Moving

Much has happened in a few short weeks and I have been too overwhelmed to blog. We moved house. Don't ask me about that! We are still intact. Thank God. It is quite exciting but very draining too with many little surprises and teeny shocks along the way. There was no inspiration to blog- none whatsoever but perhaps I'm coming back.

Yesterday we returned to work teaching two workshops at the North York Library in Toronto for the MTML and TPL joint conference for literacy learners and teachers. The energy was great and I was reinvigorated.

More importantly Obama has won the hotly contested Democratic primaries. What a historic race. So I'm thinking of a victory meal that both Obama and Clinton could share. I will be blogging on that soon.

Shitor: Enough to Share!

Don't take my word for it, we Ghanaians don't measure. We udge withour eyes and weigh in our palms.

I've been thinking of the shitor we made in Ghana all those years ago. I've been considering how the measurements would add up, as we didn't measure much except rice and cake mixes. We learnt from our mothers how to judge weights and volumes with our eyes. Try this only if you're feeling adventurous. Because of the strong cooking smell of shitor, plan to make a lot of it at once, either to share or to freeze for later use. Shitor lasts long if the ingredients used are dry, the jar is clean and dry before use, and if one uses a clean dry spoon to serve it.

Up to 1 litre of vegetable oil.

4 large onions

1 cup tomato puree

1/2 cup of powdered chilli peppers.

3 cups of dried powdered shrimp

1 cup of dried powdered anchovies

2+ teaspoons of salt to taste

Heat oil, and add chopped onion. Just as onions brown, add puree. Stir to mix and break up the thick puree in the oil. Add four Magi cubes after five minutes, then add the mixture of powders: chilli, shrimp and anchovies. Add salt to taste.


Other additions and substitutions to try:
1/2 cup Ginger powder, 1/2-1cup onion powder or dehydrated minced onion, and 1/4 cup garlic powder.

Mix and Match, Shitor: Fried Pepper Sauce

Dark brown to black in colour, this fried pepper preserve is used all over Ghana and West Africa. It could also be known as "The student's companion." For at least fifty years it has accompanied students to boarding schools for all of seven years and then some. I believe it is a Ga concoction, and oneof their most important contributions to Ghanaian culinary culture.

I'm looking for a good way to spell its most common name, while trying to get away from the first few letters: Shitor is at present my best spelling.
Usually shitor is made from dried powdered ingredients, except for onions which are sliced and fried first and tomato puree which some people add before the mix of dried ground or powdered chilli peppers, powdered dried shrimps, powdered dried anchovies (or other small sized fish popularly known in Ghana as Keta schoolboys). Don't forget salt... and some people add other flavourings such as Magi cube or Oxo.

When I was young, it amazed me how the oil frothed up high in the pan once the dry ingredients were put in. My mother's shitor was short on pepper and much more on shrimp and fish powder. Some people go so far as to fry beef cubes for their shitor-boy is it ever good! My experience was that we went fishing for the beef which we quickly depleted. And am not sure such fancy shitor lasts quite as long as common shitor.

Shitor is made to last months or about as long as the school term endures. Shitor is eaten in small amounts. Amounts between a teaspoon and a tablespoon is about as much as is needed as a dip for kenkey, banku or gari. Of course this depends on just how hot it is. Shitor can also be used to spice up a sauce or stew after it is cooked and is often stored in a jar in a fridge. Use a clean dry spoon to serve it .

Occassionally I spice up my sauces with shitor while am cooking.
The perfect shitor mix is really according to taste and I would suggest less chilli and more shrimp powder for those searching for flavours other than hot. Hot can sometimes obscure all other flavours so beware.

I don't make shitor at home because it has a strong cooking smell. But it's easy to find it at African grocery stores. I usually go for jars marked medium, as compared to hot or mild, but the heat varies from maker to maker.
Here's another recipe which I shall measure out in cups and spoonfuls when I am ready!

Leafy Green Dip or Kontomire Abom

'Ntos

Since I have been recovering from the 'flu I have had this inordinate craving for Apem and Kontomire Abom. I don't have a photo to go with this one but when am next in Ghana, I will do well to photograph this. This kind of food is the source of the wiry strength of the forest peoples of Ghana, namely the Akan: a people not very tall, not given to obesity, dark skinned and gifted with oratory, proverbs and symbolism. All this is of course my opinion which probably continues to hold sway in the rural forest regions, before urbanization and the introduction of fatty foods and meats, too much carbohydrate, too little exercise and too much stress. In short, the products of city life.

