Updated
April 28, 2001

Gambia Tourist Support
English West African Cookery

A general introduction to the culture of food and the supply and processing of fresh ingredients.

Fried fish and spicy sauce

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The smoke houses at Tanji, smoked Bongo fish is rather like smoked chicken

Market shopping

Picking the best

A womans' day is full of food buying preparation, cooking and clearing up.

The unreliability in the supply of ingredients in Africa regularly means that a variety of alternative ingredients are used when cooking a dish, so the end result is often unique and provides great variety.

Traditionally the people of Gambia eat two meals a day, lunch and a later evening meal, although a snack breakfast is often taken and small snacks and fruit are eaten all day. This pattern of meals also fits in well with Islam after midday prayers and after the evening prayers at sunset.

Both meals are likely to be based on some sort of thick stew or soup with some sort of starch (bread, rice or fufu, which is made by pounding grains and vegetables such as millet, yams, or plantains to a flour and boiling it into a sticky paste) In Gambia the stew and starch are often combined in one pot to make a benachin meal or jollof rice.

When the food is ready, it tends to be put on one large dish. Eating is often a social gathering and people appear to eat and then disappear after their fill and a chat. Those eating will crouch around the large dish and take a small piece of bread or fufu in their right hand and used to scoop up some food to eat. The bread not only replaces the cutlery but also protects the fingers from the hot food and reduces the spice of the dish in their mouths.

Food is often eaten in two areas, the men separate in one place and the women and children in another. The right hand is used by Muslims because the left hand is considered unclean as it is used for washing and toiletry purposes.

Snacks are hardly ever sweet, except for fruit or a fresh doughnut.

Because of the general lack of refrigeration, and even in towns where there are refrigerators most food is bought and cooked fresh.

In The Gambia there are excellent fresh produce markets in Bakau, Banjul and Serekunda. Peanuts or Groundnuts are a national product and are used in many Gambian dishes especially Domadal which comes in many varieties.

Fish is incredibly plentiful and all along the coast small fishing boats bring in a daily catch, there are bigger fishing markets at Bakau, Brufut and Tanji, where millions of Bongo fish are landed and either sun dried or smoked 5 times in large smoked houses and packed and exported to Ghana or Nigeria or used domestically. Gambians say "If Bongo had no bones it would be the Best fish in the World" BUT it does have bones, hundreds of them like herring.

5 Top or see also A Womans' Day