Ghana-style snack: toasted corn and peanuts

In Ghana, people snack on nuts (as in tiger nuts, groundnuts [peanuts], cashews, etc. ) often combined with something else, such as fresh coconut or corn. While corn is sometimes popped and eaten alone or with peanuts, it is also toasted. (Think African corn nuts.)

Toasted corn is an African snack food that I have been hesitant to prepare because I have been unable to easily locate the correct type of corn. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago to some farmer neighbors  and they brought me a huge bucket of hard, field (sometimes called "Indian") corn to experiment with (thank you Micah and Bethany). While it is yellow corn rather than the white corn more common in Ghana, it provided me with the raw materials I needed.

I tried 3 variations:

1) Soaking the corn for 24 hours and then draining it, stirring in a couple of tablespoons of  canola oil  for a couple of cups of corn and  and roasting it in a hot (400 degree F) oven  on a greased cookie sheet, planning to stir every 5 minutes. Whoops! After 5 minutes I stirred it and before 5 more minutes were up, the corn started jumping off of the cookie sheet into the oven. It wasn't popping exactly, more the way sesame seeds pop when you put them into a pan to heat them. I had to turn off the oven and remove the cookie sheets after the oven cooled. I then drained the corn on paper towels and salted it.

2) While the corn was cooking in the oven, I also used a heavy frying pan on the stove top with a little oil (a tablespoon or so) to toast a cup of the soaked corn on a medium heat, stirring regularly. After about 7 minutes I had to put a lid on the pan, too, to keep the corn from jumping out.

3) The traditional way they do in Ghana: toasting the corn dry over a low heat (on my stovetop), then pouring the toasted corn into a pan of cold salt water to soak for an hour, then drying the corn in the same heavy cast iron frying pan I used to toast it originally.

 

I'd recommend #2 or #3 as providing the most successful result. Certainly, if I'd been able to

easily locate Goya's giant white corn or dried hominy corn, I'd have liked to have tried that.


This makes a nice crunchy snack, but not one to be recommended for small children.

Africa Cookbook Project: From Mandela's kitchen

Yesterday I added a welcome volume to the Africa Cookbook Collection: a book by Nelson Mandela's personal chef.

I first heard about Xoliswa Ndoyiya's cookbook (authored with quietly impressive help from Anna Trapido) Ukutya Kwasekhaya ("home food"): Tastes from Nelson Mandela's Kitchen in February, 2012, when it was featured online in the BBCNews. It's not the kind of "celebrity" cookbook that usually makes the news in North America.

I had already heard that Nelson Mandela prefers to eat traditional dishes from South Africa, and was excited to hear that Ndoyiya's cookbook shared over 5 dozen recipes, many of which feature "homestyle" dishes (such as umphokoqo (crumbed maize meal porridge with sour milk), umnqusho (samp and beans), ulusu (tripe), umsila wenkomo (oxtail stew), and isophu (sugar bean and white maize soup). There are also a number of South African dishes with other influences (e.g., paella, lasagne, and strawberry trifle), but the cover, showing two hands holding white maize kernels, captures the flavor of the book. In addition, the 173-page hardcover book is bursting with homespun wisdom ("When I was young I understood that my mother was stirring love into every pot of hot ulusu and, even if I didn't always like it, . . . that my paternal grandmother, MaSitatu, was feeding me her hopes and dreams along with her umkhuphu"), as well as  anecdotes about, and lovely photos with, the famous family she has served since 1992 (2 years beforeNelson Mandela became president). I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but am thrilled to have Ukutya Kwasekhaya in the collection.

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 in 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.

Ghana-style Kenkey

Italy has polenta, Ghana has kenkey. This steamed fermented corn dough dish from Ghana has several versions. The two most well-known include Ga and Fanti styles, the former dough including salt and made of balls wrapped in corn husks before steaming, the latter without salt and wrapped in plantain leaves. It is also called komi in Ga, dokono in Twi, or dokon in Fante, kokui or tim in Ewe (sorry, I'm missing the correct orthography to insert special Akan characters in several of these words).

There are numerous other versions of kenkey, including a type where the skins of the corn are removed before grinding it. A sweet version is called dokompa, and it is one of the few instances where sugar is added to a main carbohydrate (sweet potatoes or yam are also added). Kenkey can also be made from plantains, where very ripe plantains are pounded and mixed with green plantain meal (amada kokonte). Plantain kenkey is known as brodokono in Twi, afanku in Ga, and ahyenku or asenku in Fante.

The preparation of corn-based kenkey involves souring the dough, then cooking half of it slightly to make aflatta, (a.k.a. ohu, or half-cooked banku), then mixing the partly cooked dough with the uncooked dough and wrapping and steaming the mixture. Banku is a smooth, softer dough that is cooked and stirred, rather than steamed.

Kenkey fascinates me, and I hope to continue tracing its history when I'm in Brazil later this year. Apparently some of the peoples in Amazonia, such as the Tupi-Guarani, also ferment corn to make dough. Many parts of sub-Saharan Africa have thick corn-based porridges (pap, bidia, ushima, sadza, ugali, etc.), but Ghana's fermented dough seems different. It is also difficult to duplicate in North America, where we are usually forced to ferment Indian Head or other (white) cornmeal. This disappoints on several counts: the corn should be soaked before being ground and fermented (something to do with how the starch changes to sugar, a food scientist in Ghana once tried to explain to me), it should be white (harder to find in the U.S.), and it should be finer than our stone ground cornmeal. I've also tried soaking dried Indian corn, and grinding it myself, but have not identified the correct types (flint, dent?) and been unsuccessful. Ga-style kenkey is wonderful with crisply fried fish, a spicy pepper sauce/sambal such as Ghana's "sheeto," and a fresh tomato, pepper, and onion "gravy."