2 more Ghana Cookbook sightings

It's fun and exciting to see our child going off on its own into the world and making history in a modest way this holiday season. Here are a couple more sightings:

South African Michael Dewsnap, Chef at the Golden Tulip Restaurant in Accra, Ghana, holding his copy:

And Surama King, originally from Minas Gerais in Brazil (I've written previously about some of the links between Brazilian and West African cuisines) and currently married to a Ghanaian.

It's truly thrilling to receive notes from folks as you receive copies. Many of you have sent emails or posted on facebook, but there's no substitute for seeing your faces. Truly this book is getting noticed, not by any big advertising campaign, or media hype, but ordinary people like us, letting the world know about Ghana's world class cuisine one by one!

I'm also happy to announce that The Ghana Cookbook has already (in less than 2 months) had to go into its second printing. Yay! 

Ghana regional cookbook update 2

Hello, faithful followers:

It's been 3 months since I've posted here. The time was to be spent working hard on the Ghanaian regional cookbook. It worked well--for a week or
two. . .

Then the "tyranny of the urgent" took over. I won't bore you with the details, but have decided to start posting again, and continue working on the cookbook at the same time. You all keep me motivated. The picture on the right shows my original thoughts on a cover, but as the book evolves, so has the title. Today I'm thinking of using another Ghanaian proverb ("The good soup comes from the good earth"). As you may recall, my first African cookbook (Pelican, 1993) was called A Good Soup Attracts Chairs.

The book's format is pretty well designed now. Feel free to look over the summarized table of contents below and let me know if you see something I've left out that ought to be there, or any errors. And if any of you are a potential publisher, or know of any, pass that information along.

Table of Contents (drafted)

Preface          Something for Everyone (drafted)

Introduction:  From Brisbane to Accra--Fran's story (drafted)

                       From Ghana with Love--Barbara's story(drafted)

Part I: The West African Kitchen

                       1. Background, languages, map  (drafted)

                       2. Ingredients (partially drafted)

                          Herbs, spices, seeds and oils

                          Staple foods: roots, grains, plantains and legumes

                          Meat, poultry, fish, shellfish and snails

                          Vegetables and fruits

                      3. Equipment (traditional and modern)

Part II: Essential flavors and techniques: the building blocks (partially drafted)

                      Flavor principles: texture, tastes

                      Seasoning techniques

                      Basic gravy for stews

                      Doughs (corn, cassava, fermenting)

                      Coatings: batter for squid, octopus, yam, groundnuts

                      Basic stocks

                      Removing skins from black-eyed peas

                      Opening coconuts, coconut milk and water

                      Toasting and grinding corn flour

                      Tankora powder/rub (yaagi, chichinga powder)

                      Drying (fruits, vegetables, fish and seafood)

                      Cooking and food processing techniques

                      Garnishing

                      Substitutions

Part III: Recipes (w/information on regional variations, specialties)

                     A. Snacks, street foods, and appetizers: includes green plantain chips or strips; cocoyam chips [mankani); fresh corn and coconut; sugar cane; cheese straws; octopus/squid appetizer;meat/fish pies/turnovers, kelewele [seasoned ripe plantains cubes], tubaani [steamed bean balls]; grilled prawns; chichinga [kebabs with a rub called yaagi]; tatale [ripe plantain pancakes]; akla [deep-fried bean balls, aka akara, kose, acara]; kaklo [plantain balls w/corn dough, 2 versions]; fish balls; coated groundnuts; "Kofi brokeman"[roasted ripe plantain];  roasted peanuts; boiled peantus; savory pastry chips; Ghana-style doughnuts [togbei, bofrot]; kuli-kuli [peanut snack]; yam balls [yele kakro]

                  B. Soups

                      1. Light soups (nkrankra [from meat, fish,vegetables, or all]: with lamb, eggplant, mushrooms and zucchini; fisherman's soup; pepper soup; Fante-Fante; dried vegetable soup; kontomire (greens) soup; egusi (melon seeds) soup; okro soups Ewe style (fetri detsi and fetri ma)

