Recipe #30: Crockpot Shito (Mako Tuntum/Black Pepper)

Well, the shito  [SHE-toe] cooked (see yesterday's post) in the crock pot about 24 hours. I stirred it regularly as Gloria instructed, but it never cooked down and turned dark. I telephoned her in Canada to confirm the crock pot should stay covered. I'm still figuring out how to adjust the crockpot cooking, but since I have  time constraints today I finally finished it off on the stove top, as I always have before. Please note that Gloria also cooks shito in a slow oven.

Recipe #30: Simple Crockpot Shito (adapted from Gloria Mensah)

Ingredients

1/4 cup ground dried chili pepper (cayenne)

2 cups crushed canned tomatoes (I crushed 2 cups worth from a 28 oz or 800 g can of Italian plum tomatoes, lifting the tomatoes out of the liquid first and then squeezing them through my fingers into a small bowl)

2 cups (slightly less than one 15 oz or 425 g can) canned mackerel (or tuna), drained and blotted dry with paper towels, flaked

1 cup of dried shrimp (one 3.5 oz, or 100 g package), rinsed, blotted, and dried in a low (200 degree F) oven [NOTE: if dried shrimp are not available, substitute fresh shrimp, first dried in a slow oven]

2 large onions, peeled and cut into chunks for blending (or grated)

1/4 cup ginger paste (from blended fresh ginger or an Indian or international store)

1/4 cup garlic paste (from blended fresh garlic, or an Indian or international store)

1 cup of vegetable oil, such as canola

 

Step-by-step Directions

Prepare the canned mackerel. One of the secrets to making shito is to remove all the water, so I figure  the less water you use in the beginning, the better. That's why I dried the drained canned mackerel with paper towels before using my fingers to flake it.

Similarly, I rinsed the dried shrimp before using them, blotted them dry with a paper towel, and then spread them out on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree F oven for an hour or so while I did the other prep work. Gloria says she can prepare this in 10 minutes, and then just has to be around to stir it from time to time! I'm guessing she doesn't bother with all the rinsing and blotting I did.

In a large bowl, add the 1/4 cup dried ground hot pepper to the flaked mackerel (remember that West African ground hot red pepper will be hotter than typical North American cayenne pepper). It may be cheaper to buy dried chili peppers and grind your own in a blender as I used to do, but this is a messy task that makes for a lot of sneezing! After making this once, you can adjust the pepper for a milder or spicier shito according to your preference (One could likely substitute paprika for some of the hot pepper to make a milder version).

Crush the 2 cups of tomatoes, and add 1 cup to the mackeral/pepper bowl. Use the second cup of tomatoes to blend the onions. I had to use a smaller food processor cup on my blender and do this in several batches. I'd bet, though, you could also just grate the onions into the bowl with the other ingredients.

In a couple of batches, grind the dried shrimps and add them to the bowl. A rubber spatula comes in helpful in getting all these ingredients out of the blender.

Stir in the 1/4 cup blended ginger and 1/4 blended garlic (those jars from the Indian section of our local international market were a huge time saver), and finally the 1 cup oil. According to Gloria's directions, you should be able to add everything to the crockpot, cover it and cook it on low for 12-18 hours, stirring every few hours. It didn't work that way for me, though.

I'm still perfecting the cooking part of this. It may be that my "low" on my slow cooker is lower than on Gloria's. It did not cook in the time she said, so I finished cooking most of it on the stovetop (first medium, then low heat, stirring constantly for about 30 to 45 minutes). If you have this problem, I recommend a seasoned cast iron pan if you have one (and a wooden spoon for stirring), though I also cooked some in a nonstick skillet and that worked fine as well, though it's a little harder to regulate the temperature. The shito is done when it is dark brown, but not burned (constant stirring and pressing is another trick to making shito), and all the water is cooked out. Remember that it will cook a little bit more in the pan even after it is taken off the heat. Another possibility for cooking this in the crockpot might be to remove the lid from the crockpot at some point to allow the liquid to escape more easily.

When the shito is cooked, allow it to cool completely and store it in glass jars. See note below about oil. If you know any students from Ghana, a small jar of shito and a little bag of gari would likely make a far more welcome gift over the holidays than any candy cane or chocolate chip cookies! The flavor is wonderful (as I said yesterday, dried shrimp is favored in Asia for its umami flavor). I just wish I had some kenkey handy.

I'll post my own "classic" shito recipe soon, but not until after the Thanksgiving holidays. In the meantime, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and remember to share what you have with others.

