Délices d'Afrique, grains of paradise, etc.

I'm still expressing appreciation to others who are helping to promote African cuisine:

• Koranteng my son-in-law with a sophisticated African francophone and anglophone palate, who recently provided a delightful addition to the Africa Cookbook Project, Marguerite Abouet's 2012 Délices d'Afrique --50 recipes charmingly illustrated by Agnès Maupré. The recipes feature Ivorian cuisine and are bursting with flavor just as the exuberant illustrations are filled with good humor on each of the book's 124 pages.

• Several weeks ago, Nigerian colleague Ozoz of "Kitchen Butterfly" fame, wrote a lovely post (with her always-exceptional photos)  about alligator pepper (aka grains of paradise), including a recipe using it for okwu-oji, a Nigerian version of groundnut soup.  She has also shared some photos of atariko, which I mentioned in a grains of paradise post in January, and which Nigerians often use in pepper soup and banga (palmnut soup). We continue to applaud her commitment to promoting Nigerian cuisine.
• I was grateful to have Frederick Douglass Opie provide links to several resources/talks on African food and foodways (and to Africa is a Country for alerting me to them).

Upcoming posts:

My current challenge is to tackle 2 recipes for the regional Ghanaian cookbook that I've long delayed: 

The toasted cornmeal and palmnut soup one-pot that my husband fondly remembers his grandmother making, and whose standard I've never been able to achieve: aprapransa, and a green snail soup he also loves called abunabuna. I'll be working on these this week, In the meantime,  if anyone has any suggestions or treasured recipes, please feel free to share.

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