Happy Valentine's Day in Abuja

February 14, 2012: It's now my 6th and final intensive week teaching at the African University of Science and Technology here in Abuja, Nigeria. However, since today is Valentine's Day, it only seemed right to celebrate, so I broke out my last chocolate bar, whipped up some peanut (or groundnut) "cakes" aka, peanut brittle, some "atwemo" (twisted cakes), and popped some corn. That, along with tea and  coffee in the faculty lounge (with the room decorated with some lovely bougainvillea from the campus) made for a pleasant mini celebration as our very international staff gathered together during the morning break. 

Hmmmm, am I really ready to head back to ice and snow in central Pennsylvania?

Candy (toffee), Ghana-style: Recipes #44 Groundnut "cakes and #45 Coconut "cakes"

Ghanaians use available ingredients to create simple candies, or "toffees." Here is a version of "peanut cakes" (recipe #44) and a similar "coconut cake" made with toasted dried coconut instead of peanuts (#45).

Recipe #44 Groundnut toffee (peanut cakes)

This relative of peanut brittle requires only 3 simple ingredients:  peanuts (dry roasted, unsalted), sugar and a little water.

The only equipment needed: a measuring cup and tablespoon, a rolling pin (or meat tenderizer or something similar), some waxed paper or sturdy plastic or paper bag (optional), a heavy 2-quart saucepan, a long-handled metal or wooden spoon for stirring, a flat glass surface like a cutting board or a baking pan,  a spatula, knife, or spoon, and a stove.

Measure out:

3/4 cup dry roasted unsalted peanuts

1/2 cup of sugar

2 Tablespoons of water

1. Coarsely crush the peanuts (easiest between 2 pieces of waxed paper or in a plastic or paper bag) with a rolling pin or other heavy object like a meat tenderizer.

2. Wet a glass cutting board or pan (like a lasagna or cake pan) with a little water and set aside.

3. Also wet (or rub a little margarine or butter) on the spatula, spoon or knife and set it aside, too.

4. Put the water and sugar into the saucepan and briefly stir it on medium high heat just until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Turn it to medium and let it continue cooking on MEDIUM WITHOUT STIRRING  it at all until the mixture turns brown (probably around 10 minutes). If crystals form you probably stirred it too long or your heat wasn't high enough.Turn the pan gently if the burner browns unevenly. Be careful once the mixture begins to brown so that it doesn't burn and turn into charcoal.

5. When it is a nice golden brown, remove the pan from the heat (turn off the stove) and quickly stir in the nuts.

6. Immediately turn the toffee onto the wet cutting board and use the prepared spatula or knife or spoon to press the toffee flat. It will be VERY HOT so do not touch it with your fingers.

7. As the candy cools it will harden. You can simply break it into pieces, score it while it is still warm into squares, diamonds or triangles and break them off when it is hard (top row in top photo, right), or take small spoonfuls of  the warm, but not hot candy, and roll it into balls (top left in photo above)

A yummy treat that will also keep well.

Recipe #45: Coconut "cakes" (toffees)

To make coconut candy (aka coconut "cakes"), you will substitute unsweetened dried grated coconut for the peanuts.  

Before beginning, preheat an oven to 350 degrees farenheit (medium heat). Put  3/4 cup dried, unsweetened flaked or grated coconut onto a cookie sheet and toast it in the oven, shaking the pan every couple of minutes. It will probably take only 4-6 minutes to lightly toast the coconut (it smells wonderful, by the way). Immediately remove the cookie sheet and set it aside. Follow the instructions above for making the carmelized sugar syrup, but instead of adding peanuts, add the toasted coconut, then follow the same steps of pressing it onto a wet platter or board to make the crisp "cakes" (the bottom row right in the top photo above). The candy on the left bottom row of the photo at the beginning of this post is made with fresh coconut and makes chewier toffees. I'll describe how to make them another day.

The day I cooked these I sent a batch of both types of candy with my husband to share with his students and colleagues at Penn State. No candy came home with him.

Special thanks to Katie Cochrane for her help in the kitchen and with the camera this week.

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.