This is how my grandparents stayed healthy and lived long:
On a typical day, they would rise up early and prepare to trek to the farm. My mother has several farms and although I've been to one or two of them in my youth, my memory is very faint because I was more or less city bred. Her Akwadum farm had a stream passing through it and I remember the other children collecting little freshwater crabs.

Soon after arriving at the farm, one would either set to work, clearing land, or digging up weeds, harvesting food or collecting firewood. Invariably one would need a machete (cutlass or a short handled hoe for the work. Someone would be assigned to do the cooking.

A farm would typically have a makeshift stove of rocks and firewood and an old soot stained pot in which peeled plantain and cocoyam (from the farm) would be cooked: plantains at the bottom, cocoyams at the top, barely covered by water, with the leaves of the cocoyam plant placed on top with a few red hot peppers and covered with a lid. Kontomire cooks preferably by the steam generated within the pot.

While the food cooked the potoyewa -crushing mortar and it's wooden pestle would be made ready. After removing the boiling pot from the stove, onions, tomatoes, koobi -salted fish and fresh fish would be prepared for roasting on the open fire. Next, the roasted tomatoes, onions, and salted fish would be mashed together in the potoyewa with the kontomire leaves and hot peppers. This is Abom.


The finish: Palmoil is red saturated oil, rich in vitamin A. It is however a very saturated fat which solidifies at room temperature. Only a little is needed and one would heat this in a pan on the open fire with a small onion to fry and flavour. Pour the ngo-oil over the Abom in the potoyewa, and it's ready to be eaten with the the plantain and cocoyam. Some people mash cooked okra with the abom. My mother loves okra. The grilled fresh water fish is healthy too!
So if a stream passes through your farm, you can't get any luckier for being a farmer!

Palaver Sauce

I wonder why our dark green sauce, spinach or kontomire, was named palaver sauce? Who named it and why? Palaver, is an issue, problem, quarrel or matter which needs resolution or arbitration. What is there to arbitrate about this tasty sauce?

Once, as a student at SMS, we set off from Kumasi to Juaben for field studies. This must have been in 1987. Our aim was to put our newly acquired skills of survey and interview to work. All day we asked quesions from house to house, from general census questions, to what people ate or drank. I wonder what our profs had promised the citizenry there to make them so happy to participate. But they did, giving us answers to everything we wanted to know. At the end of the day, one generous woman made my group of four, a meal of village style kontomire abom, which we ate with slender soft fingers of green apem plantain from her farm. It was the day Kakra described village style abom as "Creamy Kontomire!" Creamy in texture my friends, never in colour. I bet you want to know what village style abom is. It is the one reason to go visit a rural Akan village in Ghana!

Spinach Sauce with Beef for Four!

this spinach sauce also has black beans.

My friends, Zehrs has everything you need! :)
2 packs of frozen spinach (300g a pack)
1 piece frozen smoked salmon (200-300g) or 1 packet of peppered smoked salmon

1 pack Digby smoked herring (200g)
1 pack diced beef- about $5.00
1 large onion
1 can of crushed Tomatoes.
Vegetable Oil.
Other spices: Cayenne pepper, ginger powder to your taste!
1 Maggi cube

Cut up onion. Place diced beef, and half of the onion (slices), a pinch of salt (literally) in a pot over medium heat. Cover and allow to stew. *Save the broth for later.

Next fry the beef in half a cup of oil. Add the rest of the onion to the beef and allow to saute together for a few minutes.
Add a half can of crushed tomatoes (300ml). Partially cover pot to prevent the spray while allowing steam to escape. After about 5-8 minutes add spices: cayenne and ginger.
Next take the skin off the smoked salmon and break or cut the salmon into 4-6 pieces.
Take out 1 or 2 skinny herring fillets(smoked and salted) and cut into small bits and add to sauce.
(The smoked fish flavour really makes this sauce! But if you don't like this particular flavour simply cut out all the fish and be rid of the smoky fishiness.)
Add the previously saved beef broth.
Add the thawed spinach and allow the sauce to simmer.

Remember the digby herring is quite well salted. If you use it there may be no need to salt your sauce further, so taste first, before you decide whether or not to add salt.

Serve with rice or boiled potatoes or boiled plantains, green or ripe.
If you're using a rice cooker, Basmati rice is great. If you're cooking three cups, add an extra cup of water (4 cups) for the African feel. A side that goes well with this dish is fried ripe plantains. You can find these at Zehrs. They are usually not ripe enough when one finds them at Zehrs, so allow to ripen for about 2 days in your kitchen (not the cold room). You don't want them too mushy (when the skin turns black), but you don't want them hard.

