Hope for reducing aflatoxins in African peanuts and maize

When asked about taking groups to West Africa on culinary tours,  I have been hesitant to undertake such a project due to issues of food safety and quality control. A serious problem surrounding peanut and maize production Africa, for example, is the prevalence of mycotoxins, types of fungi that can contaminate food before, during or after it is harvested/processed. Since the 1960s there has been a new recognition of the health and other impacts of  one group of mycotoxins known as aflatoxins (in particular, Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus) in Africa. According to the most recent quarterly newsletter of the  African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) (04, Oct. 2009-Jan 2010) "These toxins are potent causes of cancer and suppress the immune system causing greater susceptibility of humans and animals to diseases. . . High levels of aflatoxin contamination in agricultural products also affect international trade since agricultural products that have more than permissible levels of contamination are rejected in the global market." The fungi thrive in environments of moisture and insect damage. It is therefore imperative to know how the maize in the ball of kenkey or corn dough was stored, how the peanuts in the tankora powder were processed, etc., in order to be confident that they are fungus-free. One cannot tell by looking or tasting.

New biocontrol products are now being developed to help: AflaSafe for maize by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Afla-guard by the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (now licensed to a private company). This is good news for us all.

Recipe #41: Pino, another light (and delightful) gari dish

Anyone who has ever turned to seasoned couscous for a quick side starch for a meal needs to learn to love gari, a form of cassava meal (aka manioc, yucca) I've enthused about previously. Last week when I made the beef and chicken versions of chichinga (a West African kebab) we didn't eat them as a snack, but made a light meal out of it by pairing them with pino, a quickly and easily prepared seasoned version of gari, some fresh vegetables, and a bottle of chilled chardonnay. A simple, satisfying and elegant meal.

Since I used part of a roasting chicken for the chicken chichinga, while I was making the tankora powder and preparing the meat and poultry I simmered the rest of the chicken in a pot with water, salt, onion, celery, garlic, fresh scotch bonnet pepper, etc.  to make chicken stock.

Then, just before putting the skewers of chichinga under the broiler, I put couple of teaspoons of peanut oil in a nonstick skillet, sauteed a third of a medium chopped onion and added a little tomato paste and some seasoning (salt, red pepper) and 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock. If a Ghanaian had a little Ghana-style gravy left over from another meal, she or he would likely just mix that in with the stock or (sigh, water and a seasoning cube . . .).  I put a cup of fine (Ghana style, not coarser Nigerian style) gari in a small bowl and poured the liquid over it, stirring it quickly, careful to keep it from clumping or becoming lumpy. Then I wet a small bowl and pressed the pino into it,  put a plate on top of the bowl and turned it upside down to release the molded pino. Finally, I garnished it with what I had handy: some sweet bell pepper and cherry tomatoes. Pino is similar to, but lighter than, Nigerian imoyo eba, where the gari is actually cooked and becomes much denser. Since there were only 2 of us I used only a cup of gari, but would have doubled it to serve 4 or 5 people. It only took a few minutes to prepare, and we had a lovely light dinner.

Recipe #40: Step-by-step Chichinga (Kyinkyinga/Tsire Suya)

Here are 2 versions of what is known in Ghana as chichinga (with the first "i" pronounced like the "i" in "it," and the second one like a long "ee", and the emphasis on the second syllable [chiCHINga]. It's also spelled "kyinkyinga," in which case the first "n" is silent. This popular street food, appetizer, and party snack is common throughout West Africa. In Nigeria this version of kebab is called  tsire suya (sooya), often shortened to simply suya.

Chichinga is commonly made from a variety of protein sources, such as liver or beef (more traditional),  and chicken (more contemporary), lamb,  or goat. I'm sure it would be possible to use vegetarian sources like mushrooms or tofu, as well. The distinctive touch comes from the rub, the tankora/yagi/chichinga powder, which includes roasted cornmeal, pulverized and fried and then re-ground peanuts, ginger, red pepper, salt, and other spices. Typically in Ghana the meats are quite tough and the chichinga are grilled for a long time so that they sometimes taste overcooked according to Western sensibilities.

Once you have purchased or prepared the powder, you're set to go.

