes out a chicken leg quarter from the cooking pot. She smothers the chicken with a generous scoop of onion sauce.
This is what it looks like now, and you can spice it up by adding green peppers, olives, tomatoes, whatever else you want, but we’re just gonna keep it simple. Bon appetit!
Marame Gueye is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Her short fiction has appeared in Transitions and Bellingham Review.