SPINACH in a SAUCE

Spinach is one vegetable which has substituted so perfectly, the dark green broad leaf vegetable Ghanaians call kontomire, which grows abundantly in the bush and which Ghanaian farmers cultivate as a bonus, when they plant cocoyam for it's root. The great thing about spinach is you can get it frozen whole or chopped and apart from allowing it to thaw, there is very little else you have to do to prepare it. As you probably know, the greener the leaf the richer it is in nutrients and spinach is reeaally green.

CHICKEN LIGHTSOUP

Light-soup settles lightly in the belly. With chicken and fufu it is celebration fare, otherwise with dried fish and smoked fish it becomes the convalescent's nourishment. Light-soup has a very distinctive taste when cooked with goat meat. The famous "aponkye kakra' is a staple at chop-bars, (rough and ready restaurants) for the working man, found in urban and rural settings.

Ingredients:

Chicken..whole, to be cut in pieces or Chicken Legs (broiler is best for taste but I use regular Zehr's produce)

Onion/: 2 medium

Pepper: Red Chlli peppers or Hot bell pepper

Tomatoes: 2 Large

1 small can of Tomato puree

Basil

Ginger root


I skin my chicken generally but for Chicken light-soup some fat goes a long way to make a tasty stock so I leave skin on some of the pieces.

I cut and puree one onion which I pour over the chicken pieces in my soup pot.
I add a generous pinch of salt.

I open a can of tomato puree and add the contents to the pot

and cook it over low to medium heat, lid partially covering the pot and stirring occasionally.

The stock forms around the chicken as it cooks. Add on four or five basil leaves.

When the stock becomes clear (tomato red but blood clear) then add four cups of water and put in it a whole onion, two whole tomatoes four or five whole chilli peppers according to your tolerance and a whole tomato. Cover pot and simmer.

After 15 minutes, take out cooked tomato, onion and peppers and blend them. Perhaps take one or two peppers at a time if you're not sure about your tolerance.

Add it to the broth on the stove, now cooking at low heat.

Puree the fresh ginger root and add it.

Simmer for five to ten minutes.
Taste.

Serve the lightsoup with fufu.

*I haven't cooked this in a while. The next time I cook it I will go according to my firm instructions as described here and photograph the process. We never measure anything..we judge it all with our eyes and our tongue.

Chicken...Kicking

Chicken has always been a delicacy, as common as they can be found in the backyards and coops in homes, rural or urban. Almost everyone I know in Ghana has kept a chicken or two free range, which has eventually ended up in a soup or stew. Ghanaian household chickens are tasty, having fed on organic food, patiently sought out while exercising. But a traveler once complained to me that he found the African free-ranger chicken skinny and tough. 'Yes', I said. 'Skinny and tough and tasty!'

There was a time in Ghana, in the seventies that the term 'Poultry' came into common use. This was when I first became aware of Pomadze, the big chicken business in Accra. This was also the time when many small poultry businesses began popping up in backyards with chicken houses made of wood and wiring. Then, people bought day-old chicks to rear for eggs and for meat. At that time we also learned the culinary distinctions, layers and broilers.

Ghanaians like their chicken marinated in hot spicy sauces and fried, otherwise they like chicken in soup served with fufu and also in stews served with rice. Lately we also enjoy the chicken and chips thing. One place I remember for chicken snacks was Podium in Kumasi. There we dipped the chicken in Ghanaian fried pepper sauce.

In my boarding secondary school, true school feasts were celebrated with chicken. I think they were the only times we ate chicken in boarding school. Cynical students counted fewer crows in the sky on school feasts and we joked that we were being served crow meat. I'm pretty sure we were served chicken.

My next blog will be a chicken dish probably chicken light soup.
What is it about that special bird which turns ordinary light-soup into celebration fare? I think my mother made the best chicken light soup with that special herb ("akoko mesa"). Basil is the closest thing I know to that ubiquitously growing fragrant herb.

Chicken Stir-fry with whatever remains

I was out of onion, otherwise, as a true Ghanaian I could never have dreamt of making a dish without the strong tear-jerking vegetable which flavours all soups and stews and dipping pepper sauces.

Time was running out so I committed to making my own gh. style stirfry sans l'oignon. How could that be?

I thawed chicken breast and cut them into chunky strips.

Sought through the cupboard and found onion powder, cayenne, salt, and garlic powder.

I sprinkled the chicken with the mix of spices Then settled a sauce pan on the stove with a little oil, three or four tables spoons, on medium heat.

Very quickly I measured rice into my rice cooker...one of the greatest of all inventions so long as you know your rice cooker well. We like our rice soft and moist yet not too congealing- that's another dish.

When the oil was hot enough to hiss convincingly, I tossed in the spiced up chicken strips. Yes ! The oil hissed and spit. I stirred in the chicken making sure to spread the pieces apart for every surface to meet with oil.