Beef Chichinga (Version I) (enough for 3 people)

12 ounces tender beef [I used top round (London broil)]
bamboo skewers (NOT the long ones)
1/2 cup tankora powder

for the marinade:
1-2 teaspoons tomato paste
ground dried red pepper to taste (about 1/3-1/2 teaspoon)
~1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger (about 1/2 inch root, peeled)
~1/2 teaspoon fresh ground or grated or crushed garlic (about 1-2 large cloves)
about 1/4 to 1/3 onion, grated (to get 1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons)
~1 teaspoon salt or seasoned salt (like spicy adobo)
~1/2 teaspoon white or black pepper
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (I used peanut oil)

Put the skewers to soak in water at least an hour before you intend to use them (I do this for the oven when I need to broil the chichinga, but it might not be necessary on an outdoor grill). In the picture, the top shows the type of homemeade wooden skewers that are commonly used in Ghana.)

To make enough for 3 persons, use 12 ounces of tender beef with all fat trimmed off, enough to cut into about 18-21 thin strips, roughly  1/4-3/8 inches thick, and a couple of inches long and around an inch wide (you'll see both the chicken and beef strips in the picture).

Prepare the marinade and mix it together, then coat the meat evenly with it and let it sit (in the refrigerator) covered, for about half an hour or longer.

Preheat a broiler, or build a fire when you are ready to grill the chichinga. To finish the kebabs after marinating them,
put a cup of the kyinkyinga/tankora/yaji powder in a plastic or paper bag, and add about 6 pieces of the marinated meat at a time, shaking them well to coat them (in Ghana they actually coat them after they put them on the skewers, but the bag procedure works better for me. Thread 3 pieces of meat onto each skewer. Continue repeating this process untl all the meat is coated and on skewers. Do not push the meat down too tightly on the skewers.
I lightly brushed the kebabs with a little peanut oil before putting them under the broiler, turning after 5 minutes and brushing the other side lightly with oil as well, then giving them another 5 minutes or so. Since we weren't quite ready for them, I turned the broiler off and let the sit in the over for another 20 minutes or so befoe we were ready to eat.

Actually, I made 2 versions at the same time (in the picture you'll see that I had some chicken livers from the chicken that I thought about using, too, but since they would have cooked faster and I didn't want to worry about timing, I left them for another day.)

Version II (Chicken Chichinga) [also for 3 people]

This version is the identical process, but uses chicken instead of beef. Since North American chickens tend to be so soft, it is more flavorful and interesting to use a roasting (or free-range) chicken. In Ghana, I usually find the chicken version is made from white chicken breast meat, but I include a few from the darker, moister thigh meat and that works well also.

12 ounces boneless chicken (breast and/or thigh meat), cut into roughly 18-21 thin strips (as was the beef)

Follow the same procedure for marinating, coating, and grilling.

Variation: It is also possible to grill the meat directly, without using the tankora powder, but you'll be missing a treat.

Chichinga goes very well with a lager beer (like Star or Club in Ghana), or ginger beer or ginger ale or bissap.

Recipes #39 and 40: Kuli-kuli and tankora (yaji) powder/rub

 Recipe #39: Kuli-kuli (groundnut/peanut balls)

I feel pretty stupid today. After spending hours trying to use peanut butter to make my kuli-kuli (and wasting a LOT of peanut oil as they disintegrated in it), I decided to try beginning with dry roasted peanuts. I threw a cupful into my mini food processor and quickly ground them to a powder, stopping before it turned into a paste. Then I proceeded to wrap the powder in cloth, and press the oil out between 2 cutting boards (I actually put them on the floor and stomped on them). Next, I added a little hot water to allow me to mold the powder mixture into small balls (the cup of peanuts made 16 of them). I didn't add salt because the peanuts were already lightly salted. Then I deepfried them in hot peanut oil for a few minutes until they were crisp and brown on the outside. No problem. It was quick and oh-so-easy.

They're then ready to eat as a snack, or sprinkled crumbled over salads or porridges or whatever you fancy. Because I intended to crush the balls to use in my tankora powder for my chichinga (suya), I didn't add any other spices like grated onion or red pepper when I made the balls, but I could have done that, too.  I pounded the fried balls in a small marble mortar (see picture below), then pressed the pounded mixture through a medium sieve for the recipe below. I imagine it would have been easier to just use the powdered peanuts without frying or pressing them, but then, I'm a perfectionist of sorts. Do whichever you choose.

