How I won the battle of Ablo

Name: Ablo

Eaten in: West Africa

Category: Traditional

I decided that I was going to make ablo, and ablo I was going to make. They are traditional corn and rice flour dumplings that are made and sold by women on street corners in Côte d’Ivoire. If you have a good ablo supplier, you hold on to her as families typically do not bother with making the dumplings at home. Well, you can’t really find ablo in Manhattan, so I had to learn how to make it. It was surprisingly easy once I found the right recipe, the right ingredients as well as the right technique to steam them. Yes, many rights and multiple tries later, I had the perfect ablo that I served with a “sauce feuille” from Togo. The dumplings were light and flavorful, chewy with a melt-in-your-mouth quality. They were definitely worth all the trouble.

Ablo Recipe

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Ingredients

1 cup rice flour (200 grams)
6 tablespoons corn flour (60 grams)
10 tablespoons cornstarch (100 grams)
2 teaspoons yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups water (500 ml)

Directions

1.	Put your water in a large saucepan. Add corn flour. Mix well and bring to boil. As soon as the mixture boils, turn off the heat and let it cool down.
2.	Meanwhile put the yeast in a bowl with a little hot water and let it rise.
3.	Once your corn mash is cooled, add the rice flour and cornstarch. Mix well to get a homogeneous mixture.
4.	Stir yeast mixture in preparation. Add sugar, salt and mix salt.
5.	Close the pan cover with a clean cloth and allow the mixture to rise. It needs heat to do so. If you are in a warm place (80F), one hour should do. If not, let it stand for four hours. I typically use a little trick. I warm my oven beforehand, turn it off, then put my mix in and leave the oven door slightly ajar. It works wonder and definitely shortens the waiting time. If you use that trick, one hour of rising time will do, regardless of your location.
6.	When you are ready to cook the ablo, put water in the steamer and bring to a boil. Spoon the mixture into individual molds (about 12) and arrange on top of the steamer
7.	Cook for 20 minutes. The final result has a light doughy texture that detaches easily.
8.	Enjoy with a sauce feuille, or grilled fish and a tomato sauce