Gonré — Burkina Faso

Gonré refers to a thick green sauce made from baobab leaves, a staple ingredient across the Sahel, cooked down with dried fish and a fermented seasoning paste until it turns glossy and slightly sticky. It is eaten alongside a stiff paste of millet or sorghum, the everyday starch of Burkinabé tables, which is torn by hand and dipped into the sauce. The dish is reported from Burkina Faso, where baobab-leaf sauces of this kind accompany the daily meal in many rural and urban households alike. Recipes vary from one family to another, and the same base can be enriched with meat, extra dried fish, or different leafy greens depending on the season and on what the market offers. To prepare it, dried baobab leaves are first soaked to soften before being simmered with dried fish, onions and a fermented seasoning paste, with palm oil added to round out the sauce and give it its characteristic sheen. Meanwhile the millet or sorghum flour is stirred into boiling water in a steady stream and worked with a wooden paddle until it forms a smooth, stiff paste that holds together. What sets this version apart is the particular thickness the sauce is allowed to reach, and the balance struck between the fermented seasoning and the palm oil, each household favoring its own proportions. The stiff paste it is served with is common to many dishes of the region, and the sauce itself is only one of several leaf-based preparations found across Burkinabé cooking.