Casamance-style soy filet pieces yassa
A vegan version of "poulet yassa", a Senegalese dish whose creamy mustard and lemon based marinade gives mildly pungent, slightly bitter, and strongly comforting dimensions to the dish. All at once.
Serves: 5
Preparation: 30 minutes, plus hours of soaking in the marinade
Cooking: 2 hours and 40 minutes
This recipe reminds me of the delicious meals I discovered during the years I lived in Africa. I remember enjoying several different local, West African dishes, like mafé. For years these memories were buried, however there’s one recipe I recall our family brought back to Europe: chicken yassa (yassa au poulet). Yassa are marinated dishes, and chicken yassa is a specialty of Casamance, the South-West region of Senegal. When my parents cooked it, the perfume in our home always sent us back to those years we lived abroad1.
Even if I explored cooking as a young adult, I don’t think I ever prepared a chicken yassa before I became vegan. Years ago, I cooked this vegan version of the original recipe, replacing chicken with soy filet pieces. It was great, and my significant other liked it — a lot! Recently, she wondered which dish she could bring to the monthly board game gathering with her friends, and she suggested I cook this. Yes, I cook for her friends, and I don’t mind: I love cooking, and I like drawing their interest to delicious vegan food. Her friends are neither into pungency, nor spiciness, so I did not include chili pepper (see the optional ingredients), and I chose a soft variant of a major ingredient of this recipe: mustard.
About mustard
Mustard is both a plant, and a condiment. The seeds of the former are used to prepare the latter: mustard seeds are ground, cracked, and with the addition of other ingredients, they make the well-known pungent paste.
In marinade, mustard gives a slightly creamy texture and a distinctive taste. Depending on the mustard you use (there are a lot of varieties), the taste can be strong or light, the color brown or yellow, the texture creamy or fluid. For the present recipe, I used a mild mustard from the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, which is my go-to mustard for thick, creamy marinades.
You may encounter the famous Dijon mustard in unexpected, remote places, far from Dijon, France. This is because Dijon mustard is not a geographically protected indication — and it could not, given it’s been a while it’s “just” a recipe, which no longer relies exclusively on local seeds. If you visit Dijon or Burgundy, and want to bring back a local mustard, look for “moutarde de Bourgogne” (Burgundy mustard).
Ingredients
800 g nature soy filet pieces
4 big yellow onions ~ 850 g
4 big garlic cloves ~ 25 g
4 soup spoons of yellow mustard2
13 soup spoons of peanut oil3
8 soup spoons of lemon juice
4 small bay leaves
300 mL of water
4 pinches of salt
4 pinches of black pepper
Optional, for a stronger flavor: 4 thyme sprigs, 170 g green pitted olives, 1 Habanero chili pepper (all not pictured)
Note that Senegalese cuisine makes an heavy use of flavor cubes, which are also heavy in salt, and other chemicals. The present recipe skips such ingredient. Moreover, there’s no point in adding poultry flavor to a vegan dish!
Preparation
The preparation steps are split in two: the majority lead to soak the soy filet pieces in a marinade, and the only one left consists in slicing the fourth onion. While I often recommend you complete Preparation steps before moving to Cooking, this recipe makes an exception where the very last step shall be done in parallel of the beginning of the Cooking part.
Drop the soy filet pieces in a large salad bowl; trust me, go for a large one
Add 3 yellow onions: peel them, then slice them as thin as possible
Add the 4 garlic cloves: peel them, then press them with a garlic crusher
Add the 4 bay leaves
Add the 4 soup spoons of yellow mustard
Add the 8 soup spoons of lemon juice
Add 8 soup spoons of peanut oil
Add black pepper and salt according to your taste
If you’ve chosen to include the optional thyme and chili pepper, chop the latter, and add them both to the bowl
Mix gently all the ingredients, so liquids and solids blend into a marinade; by doing so, onion slices will start to tear down to rings, and that’s totally expected
Ensure the soy filet pieces are well covered, or at least coated with the liquids, before putting a lid, or a transparent film on the bowl; then, refrigerate for 12 hours, or longer — I left it in the fridge overnight, and only cooked it beginning of the afternoon on the next day
Before starting to cook, peel the last yellow onion, and slice it as thin as possible
Cooking
For this kind of recipe where the ingredients cook mainly at low temperature, and covered, I prefer to rely on my glazed cast iron pot. However, upon completing the preparation steps, I realized my pot wouldn’t be large enough. I fell back to my stainless steel pressure cooker, which is deep enough to accommodate the volume of the entire marinade.
As mentioned in the Preparation steps, there’s one yellow onion which doesn’t join the marinade, and which you can peel and slice in parallel of the first step below.
Heat your cookware to 70% of the maximum flame/power; give it 2 minutes for the heat to increase
Spread 5 soup spoons of peanut oil, then add the onion slices; lower to 50% of the maximum flame/power, and stir occasionally for 5 minutes
Transfer the marinade to the pot, add 300 mL water, and stir to mix all ingredients together; lower to 30% of the maximum flame/power, cover, and let it cook for 50 minutes
Open the lid, stir, and raise the heat to 70% of the maximum flame/power; cook without the lid for 10 minutes, stirring regularly — do not worry if some ingredients stick a bit to the bottom of the pot
Cover again, lower the heat to 40% of the maximum flame/power; leave to cook for 90 minutes, without opening
If you’ve chosen to use the optional green pitted olives, open the lid and add them now — do not add brine to the dish, the olives themselves will already give the intended flavor
You can serve as soon as you complete the Cooking steps. If you “meal prepped”, and plan to serve it later, let it cool with the lid closed, so flavors will continue to mingle. Serve with plain white rice — check the tip at the bottom if you’d like to pimp it.
I didn’t serve it right after cooking. Actually, it didn’t serve it at all. As mentioned in the introduction, this dish was a request from my significant other so she could bring dinner to her board game group. This is also the reason why I did not include the Habanero chili pepper — should I have cooked for myself, I would have added one, for sure. From the list of optional ingredients, I only selected the green pitted olives. They are a great addition in my opinion, however as the name of the list suggests, they’re optional. My beloved one and her friends all enjoyed it; a little came back, so I also delighted myself afterward.
Enjoy!
If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it — please do so! I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.
Here’s a tip before you go
The recipe above suggests to serve the yassa with plain white rice. Although simplicity is often the best way to avoid risks (of overtaking the main dish flavor, for example), sometimes pinches of turmeric can pimp the color and the taste of basic white parboiled rice. This is what I did in this occasion, adding only one heaped table spoon of the yellow powder to the 750 g of white rice. You can add thyme sprigs and bay leaves, to keep flavors in line with the recipe above. Just remember to remove the thyme sprigs before serving — bay leaves are large enough to stay, and pose as ornament.
I asked my mother, and she does not recall the same as me. So either I recall better, or this is an example of the Mandela effect.
Be cautious: mustard is a known allergen
Be cautious: peanut oil is made of peanut, which is a known allergen
One of my favourite dishes ever! I’m going to try your recipe tomorrow ☺️
Will definitely try it, it looks so good !