Recipe #40: Tankora Powder/Rub for Chichinga (Suya)

If you don't want to bother with the recipe below, you can make a "make-do" powder by mixing a little hot red pepper, and a little ginger and salt, and some crushed/powdered peanuts together. If you don't have a food processor, put peanuts between waxed paper or into a bag and hit them with a rolling pin, hammer, or meat tenderizer to pulverize them.

However, if you have the time, I recommend going all out. As with curry powders, you can mix and match the ingredients you happen to like. And, as with curry powders, freshly made is better.

Here's a basic recipe:

1/2 cup of powdered peanuts from kulikuli prepared above
1/4 cup of toasted corn flour (see directions below) made from 1/4 cup toasted, ground white popcorn
dried ground red pepper to taste (~ 1/4-1/2 teaspoon)
dried ground ginger to taste (~ 1/2 teaspoon)
salt to taste (if peanuts were salted, just a little, maybe 1/4 teaspoon)
other ingredients as desired (I used 1/2 teaspoon dried powdered green bell pepper, 1/4 teaspoon mace, and 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper; others use shrimp-flavored or other seasoning cubes)

I actually made a double batch of this today so I can test it on 2 types of chichinga, one made from round steak (beef) and one from chicken breast. I'm getting ready to make the marinade for the meat now, and will grill it for dinner. I'll post the results tomorrow or the next day.

Next I prepared the other ingredients for the tankora (yaji) powder, the spice rub to use on my meat/poultry. Yesterday I dried a few rings of sweet bell pepper in a warm oven (the lowest setting on the oven for a few hours) and ground them in a coffee/spice grinder. I've only once had tankora powder with that ingredient, but I liked it. I also used mace because I had some handy. And I had no African black pepper, so I just used white pepper. I had African dried red pepper (hotter than the cayenne usually available in North American grocery stores), so I used that, along with dried ground ginger.

The toasted cornflour (the same one used to make Tom Brown porridge) was a little more of a challenge, but thanks to Dorinda Hafner's adivce in A Taste of Africa, I managed to make my own by toasting a cup of white popcorn in a preheated heavy cast iron skillet over a medium high heat, shaking it constantly for about 6 minutes until just before the kernals started popping (I quickly poured them onto a cool plate so that they didn't continue to heat and pop in the pan) and then ground them as finely as I could in my coffee grinder, pouring them through a fine tea strainer and regrinding the chaff until I had what I needed: still not quite as fine as I could have gotten in Ghana, but quite okay. I've seen people saying you can just toast  cornmeal in a dry frying pan, but, as always, I think freshly made is better. Mix all of the ingredients together.

I make this just before I need it, but I imagine it could also be stored in the freezer.

Kuli-kuli, and tankora powder, the continuing saga

When I was in Northern Ghana I watched kuli-kuli being made (and helped a very little--the women laughed at how weak my hands were when I tried to squeeze the peanut [groundnut] paste into balls) it seemed pretty straightforward. That's like saying pounding fufu correctly is easy. Not true.

I'm working on developing the recipe for tankora (or "yaji") powder. Tankora powder is a West African rub for meats, poultry, etc. that is most famously used in West African kebabs. Like curry powders, it's a blend of several dried, powdered ingredients. There are many versions, but most commonly they contain dried, powdered red pepper, ginger, some kind of black or white pepper or masoro, salt, powdered peanuts specially prepared (that's the kuli-kuli I've been trying to master), and various other spices: some call for mace, or cloves, maggi cubes, garlic, and in Ghana people commonly mix toasted corn flour into the mixture as well. One of the best kebabs (called chichinga or  tsitsinga) I had in Ghana was made from tender beef (often chichinga is made from very tough meats and quite chewy and overcooked to Western palates), and the vendor (from the North) told me he made his own tankora powder that included: white pepper, sweet green dried pepper powder (the only time I've ever heard of that in tankora or yaji powder), dried powdered ginger, ground nutmeg, Maggi and Royco shrimp seasoning cubes, salt, kulikuli, and dried red pepper.

But making the kulikuli powder: that's the problem. I admit I'm not grinding the roasted peanuts fresh, but trying to use natural style peanut butter (I've tried different brands). Getting all of the oil possible out is the first step. I tried using my hands and a little hot water like they did in Ghana, but that didn't work, so I tried using a folded cheesecloth to squeeze out the oil, but that still didn't work well enough, so I wrapped the peanut butter in dishcloths, put it between 2 cutting boards, and stomped on it. That seemed to work! I got the oil out of the peanut butter, and was able to form the balls like they did in Ghana (or so I thought). As soon as I tried to deepfry them in peanut oil they disintegrated. I tried again today, making sure I had the oil hot enough, but the same thing happened, so I decided to make the balls into patties and fry them on a nonstick griddle well greased with peanut oil, at about 350-375 degrees. That worked okay, more or less.