                     2. Groundnut (peanut), palmnut and sesame soups: chicken groundnut soup; vegetarian groundnut soup; groundnut soup with turkey and okra; groundnut-palmnut soup; classic palmnut soup; palmnut and bean soup; benne (sesame) soup with Guinea fowl or game hens)

                 C. Stews: browned flour and meat stew; groundnut (peanut) stew with chicken and condiments; groundnut stew with meat; sardine stew; corned beef stew; simple bean stew; crock pot bean stew with smoked fish (aka, ase abom or frow, asedua yoo flo, bobo, eduwa forowe, in various languages in Ghana); palaver sauce, garden egg (eggplant) stew with beef, crab and fish; detsi fifi (an Ewe dish between a light soup and gravy); ayikple (coconut and bean stew); okra/eggplant/fish stew; aprapransa or akplijii (seafood and toasted corn stew)

                D. Protein main dishes: grilled tilapia; grilled prawns; kenam (fried fish); abobo (cooked cowpeas); aboeboe (boiled bambara beans); adayi (pureed cowpeas); domedu (roast pork); Ashanti fowl

               E. Miscellaneous sauces and seasonings: fresh peppers sauces (green and red); shito; gravy; flavored oils

               F. Starchy/carbohydrate accompaniments:  akpele (corn and cassava dough, simple gari (toasted fermented cassava meal), pino (also from gari), ampesi (boiled starchy vegetables), fried ripe plantain, kenkey, banku (from fermented corn and cassava doughs), oto (a mashed yam and palm oil dish). coated yam; acheke (manioc [cassava] couscous);  TZ (tuo zaafi) from millet, fonio, and/or cassava flour; coconut rice, omo tuo (rice balls); fufu (3 types: cassava, yam, plantain; pounded, microwaved from commercial fufu power, or potato starch and potato buds); yam chips
              G. One-pot cooking: Gari foto w/corned beef; vegetarian gari foto; jollof rice with chicken; jollof rice with beef; vegetarian jollof rice; jollof rice with shrimp; mpotompoto/nyoma, mpihu (yam pottage/soup); waakye (rice and beans)
              H.  Beverages and breakfast porridges and meals: rice water, koko (porridge), Hausa koko, Tom Brown (ablemamu), koklui, iced kenkey, gari potowye (soaking);  ginger beer; lemon grass tea; coconut water; sobolo or bissap (hibiscus iced tea); puha (tamarind drink); shandy; fruit juices; beer and wines with Ghanaian food; contemporary: fruit smoothies, Ghana-inspired hot chocolate
              I. Desserts and baked foods: atwemo (twisted cakes); tiger nut pudding (atadwe milkye, from chufa); sugar bread (loaves and rosca); tea bread; ofam (ripe plantain loaf); caramel custard; fried ice cream; pawpaw fool (papaya); mango fool; groundnut toffee/cake; coconut toffee/cake; fresh papaya with lime fruit salad
Appendix A: Glossary of Ghanaian terms (drafted)
Appenndix B: Suppliers, online resources, restaurants, and bibliography
Appendix C: Akan Day Names

I must admit, this particular labor of love has turned out to be a huge project. Those of you who pray, please keep me in your prayers, that I'll have the stamina and determination to finish this book. I believe my dream will come true, and will become the comprehensive step-by-step guide to cooking Ghanaian (and much of West African) foods that I kept looking for over the past 30 years!

          

                      

                         

                       

    

African Cooking Teachers in North America

The papaya on the counter is still hard and green, and the plantains for my holiday ofam turned woody but did not ripen, so today I'll wirte about a topic close to my heart:   

African cooking instructors

I've alluded before to some of the dvds or videos available online, such as those on Liberian cooking, or from Yeti Ezianii's Afrofood TV (see her YouTube videos). Of course, I teach African cooking classes, too (plus have a number of YouTube videos available, from making microwave fufu to moin moin, injera and doro wat, etc. These videos have multiple parts.) And there are  African cooking videos at HowCast.com.   Kunmi of Sheba foods, has dvds available on Kenyan, Nigerian, and South African cooking. Many people have posted videos on YouTube covering all aspects of African cuisine.

