In early 2010 I posted about ofam, a tasty savory over-ripe plantain loaf from Ghana that is also described in The Ghana Cookbook. It uses only 7 ingredients: over-ripe plantains, good quality red palm oil, hot pepper (I use habanero) fresh grated ginger, flour (I use white rice), grated onion, and a little salt. Unsalted dry roasted peanuts make a great garnish or accompaniment.
Now that plantains are becoming more readily available (after years of begging my local grocers to import the yellow--ripe plantains--I am happy to say that I can now find them locally at Wegmans, Giant, and Weis! A great thing since in the winter the green ones will not ripen properly here in central PA.
When I was in Ghana in March, Paulina Addy gave me a can of organic, high quality palm oil (thank you), and I decided yesterday that, since spring is almost here finally, it was time to open the can and make some ofam. I plan to serve it at a Penn State student symposium luncheon I'm catering next week. (My husband begged me to cut a little slice for a taste since he couldn't wait). Oh, and when made with rice flour, it's also gluten-free and sugar-free.
Note: I did find that in my new oven it took a bundt pan 45 minutes to cook (longer than the 30 minutes in my old oven).
A few days ago another cluster of palm nuts ripened on the tree in our yard in Tema. When they are bright orange-red, they are ready to be harvested. While extracting the palm butter/cream of palm fruit from them I realized that many North Americans have probably never seen the process: After using a cutlass to cut the palm nuts off the tree, one whacks the cluster to loosen the actual fruits before collecting them in a bowl or basket. If the fruit is not quite ripe it may be necessary to carefully pick some of the fruits off individually. Next, the nuts are placed in a large pot, covered with water that is brought to a boil, and boiled to loosen the skins and fiber. The fruits turn a little darker as they cook. I boiled mine for about 20 to 30 minutes.
After removing them from the water they are placed in a specially shaped wooden mortar and pounded with a wooden pestle to loosen the skin and fiber from the nuts. I pounded mine in 2 batches for about 10 to 15 minutes each. Then, everything is poured into a large pot or bowl, and enough warm water is added to allow one to loosen the fibers by hand from the kernel (by the way, it's the palm kernel oil that has the really bad rep, not the red carotene-rich palm oil, aka dendê in Brazil).
Eventually everything is strained once or twice to remove the kernels, skin and fibers, leaving only the pulp and oil. The texture is kind of like pureed pumpkin. This is a somewhat messy job, and one needs to be careful to avoid getting the bright orange-red oil on one's clothes. Below is an awkward picture of me holding the camera with my right hand as I pound with my left, and a very brief video clip.
