Dinner is fast and tasty with these gingery, garlicky chicken thighs
Whenever someone shares a recipe with me, I feel honored and pretty darn confident that it will be good. There is a reason a dish travels from one set of hands to another. It might be because it is foolproof, but often it is loved because it comes with a memory or a connection. It’s the pie someone’s mom made every Christmas. It’s a casserole that landed on every Sunday dinner table. Or it is a reflection of a person’s heritage and culture.
It has been tested again and again and passed those tests.
That handing down of recipes is the premise of “In Bibi’s Kitchen” (Ten Speed Press, 2020) by Hawa Hassan, the founder of the sauce company Basbaas and native of Somalia, with co-author Julia Turshen of New York.
The authors collected recipes from women from eight African countries: Comoros, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa and Tanzania. Throughout the book’s pages are photographs of the women, some still living in Africa, some who have moved away, cooking their food. The authors include descriptions of each country and provide accompanying question-and-answer interviews with the women, who share life experiences and cooking tips, too.
Much of the cookbook focuses on vegetarian, even vegan, dishes, with the recipes heavy on beans, peas and vegetables. But the dish I’ve made from it features one of my favorite weeknight go-to’s: simply cooked chicken thighs.
Appropriately enough, this recipe was handed over to me by my colleague, Olga Massov, who made it first and then urged me to explore “In Bibi’s Kitchen” and try this dish because it delivers big, bright flavor with such little effort.
When I took my first bite of the Akoho Misy Sakamalao, which is from the chapter on Madagascar, I could see how it would move from one home cook’s table to the next. I could imagine how the fragrance of the dish could create visceral memories of the flavors to come.
Chicken thighs are rubbed with salt, garlic and ginger and then cooked in hot coconut oil in a cast-iron skilled until nicely browned. That’s it. (Hassan recommends marinating the thighs in the refrigerator overnight, but that isn’t essential for a delicious, 30-minute
weeknight supper.)
Hassan describes these chicken thighs as “incredibly simple to make” and serves them over rice, spooning the chicken juices on top. On the side, she suggests roasted tomatoes or greens. The first time I made the thighs I followed Olga’s advice and cooked the accompanying rice using coconut milk and water for the liquid and enjoyed them with a big green salad.