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!