NOTES:

I've always used tomato paste before, and when I asked Gloria why she uses crushed tomatoes she said one could substitute 1 cup of tomato paste for the canned tomatoes. Trusting her intuition, I asked her why she doesn't use tomato paste since it's simpler. She said that she finds the paste gives too "sweet" a flavor to the shito.

Shrimp: I have Ghanaian friends who skip the mackerel altogether and make shito using only flaked shrimp from Thailand. This is even easier, but I don't like the 2% sugar the Thai people add to their dried shrimp. We also have a vegetarian family locally who make a great shito using seaweed in place of the dried shrimp and fish.

Also, many Ghanaians nowadays will include shrimp or other seasoning cubes added to their shito. Oil: One of the reasons shito does not spoil is that there is usually a coating of oil on top of it. Therefore, you might like to keep this in the refrigerator, even though that would likely not be the case in Ghana. Or, increase the amount of oil.

And yes, this has a strong fish odor, so cook it near a fan (or, like Gloria, outside).I happen to like the smell. It reminds me of Ghana.

Preview: Ghana's "shito" (black pepper condiment)

I've written about shito before, as in an article first published in Gastronomica. In much of Ghana it's as ubiquitous as ketchup was to my father's generation in the U.S. Shito literally means "pepper" in the Ga language, and can refer to peppers, or the hot sauce/condiment itself (also called shitor, or shito din [dark pepper]) which includes dried peppers, dried shrimps and sometimes small dried herrings as well as onion, tomato, and other seasonings. 

The coastal Ga people eat a lot of fish, fresh and dried.I first lived in Nungua in the early 1970s, which is a Ga area. Ga kenkey (komi) in Nungua was generally eaten with shito and fried fish. I've always assumed shito was a Ga invention (aka black pepper, "engine oil, " students' pepper sauce). It was especially popular with boarding school students, probably because it goes well with both kenkey and gari, filling and inexpensive foods.

In Twi the word for pepper is mako, so it might be called mako tuntum (black or dark pepper). In Robert Sietsema’s article “Foo-foo Fundamentals” in the October 2005 issue of Gourmet he suggested it might be called "black pepper" because it included grains of paradise. I've no idea how he came up with that interpretation. I've never heard of melegueta peppers (Aframomum melegueta) being included in it. I think, rather, it's called "black" because you cook all of the liquid out of it with very slow cooking, which means it will keep for a very long time without refrigeration, and it turns quite dark.

Pounding is of course a very common processing technique in Ghana, so the traditional pounding of the dried peppers and dried fish is consistent with the cooking techniques throughout the region, and provides the texture I've always valued. Onions, peppers, and tomatoes are of course "the ingredients." Ghanaians are inordinately fond of tomato paste, and often include it. I don't know of other places that make a similar sauce around the world, and would love to know if there are.

It's interesting that the recipe for this has been pretty much an oral tradition up until recently. None of the earliest cookbooks I have include recipes for it. However, Dorinda Hafner included a recipe in her book A Taste of Africa, and more recently I saw one in a "people's" cookbook by Vivian Ofori that I picked up in an outdoor market in Accra in 2008. (Recipe Book for All [Catering]). Also, Marian Shardow in the U.K. included a recipe for it in her self-published A Taste of Hospitality: Authentic Ghanaian Cookery, a few years ago. Plus, there are a number of online recipes now. 

However, it saddens me to see how often imported tabasco sauce is found on restaurant tables in Ghana these days.

I also note with amusement that one of the main ingredients, dried shrimp, have been recently "discovered" to have great value for providing that magical "5th sense" umami. Maybe there is another link between Chinese and West African cuisines to look at?

At any rate, I confess that while I can make shito, it is a somewhat complicated and time-consuming process so I often opt out and substitute off-the-shelf Asian chili sauces. But I've been wanting to make shito recently. I emailed my friend and colleague Gloria Mensah
who is an amazing no-nonsense, efficient, single mom who knows how to adapt traditional recipes to the 21st century. She once told me she baked shito in large batches in the oven and also that she substituted canned mackerel for the dried herrings. She responded that she now makes shito in a crock-pot (that sits outside for a day or a day-and-a-half) because it used to smell up her house so badly.

I eagerly asked for the recipe and she gave me the basics. My version is outside cooking now, and I'm excited. She's added a number of short cuts that make it much easier to prepare, and I've made a few more.

Here are a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. I'll post the recipe and results very soon. Incidentally, I placed salt in the picture of the ingredients, which was probably a mistake. Just ignore that for now. I'm not sure we'll need to add any. Along with substituting canned mackerel, Gloria also uses ginger paste and garlic paste from an Indian market to eliminate making them from scratch. Another time saver for me, was the ability to purchase Thai dried shrimp from the local international market--Gloria said she has to dry her own in the oven first before grinding them.