In Northern Ghana, they then add the salt (and maybe other spices, too?), and pound the balls again, t form them into rolled strips joined together and deepfry them again. I couldn't manage that, so just rolled them out and put them in a very low oven alongside the green pepper strips I'm drying to powder and add to my tankora powder, too.  Most of the recipes I've seen simply say to powder dry-roasted peanuts and use them that way. I don't want to cave in and do that until I have no other choice. I'll let you know tomorrow how it worked out. If the oven will dry out the "kulikuli" enough to powder it, and if I can get the sweet bell peppers dry enough to grind, tomorrow I'll see if you can really make a proper toasted cornmeal from popcorn. Keep in touch!

Recipe #38: Cocoyam (taro, mankani) chips

While we were in Brazil in 2007, one night I  made cocoyam chips  for some colleagues who were over for dinner,  and they couldn't stop raving about them. When my husband and I were (literally) poor graduate students and married in Ghana in 1972, we cooked and served these at our wedding reception, and they were cheap, but elegant.

They're a little harder to make than plantain strips because the cocoyams (aka taro, mankani) are more slippery and harder to hold to grate or slice, but it's well worth the effort.

Cocoyam chips are similar to potato chips, but the cocoyams are harder so the chips are crisper and have a different flavor, though also mild. As with plantains, the thinner you manage to cut the chips, the tastier they are. I used a vegetable peeler to peel them, and used several methods to make the chips: a box vegetable grater, a vegetable peeler, and a knife. How I wish I had a mandolin! 

Follow the same procedure for frying and draining and salting them as for green plantain chips. Delicious!

Nagaimo (Japanese mountain yam) and Okra, Cinderella of vegetables

Recently, when buying taro (cocoyams, mankani) at an Asian market, I was excited to see what looked like a long, thin-skinned, gorgeous yam, and immediately snatched some up along with the cocoyams and ginger root (much fresher and cheaper than what I can find in regular grocery stores). At the checkout counter, I was stunned to find that small yam cost about $11! When I asked the clerk what it was, she had to look it up, and told me it's very healthy, Japanese people use it, and the name is nagaimo. I did a little research and discovered that it is from the Dioscorea family (like African yams) and is known as Dioscorea opposita or D. batatas, (or: nagaimo, yamaimo (Japan), Japanese mountain yam, ma (Korea), Korean yam, glutinous yam, cinnamon vine, Chinese yam, shan yao, huai shan, or huai shan yao (China).

It is a type of yam that may be eaten raw, and it has a delicate texture and flavor. It was a treat, though slimier to peel than African yams, and worked when boiled and eaten with a stew. The price makes it a luxury I probably won't use unless absolutely necessary (or when I'm cooking Japanese food, in which case it is often grated and eaten raw and soaked or included in things like pancakes or noodles.)

Okra waiting to take its rightful place

I did not grow up eating okra. It wasn't until I lived in Ghana that I fell in love with it. In the U.S., unlike other parts of the world,  it is considered one of the least favorite vegetables, partly because of its "mucilaginous" properties (i.e., "it's slimy").  Lost Crops of Africa, vol. II on vegetables, declared okra to be a "Cinderella. . . still living on the hearth of neglect amid the ashes of scorn." (p. 287). The book lauds okra for its mind-boggling health benefits and nutrients (e.g., seeds providing excellent vegetable protein and oil with qualities similar to olive oil, rich in tryptophan and sulfer-containing amino acids, okra pods helping to lower serum cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar in diabetics (high soluble fiber), filled with vitamins and minerals. . . It is an important food crop in West Africa. There are different types of okra. In Ghana there is the familiar long slender pod, and a shorteder, fatter pod. In the North of Ghana, the pods are dried for use in soups and stews. I'll soon post a recipe for a soup using dried okra and tomatoes.

When I happened upon some lovely fresh okra in the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, I promptly brought some home, cooked part, and rinsed, then dried the rest on a cookie sheet in a very slow oven (less than 200 degrees, or a little higher than the "warm" setting) for several hours.
BTW, fresh crisp okra are to frozen okra as fresh green beans are to frozen ones.