The name of the dish, mafe gerte, translates to "Sauce Peanut." As with most dishes here, people are excited to see the white people from America eating their local food, and they shower me with praise when I eat a lot of this dish.
Cheb-u-Jin: The name of this dish translates to "Rice and Fish" but it is only labeled in the Wolof language and not in Pulaar. Lingually confusing, cheb in Wolof just means rice, but for the Pulaar people, cheb means fried rice and marrow means plain, white rice. Cheb-u-jin is a delicious, oily, rice-based dish featuring fried fish, a carrot, a piece of cabbage, sometimes a pepper or two, and of course, the staple of most local dishes, a pile of greens that has been crushed into a paste called folere.
Yassa Poulette: White rice serves as the base for this chicken and sauce dish. We have this for special occasions and parties when there are many people over for lunch. The sauce is the best part of this dish, as the small chicken in the center of the bowl is hardly ever enough to serve more than a couple of bites per person at the bowl. Onions, carrots, peas, tomatoes and whatever else is on hand seasonally will be tossed into the acidic sauce that serves as the flavor for the dish. This is a sure favorite with myself and my American friends in Senegal.
Other(s): The other food we have for lunch is a white rice-based dish featuring random fish or bits of beef, vegetables and some kind of onion and oil-based sauce. These dishes don't tend to have names in particular other than, "Rice plus main-thing-in-the-bowl."
