So Much Fun. . .Akpabli's Tickling the Ghanaian

Earlier this year I discovered Accra-based writer Kofi Akpabli's slim but delightful book of humorous essays: Tickling the Ghanaian: Encounters with Contemporary Culture. A fun book featuring an insider's accurate and hilarious musings targeting the food and culture of my favorite African country. 

I especially like "The Truth About Fufu," "Between Tinapa and Boflot," and, of course, "The Serious Business of Soup in Ghana." However, he also covers cloth and clothes, rings, akpeteshi and schnapps, bartering, the Black Stars, kokonte, funerals, Nigerian-Ghanaian relations, and other topics with wit and veracity.

It's a kindle bargain at Amazon.com. Apparently, Kofi Akpabli, was selected as a CNN/Multichoice African Journalist for Arts and Culture in 2010 and 2011, and is  well known for his "useful humour, rooted in truth." A great gift for anyone who knows Ghanaians, plans to visit, or just in need of a refreshing read.

Recipe #47: Light Soup with Lamb, Eggplant, Mushrooms and Zucchini

I was wondering what to cook for dinner last night that would be fun, healthy, simple, and delicious, when I realized I had lamb shoulder (on sale the week after Easter), portabella mushrooms, zucchini squash, jalapeno peppers and eggplant all on hand. Plus, I always have tomato paste/sauce/canned tomatoes, garlic, onions, salt, dried red pepper and fresh ginger in the house.

Voila! Everything I needed for a wonderful “light soup.” That’s the English name in Ghana for a light stock-based soup, named that long before the West started talking about “light” foods. A light soup can be contrasted with heavier “groundnut” (peanut) or palmnut (palmfruit pulp-based) soups. Light soups have infinite variations, and are easy to adjust according to what you have on hand: but remember to include onion, pepper and tomato!

By the way, I recently realized that I've numbered the Ghanaian recipes I've posted so far incorrectly (I actually repeated numbers a couple of times), so this is really recipe #47.

Anyhow, here are the proportions and ingredients I used:

LIght Soup with Lamb, Eggplant, Mushrooms, and Zucchini

1 3/4  pounds of lamb round shoulder chops (mine had bones), fat trimmed and cut into chunks

6 cups of water

1 1/2  teaspoons salt (or to taste)

1 cup chopped onion (1 large)

1 cup tomato sauce (1 small can)

a few spoonfuls of tomato paste (optional)

6-8 ounces of eggplant, peeled and cut into quarters (a whole small Japanese eggplant, or a third to a half of a larger regular eggplant)

one medium zucchini (about 4 ounces), cut in half

1 small jalapeno or other chili pepper (or use dried red pepper to taste, if desired, beginning with 1/8 teaspoon). If you like things spicy, use the whole pepper; if not, cut it in half and carefully remove the seeds and membranes first

about 6 ounces of fresh mushrooms (I had portabella on hand, but any mushroom will work)

(optional seasonings: a 1-2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger, a couple of tablespoons chopped onions, 3 peeled, crushed cloves of garlic, a sprinkling of ground red pepper)

Trim the fat from the lamb, and cut it into chunks. Put the meant in a soup pot with a cup of water. The next step is optional, but I almost always season and “steam” my meat before making the soup, so if you want to follow tradition: on top of the meat, sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of fresh, peeled, grated ginger, a few cloves of peeled, crushed garlic, a couple tablespoons of chopped or minced onion, and sprinkling of dried ground red pepper and salt or seasoned salt. Cover the pot, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer while you prepare the other ingredients.

Chop the onion. Open the can of tomato sauce (and paste, if you want to use it). Rinse and trim the zucchini and  cut it in half. Peel the eggplant and cut it into quarters. Prepare the mushrooms (rinse, wipe dry with a paper towel, and slice in thick slices, or, if they’re small leave them whole or cut them in half or quarters).

Set the mushrooms aside to add near the end.

Add the other vegetables, except the mushrooms, to the pot, along with another 5 cups of water. Add the salt, stir well, bring it back to a boil, then let it simmer, covered, until the vegetables soften (about 10-15 minutes).

Use a slotted spoon to remove the eggplant, pepper, zucchini (and I also usually spoon out some of the chopped onion floating in the soup) into a blender or food processor container. You may need to add a little broth from the pot, or to do this in 2 batches. Blend the vegetables until they are smooth and return them to the soup.

Add the mushroom slices (at this point I tasted the soup and decided it needed more tomato flavor, so spooned in a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste), stir, cover, and allow the flavors to blend for another 10-15 minutes. Before serving, adjust the seasonings to taste, and skim any fat from the lamb that may have risen to the surface.

