White rice topped with a creamy sauce made from roasted and ground peanuts, simmered with a little meat, onion, and tomato. Hearty and comforting, it perfumes the whole courtyard when the fire does its work.

Why this dish? Peanut sauce on a bed of rice is the staple dish of Malinké households in northern Ivory Coast where Kourouma grew up, in Boundiali. It is the food of ordinary days, eaten with the family from a common dish — the ground peanuts explicitly mentioned in his food background.

Listen to me, you who are in a hurry. In our home in Boundiali, peanut sauce does not let itself be rushed: you roast the seeds until they sing, you pound them in the mortar until they weep their oil, and the fire, gently, does the rest — for a good sauce, my mother used to say, is recognized by the patience you have given it. We eat from the common dish, with the right hand only, and whoever talks too much during the meal, well, their rice gets cold! Allah put the peanut in the earth so that men would learn that you must dig and wait before you eat.

How it was made : In those days, peanuts were roasted on a griddle then pounded for a long time in a mortar to make a paste; there were no blenders or ready-made pastes. Cooking was done over a wood fire in a cast-iron or clay pot, and the sauce simmered for hours to bind properly.

The contemporary twist : As a nod to the writer turned actuary in Lyon, serve the rice molded into a neat quenelle with the sauce poured around — the rigor of numbers meets the generosity of northern Ivory Coast.

Ahmadou Kourouma · Charactorium