Moon nanu ceere ak Oumoul (Making ceere with Oumoul)

I have always wanted to learn how to make Senegalese couscous, known as ceere. Turning sunguf (the millet flour) into ceere is quite an ardous and lengthy process, traditionally done by hand by women. As a result the art of ceree making, known as moon, is slowly dying out in the city, as more and more women who work or go to school during the day opt for purchasing ready-made ceere that you can purchase in the markets or in the evenings around the neighborhoods. Knowing full-well that this skill is clearly not something that could be learned overnight, I decided nonetheless to push the suggestion made casually by my Wolof teacher to use one of our class periods to learn how to make Senegalese couscous by hand.

Sunguf, purchased from the market by the kilo and wrapped up in a brown paper bag to take home. 

So I recently went to the market and bought 2 kilos of sunguf, borrowed an inde (a metal steamer to rest on top of boiling water) from the boutique down the street from us, and invited Oumoul, our Wolof teacher, to Giulia and my house for class. We still didn’t have all the right materials, as we were missing a giant calabash (a bowl made from a huge gourd), to manually mix the flour with a bit of water to make the individual couscous balls. As a result, Giulia and I simply ended up watching Oumoul struggle with a poor substitute for a calabass while trying to explain what she was doing. When asked how much water to add for the right consistency, she said you just have to know. When asked how long to steam the ceere over water, she said you just have to know. Clearly, this is not something a toubab can take one lesson on, write down the recipe, and then be able to replicate it next time. Oh well, for now at least, I will have to settle for the still-delicious option of buying ready-made ceere from the lady down the street from us. Plus, we still have great step-by-step pictures of the process. 

This is Oumoul, looking beautiful and hiding well the fact that she's super frustrated we don't have a calabash. 

The process of moon, mixing the sunguf and water by hand until reaching the right consistency and balls start to form.  

Then, the balls were transferred to a sifter that we shook to even out the size of the couscous balls and make them all more uniform.

This is the ideal size of ceere post-sifting.

Finally, the ceere was placed in the inde over boiling water and covered with a cloth to let steam. At some point Oumoul turned the ceere over to make sure both sides were evenly steamed. 

This account is way over-simplified and does not do ceere nor the process of moon justice. Clearly, learning about Senegalese food is a constant work-in-progress. But fortunately, there continues to be more and more delicious reasons to keep trying. Here’s the final result of our ceere endeavors: ceere with a tomato-based sauce of chicken with cassava, carrots, turnips, squash, and cabbage. And of course, a lot of fresh hot pepper. Bon appétit!