While the soup finished simmering I made some fufu to go along with it, but you could serve it with rice, or bread, or whatever you like. If you want to try an American version of microwave fufu using easily available ingredients, you might like to check out BETUMI's YouTube video. However, eating fufu is a slightly acquired taste. Also, pieces of fufu are swallowed whole without chewing them, so you might try the soup first with bread or rice or rice balls (omo tuo). This recipe makes a fairly thick soup: you can adjust or omit the eggplant, zucchini, etc. to suit your tastes, or cube the vegetables instead of blending them. (With American children I generally find it's better to grind the vegetables if they're not used to eggplant and zucchini).   Ghanaian women overseas also tend to be innovative cooks. It was a Ghanaian neighbor in Pennsylvania who first shared with me her discovery that pureed zucchini makes a nice complement to (or substitute for) Ghana’s “garden eggs” in light soup. Similarly, my friend and colleague in Canada, shared that her discovery that pureed carrots are a fabulous addition to chicken light soup, and my sister-in-law blended red bell peppers to get the color she wanted in her soups. This recipe serves 4 to 5 people.

Bon appétit.

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.

Mama's Choice Fufu Flour

One of the ongoing dilemmas for those outside of Africa is how to reproduce "homestyle" flavor. Last February I mentioned Elisha P. Renne's article in American Anthropologist: "Mass Producing Food Traditions for West Africans Abroad (Dec. 2007, Vol 109, Issue 4, pp 616-625).

For many Ghanaians, soup and fufu is a classic meal in their culinary repertoire. In April, 2006 I posted a blog about and interview with a Ghanaian chemical engineer living in New Jersey, Dr. George (Yaw) Adusei. Dr. Adusei set out to develop a high quality fufu flour in the U.S., using plantain, cassava (manioc), and cocoyam (taro) imported from Ghana. I recently received several boxes of his improved fufu powder requesting me to taste test them and give him feedback.

He has, among other things, changed the design of his boxes and added vitamins and minerals to the plantain fufu flour. One of the things I like about Mama's Choice flour is that in Ghana there is often the issue of quality control. I trust that Dr. Adusei has had his nutritional facts tested by a reputable independent lab, and the portion sizes, calories, etc. make sense, which is not always true with the numbers on boxes from Ghana. Also, I know that he is working to limit and/or eliminate the use of preservatives in his flour.

I like the taste and texture of his product (second only to freshly pounded fufu), though it does seem that the plantain fufu may take a little more water and a few minutes longer in the microwave to cook than the previous brand I was using.

Mama's Choice is the new kid on the block. As a relatively new, small, independent company, it faces a huge challenge in developing its market share in a field currently dominated by a couple of well-known brands and distributors. I encourage you to check out Mama's Choice fufu if you see it in stores, or request that your suppliers order some and give it a chance.

More information is available from George Adusei of Adusei Corporation via e-mail at mamaschoice@aduseicorp.com, by phone at 908-757-7530, or on the web at www.aduseicorp.com or www.mamaschoicedistributors.com. Mama's Choice is also available in Ghana. Call 024 444 9440/ 0234 468 3147 or 024 440 1098.

Lunch at Elmina Beach Hotel

This week my husband and I headed to Tarkwa in the Western Region of Ghana. Driving along the palm-lined coast we passed through Elmina and Cape Coast (whose grim slave castles earn this region a place as a UN World Heritage site). Instead of Accra's Ga kenkey, we passed roadside stands selling the Fanti version. We stopped for a lovely lunch: cassava and plantain fufu with goat groundnut (peanut) soup and I chatted with Theresa Anokye, the demi-chef responsible for the soup. I was delighted to find that this restaurant regularly features a weekend buffet of traditional Ghanaian foods that moves beyond the ordinary dishes to include those less familiar (to tourists), like tatale and bambara beans or aprapransa. Ah, yes, note the Star beer, too. And my Africa Cup of Nations scarf.

Fufu in Brazil?

We've been in Brazil for 3 months. We're getting really tired of omo tuo (rice balls) in all our Ghanaian soups. I decided this week to attempt to make fufu with what is available when one does not have a mortar and pestle for pounding it from fresh cassava and plantains or cocoyams. At the market I picked up some polvilho (manioc, or cassava, starch). It seems to be the same thing as tapioca starch in the U.S. There're 2 kinds: doce (sweet) and azedo (acid). I also bought some farinha de mandioca, torrada or toasted, (a cassava meal that's like a really, really fine unfermented gari).

I spent a couple of hours last night trying to make Ghana-style fufu. You don't want the gory details. Suffice it to say that, with a great deal of trial and error, I produced a semblance of fufu that we managed to eat with our chicken light soup with okra. It was kind of a cross between that paste you use to stick wallpaper on the wall and fufu. Next time I need to drastically reduce the amount of starch, increase the amount of water, and figure out how to keep it from clumping up. Help! Have any West Africans lived in Brazil who can tell me what to do? We still have 2 more months here.

On a more hopeful note, I'm going to use some of the polvilho, along with a special cheese from Minas Gerais, to practice making a delightful type of puffy Brazilian cheese ball known as pão de queijo (bread of cheese), but that's another story.