Quickly I opened my fridge and search my vegetable drawer. One large green pepper, two large red tomatoes and salad leaves looking forlorn...oh dear. Laziness had caught up with me again. I toss the lettuce into the garbage, wash the pepper and tomatoes, and slice them quickly.

Saute: I toss in the peppers first, since they're harder and crunchier .

I add the tomato slices and watch them fry losing firmness in the pot.

In the absence of ginger, one heaped teaspoonful full of Knorr's vegetable stock is all I need to flavour my stirfry which is soon ready to serve over rice.

*You can cut out salt from the rice and just flavour the stirfry sauce to taste.

I can tell you that I received exuberant compliments from my hungry family, for my quick and tasty meal at supper time!

A True Red Tale

Achimota School Ad-blockphoto credit:ac 2010 by Suzette Ayensu

• Our dining hall in Achimota School eastern compound, was large, with the prefects' high table raised on the west end and the teachers'dining room on the eastern end, up a floor and overlooking the hall. A loud bell at the school tower summoned us highschoolers to every meal. We had to be on time for meals or else face discipline!
  
  In my day, the tables were arranged in three columns and twenty rows and I do believe there were fourteen people on each table. This means there were probably 840 students in the main dining room and perhaps 20 prefects. Each table was cleared after meals by two junior students -form 1-3, (equivalent to grade seven to nine) unless someone from a higher grade was being disciplined or punished as we called it.
  
  Red-Red was just about the most popular lunch available but inspite of this fact some students, noticeably the mid senior cool girls of form 4 and 5 (or grades 10 and 11), would quite often leave food on their plates uneaten- a behaviour we described as 'posing', in other words, creating a sense of cool aka sophistication. (Cool adopts many different expressions especially in co-ed boarding schools where wearing uniform is compulsory.)
  
  Everything in boarding school was based on a hierarchy of seniority and therefore it was also the duty of juniors to serve food, giving the best portions to seniors. So the softest fried plantains went to the seniors and the hardest pieces went to the juniors. We were the juniors this day in 1975, when my friend G served Red-Red to the fourteen students on our table. Then it was time to clear the table and as usual some of the best pieces of plantain lay uneaten on the plates of the posing semi-seniors. G loaded the tray and carried it to the pantry where the pantry-men were waiting to wash the dishes. I guess she was still hungry, otherwise she just could not bear to see that succulent looking plantain in the garbage, so she grabbed it quickly and shoved it into her pocket, no doubt looking forward to a snack once she got to the house. But G hadn't thought far, for Red-Red is fried in palm oil. Oh the laughter, when she returned to the table to await announcements sporting a growing red oily wet stain forming on her pocket, colouring the white flowers on her dress, red! It was clear what she had rescued from the pantry. Inspite of this embarrassment, I'm sure as a true Akora, she still loves Red-Red.

The Second Red of Red-Red

ripe enough to fry

We already discussed kelewele, ripe plantains cubed or chopped small and spiced up...but this is not the only way to fry plantains. Indeed in the popular meal of Red-Red or Fried Plantains and Beans we tend to cut the plantain in larger pieces. Once the plantain is peeled....

Style one: Cut the plantain diagonally, thin and long, exposing a large surface area to the oil. This takes away the fullbodied cylinder (the essential shape) of the plantain and allows you to fry it more easily, more crispy and more tasty!

Style two: Split it along it's length and then cut in three or four pieces across. This is less sophisticated but it works if you don't have the technique of style number one.

You can choose to salt the plantain before frying but the plantain will taste good without salting especially if you consider the bean sauce already has some salt.

In Ghana people may fry in red palm-oil. Palm oil which is rich in vitamin A is good for vision but it is also highly saturated. I opt for a regular vegetable oil, such as corn oil.

The First Red of RED-RED

a slit along the length is the beginning of the process of peeling

It is safe to say that the most favourite of Ghanaian boarding school meals is the dish known as Red-Red. Mostly it was eaten once or twice a week for lunch and for those of us raised on boarding school sub-fare, Red-Red topped the list.

What is Red Red?

The first Red of Red-Red is black-eyed beans cooked in a sauce made with red palm-oil.
The second Red is fried ripe plantain.

Here in Ontario I make my bean sauce in this manner and I must say it tastes good. I find all my stuff in Zehrs Markets or Ultra Markets.

