Djibouti - home cooking

After a good long run of restaurant visits, it was time to get back into the kitchen due to the lack of restaurants in London serving the food of Djibouti. And it wasn't difficult to decide which meal I was going to cook. Very quickly, during the minimal research I ended up having to carry out, I came across what is said to be the national dish of Djibouti. Skoudehkaris. It was also a prospect that really appealed. An easy, hearty, stodgy one-pot meal which took the best parts from a lamb stew and a lamb biryani and combined them. I was sold.

It had the makings of a simple meal from the short list of ingredients. The fundamental elements were lamb, spices, onion, tomato and rice. I started by frying a mix of ground cumin, cloves, cinnamon and cayenne pepper in ghee. Unfortunately, I was unable to track down ground cardamom and rather lazily added crushed cardamom pods instead. This was later going to taint the dish a little. After 20 seconds or so I added a chopped onion to the mix. Instantly this ended up turning everything really dry, as the spices coated the onions. Rather than risk burning the spices, I only fried this for a couple of minutes until the onions started to soften. 

I then added 600g of diced lamb, and browned the meat with the spiced onions. Thankfully, this added some moisture into the pot. Once browned, I tipped in a can of chopped tomatoes, followed by about 250 ml of water. And this is essentially the basis for the meal. Lid on and simmered for 45 minutes.

After the 45 minutes had passed, there was still a good bit of sauce in the pot. I then added 100g of long grain rice, stirred well and covered the pot again, simmering for another 20 minutes. I checked regularly to make sure the rice hasn't run out of moisture to soak up, but this never happened. In fact, if anything I probably could have added a touch more rice to help the general consistency.

But 20 minutes later, much of the sauce had been soaked up by the rice and the rice was done to perfection. It was time to serve.

Being a pot dish, this meal was clearly best served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon. A healthy portion was served, leaving about another quarter of that again in the pot for afters.

As hoped, it was a lovely, filling and very flavoursome meal. The lamb was absolutely perfect - melt in the mouth soft, with much of the fat having disappeared to help thicken the sauce. The sauce itself had some fantastic flavours - a very earthy, distinctive spice to it, with a sweet tomato base. The cardamoms were annoying. Rather than pick them out before serving, I tried to endure them. They had been cooked for so long that they were definitely soft enough to consume. An acquired taste, for sure. I'm usually quite happy to eat a couple in curries, but there were a good few in this dish. It didn't ruin the meal, but it created a slight annoyance which wouldn't have been the case if I had sourced ground cardamom. Still, the cardamom flavour is important in this meal.

Generally, this was a good hearty meal with a lovely flavour. Really simple to make, and really enjoyable to eat.