However, there is no substitute for having an experienced and knowledgeable teacher guide one through the process of creating authentic regional African dishes, explaining cooking techniques, correcting problems, giving tips, and walking one through the process step-by-step. I've yet to discover any comprehensive and current listing of individuals outside of Africa who teach such classes on a regular basis. Such classes are also not yet incorporated into the culinary curriculum of  North American cooking schools (I'd love to be corrected here if you know of any schools with a specific emphasis on African cuisines, and not just a brief "world cuisines" unit.)

Let's begin a list today, at the end of 2009. Since I'm in the U.S., it will start with culinary professionals  in North America who are currently available to teach. I'll be happy to update it as people send me information and links. We can move beyond N. America if people send me information.

Off hand, apart from me
Fran Osseo-Asare (fran@betumi.com)
State College, Pennsylvania U.S.A.

I recently received an email from
Nbret Aga (lovecarepacifica@yahoo.com, telephone 206-218-2833)
Des Moines, Washington, U.S.A. who teaches (among other world cuisines) Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking classes.

Ghanaian caterer and consultant 
Eva Forson of African Palava
New York City, New York has taught African cooking classes.

If you would like to be listed, or can recommend someone, please contact me.

Question #9: Doesn't African cooking require specialized ingredients and equipment?

Preface to this blog posting: I saw the movie "Julie and Julia" last week, and it encouraged me to continue posting the recipes for the Ghanaian cookbook Barbara Baeta and I have worked on the past few years with basically no encouragement from publishers. Wouldn't it be wonderful to do for West African food what she did for French food? Of course, everyone already knew that French food was amazing, but for many people West African food has negative stereotypes and/or just seems inaccessible. Do try cooking some of the recipes I'll be posting, and see if you don't also fall in love with the dishes of Ghana.

Now to tackle question #9 about the necessity of having specialized equipment and ingredients to master African cooking.

I've lived in England, Japan, and Brazil and had cooking lessons in each place. I've also learned Indian cooking from colleagues from India, Italian cooking from Italian colleagues, Chinese cooking from Chinese colleagues. It's usually possible to re-create dishes from other cultures even without all the specialized equipment and ingredients that are native to those places.

The same is true of African cooking, whether I've been taking lessons on Moroccan cooking in Morocco, Ghanaian cooking in Ghana, or South African cooking in Cape Town . . . Of course, one cannot always get the exact ingredients and cooking equipment one might like outside of those countries, but one can generally substitute and adapt.

Plus, when things like sushi or kimchi or pad Thai make their way into our lives, we discover seaweed or bamboo mats or pickled ginger or special spices or lemongrass are actually not all that hard to locate in our cities. With the rising popularity of Latin foods and cooking in North America, along with Asian cuisines, fruits and vegetables and starches that were once unfamiliar are making their way into mainstream grocery stores: all kinds of chili peppers, ginger, tamarind, fresh and dried coconuts, mangos, papayas, yucca (cassava), cocoyams (taro), African yams, plantains--the list is practically endless. Many of these ingredients are integral to the cuisines of tropical and sub-tropical countries of Africa. Their increasing availability provides opportunities to explore a whole new world of flavors and textures. It's a very exciting development to me after many years where such foods were inaccessible or prohibitively expensive.

I further rejoice to watch Americans discover and embrace specifically African ingredients like South African rooibos (redbush) or honeybush teas.

As more African immigrants/students/professionals abroad demand the ingredients from their homelands, the market provides those things, from fresh vegetables and root crops to moinmoin powder, teff, fufu flour, smoked shrimp, dende (red palm) oil, fermented corn and cassava doughs, etc. "Ethiopian" teff is now grown in the U.S. (BTW, I'm trying to find a way to import some wonderful kpakpo shito peppers from Ghana, and have 3 organic farmers ready to grow them here! If anyone knows of any sources, please contact me at fran@betumi.com)

Having said that, there are also many dishes that can be made using familiar North American ingredients, like stews using beef, onions, tomatoes, and oil, but combined with spices and eggplant or spinach or okra or mushrooms. There are curry and rice dishes, corn dishes, and bean stews, but with interesting twists like using canned sardines or corned beef or smoked fish or pureed nuts and seeds. Of course there are numerous chicken and fish dishes, too.

