Asaro — Togo

Asaro is a yam porridge, or yam pottage, made by cooking peeled yam cubes until they soften and break down into a coarse mash, bound together with a red pepper and palm oil sauce rather than served as separate pieces. The finished dish is soft enough to eat with a spoon, somewhere between a stew and a mash. It is reported from Togo, among communities with Yoruba roots also found across the border in Benin and Nigeria, where the same dish is referenced under the same name. It is eaten as a main course or alongside other dishes at family meals, and is often chosen as a quick, filling option for a weekday lunch. To prepare it, tomato, pepper and onion are blended and cooked down in palm oil with dried fish and ground crayfish, while yam cubes simmer separately in seasoned water until very soft. The two are then combined and mashed together over low heat until the mixture is smooth and thick, adjusting the amount of cooking liquid to reach the desired consistency. Within the wider family of West African yam preparations that includes pounded yam, asaro is set apart by its porridge-like texture, since the pepper and palm oil sauce is worked directly into the yam rather than spooned over it as a separate sauce.