Shop easy, no fuss:
buy vegetable oil
and two cans of black beans
and a medium to large onion.
One jar of pasta sauce:
tomato and basil, or roasted red pepper
a good sized piece of frozen smoked salmon
the kind that's dyed red


Protect your eyes,
with Jackie O darks
as you peel and cut
your medium to large onion
then prepare to fry
In a half cup of oil
in a 3 quart sauce pan...
pour in the jar of pasta sauce
add cayenne pepper to taste- one teaspoon +/-
and Knorr's vegetable stock-2 heaped teaspoons

Simmer for five minutes
on medium heat
then add the two cans of black beans to the mix
On low to medium heat simmer for five minutes
Add pieces of smoked salmon
for a taste to remember

Serve this bean sauce with fried ripe plantains and/or gari or rice.

Plantain Power: Thousands and Millions

plantain photo credited to allsoulsbuduburam
UNRIPE, RIPE, OR OVERRIPE and frankly, almost rotten! Plantain is scientifically known as Musa species. Also called Cooking Bananas, it is rather the banana which is a sub species of the plantain, yet I agree that it's more confusing to call bananas, Eating Plantains.

In Ghana, plantains are classified into two major kinds, Apem and Apantu. I don't know if this relates to the French or the Horn varieties, described scientifically. In local language, Apem means a thousand and Apantu means a million. This may refer to the size of the bunches on a stem, or the number of fingers on a hand, but am not really sure. In terms of finger size, apem plantains are slimmer and smaller than their cousins apantu.

Apem plantains are good for cooking green; chopped into two, or cooked whole and not mashed. Usually, it is dipped into a savoury sauce, spicy and hot which locals call "abom," loosely translated, dip. A simple way of cooking apem, (particularly as a farm snack) is by roasting it over an open fire.

Apantu plantains, when eaten green, are boiled and mashed or pounded with other starchy vegetables into fufu and eaten with soup. Apantu also ripen much better and are perfect for eto (spicy mash) and kelewele. In a regular grocery store in Ontario you're more likely to find the larger variety- Apantu- Million.

Plantains are a staple vegetable for many tropical countries. It is a vegetable which never goes to waste, because there are recipes for eating it unripe, ripe, overripe and even fermented!

Love and Kelewele

the real mckelewele

The culture of kelewele, speaks to sweetness in life....sweet can be hot, sweet can be spicy and salty too. Sweetness is dessert: the extra, the bonus; the icing on the cake and the cherry on the pie! So when life feels right, and the job is well done, and it seems like the pay is enough for the budget, then come night time, after supper is done......the stars are out and the moon has a place in the heart of the sky, then take a shower and change your clothes, call for your friends, and take a stroll along the road, to the crossroads where small oil lanterns compete with urban neon lights...

At the street corner,
where cars go slow
there, people gather
in great Accra city
chatter and laughter
fill the spaces
between faces
senses awaken,
to Daavi's deep frying,
as particles of aroma
assail smellbuds and tastebuds
we're under the power of love and kelewele.
The waiting is as good as the eating,
the walking is as good as the talking
love is in the air
and it tastes a lot like kelewele!

Adwoa Badoe

GRACE and Kelewele

kelewele in the making..cut, cubed, spiced

It occurred to me that life comes from a fertillized seed which must develop in all kinds of ways, away from view, until the moment of birth, or hatching, or budding, or blooming. Is this why this blog Cooking African has been dormant since the day it was announced? Today feels "write" to say a word.... what word?

Kelewele

There's a Ghanaian song which goes, "kelewele wo de aye me aduro..."

Kelewele, I am under the power of kelewele.
They told me not to say it...I said it
They told me not to make it...I made it
They told me not to eat it...I ate it,
Kelwele, I am bewitched by kelewele.

Adwoa's Canadian style Kelewele Recipe,
Make as much as you want to eat,
Spice it as much as you want to taste,
I go for a lot of spice.....yum.

Kelewele i-i-i-s-s-s...
Spicy hot fried ripe plantain!
Make sure the plantains are healthy and large,
Choose the ones which look yellow and ripe,
Touch them, feel they're moderately soft,
Not too mushy not too hard,
Peel them, take away the skin,
Split them in two along the length
Slice them, cube them if you can,
Sprinkle with onion powder and salt,
And dashes of ginger, fresh or ground
You've done the spicy, bring in the hot
Red cayenne pepper, powder or flakes,
Black pepper too, or ground peppercorn
Toss the cubed plantains in a bowl,
Allow the spices to mix and flavour,
Deep fry until golden brown,...
or
Shallow fry them if you so desire,
Serve alone or with peanuts, as a snack,
Serve as a side dish with rice and beans.

If you make this right and you taste it, you will fall under the power of kelewele. Send me a comment on this blog or write to me at adwoa_badoe@yahoo.ca
The next time I make kelewele, I will take a photo to post on my blog.