So, the short answer to Question #9 above is: No, African cooking does not require excessive use of unavailable ingredients and cooking utensils!

On the other hand, for purists, rest assured that if you wish to become a master chef of any African cuisine, you can move beyond the simple to the more complex--just like any of us can make tacos or fajitas or enchiladas or burritos, but someone like Rick Bayless takes Mexican food to a whole new level. For example, last week my electric mitad arrived from Bethany Housewares. A mitad is a round griddle and lid that can be used to make injera, even though it was originally designed as a lefse maker for that Scandinavian flatbread. Incidentally, it can also be special ordered, without the lid, from Target. The previous week I was in Portland Oregon visiting family and stopped by some Ethiopian stores to buy some specialized ingredients: Ethiopian cardamon, green coffee beans, shiro powder, berbere, niter kibbeh (clarified, spiced butter), tea, alecha seasoning, and a woven mat that is used to remove the injera from the mitad. In other posts I've already praised my asanka (ridged grinding bowl from Ghana), and, yes, I have a tagine from Morocco. . . Do I absolutely need the special grill and spices to make my Ethiopian injera and stews? No. Certainly not. I made some fine flatbreads on a nonstick skillet on my stove, and I made a "make-do" version of the clarified butter myself, and even a "fake" berbere. I can also get many of the ingredients I need, from teff to millet flour to garbanzo beans and Ethiopian coffee, locally here in central Pennsylvania. And blenders and food processors do much of the work of African mortars and pestles.

However, I'm a perfectionist (I also have specialized ingredients and equipment for make other things like Japanese or Chinese foods). Since I do cooking classes, I can convince myself to spend a little extra money to purchase the spices and cooking equipment. It's also always fun to serve meals with "authentic" serving dishes/mats/tablecloths, etc.

In summary, African cooking is quite forgiving and adaptable for novices, but there are also many layers one can explore to master more complex flavors. In other words, there's something for everyone.

As an example, today I've mixed up some corn flour/meal to ferment so that I can post the recipes for banku and Ga kenkey, two Ghanaian favorites. I have 4 options to choose from, using both local white Indian Head cornmeal and imported flours and doughs from Ghana. Check back tomorrow to learn more.

More African food videos

Here are links to several more free online videos related to African cuisine (what did we ever do before You Tube?)

Dona D’Cruz interviews Marcus Samuelsson, author of The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa, which features some Senegalese food at the end of the interview (e.g., fried ripe plantain, couscous, yassa, and thiebou dienne.)

In a February 19, 2007 blog posting I shared some photos from Penn State University's Touch of Africa dinner and cultural show (more photos are available at Betumi's flickr account). The students at Oklahoma State University did me one better, and videotaped the food preparation action behind the scenes for their 2007 Africa Night.

In the February 13, 2007 blog posting I mentioned two cooking videos by Nigerian Ngozika on BlackTVonline.com. She has another one on preparing jollof rice, fried plantain (dodo), and fish stew. While I find her videos fun to watch, given time constraints she rushes through things. For example, she has already prepared the gravy for the stew and the jollof rice, and even peeled and sliced the plantain ahead of time. Though she mentions ingredients, she does not give quantities or explain preparation techniques enough for newcomers to the cuisine to successfully follow her directions. Still, having said that, I'm very glad she is out there popularizing Nigerian cuisine.

The North African cooking pot with a conical lid is called a tagine, which is also the name of a type of Moroccan stew cooked in it. Traditionally made from clay, modern versions are made with metal bottoms that can be placed directly on a stove top. Tagine: the Movie, illustrates how to use a modern tagine to make a typical Moroccan beef and vegetable stew. As in other YouTube videos, the lack of details frustrates the would-be cook. What WAS in that mysterious broth added to the tagine? Also, did they really eat it without any couscous in sight?

There is an intriguing demonstration of preparing Congolese satori, "a famous dish of the Lokele fishermen of Kisangani," made in the demo from tilapia fillets. Be sure to read the full description of the ingredients before watching the video.

Finally, there are several clips of people eating at African restaurants at the You Tube site. A typical one includes a send-off party for students at Drelyse African Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio (USA) where the students give a little cultural advice to the Americans.