Leah, coworker American missionary, and I are taking Ghanaian cooking lessons each Sunday afternoon. It allows a young college student to earn a little income (most of the students here struggle to meet basic needs), and the fine Ghanaian dinner that results is a great meal to enjoy with those I otherwise wouldn’t want to suffer through my own cooking! Can I provide a little background on Ghanaian food culture and practices?
First of all, there is no such thing as convenience food in Ghana. Most Africans have a lot of patience that extends to the kitchen. It can take quite a lot of physical effort to make a Ghanaian dish due to preparing the starch that accompanies almost all dishes. Their lunch and supper meals tend to consist of one starch and a “side” dish of stew or soup in which to dip the starch. The starch can be Banku (fermented cassava flour and maize), Fufu (boiled cassava and unripe plantain pounded together), Kenkey (maize that has been fermented before cooking), and Tizet (unfermented maize cooked to a looser consistency).
The starches need a lot of work to prepare them for a dish, including cutting, peeling, cooking, and pounding with long wooden “rams.” It takes a couple of ladies to prepare some starches; as one pounds, another women sticks her hand into the pot and turns the dough. If their timing is not perfect, broken hands and/or fingers can occur. I am not preparing these starches at this time as you need a charcoal burner and large pots with big cooking tools; but I can buy them prepared or go over to a friend’s and do it there.
Soup ingredients include vegetables and a little animal protein, usually fish and always hot peppers. Palm nut and groundnut (peanut soup yummy) soups are eaten everywhere in Ghana. The main cooking oil is locally produced red palm oil. The northern staple is millet, which is processed into a paste and eaten with a soup as well. Bread is the only major European introduction and is often eaten at breakfast; except maybe rice. I am not sure if it is indigenous. In Tamale, there are now a few restaurants to eat, but most people eat at outside and roadside “chop bars.”
Ghanaians tend to use fewer and simpler ingredients than do Americans in their cooking; however there is a wide variety of food stuffs here. There are great fruits available including bananas, oranges, pineapples, mangos, papaya, small yellow melons, watermelons, and others.
Here’s a recipe we learned in one of our recent cooking lessons. Our student teacher didn’t count or measure, but patiently let us count and estimate at each step. The Onga (stew seasonings with red pepper, garlic, salt, etc.) and Maggi (shrimp powder) packets are simply seasoning packets that are used here: they remind me of the ramen seasoning packets available in the States. And she said that Americans can blend instead of mashing if desired, even though the results won’t be quite as good. So without further ado, here is a recipe for:
Jollof Rice (serves 12-14)
19 small tomatoes, washed and chunked 3 onions, peeled and chunked
3 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed, and chopped (optional) ½ small ginger root, scraped and chunked (optional) 7 (14 for the brave; WE did!) small dried or fresh hot peppers, washed and stemmed 1½ – 2 cups oil 2½ pounds beef, chopped ½ teaspoon all-purpose seasoning powder Salt to taste 2 medium cans (210 grams each) tomato paste 1 can tuna 1 packet Onga stew seasoning 1 packet shrimp Maggi (dry shrimp mix) 3 green peppers, washed and cut into small pieces 1 bunch spring onions, chopped
2 handfuls of green beans, chopped ¼ head cabbage, shredded 2½ cups dry rice
Blend tomatoes with water until very smooth; set aside.
Blend onions with water, adding garlic and ginger if desired. Blend a small amount of this mixture with hot peppers; set aside.
Put half of remaining onion/garlic/ginger mixture into large saucepan with 1-1½ cups oil. Simmer on medium heat.
Place beef, all-purpose seasoning powder, remaining onion/garlic/ginger mixture, and 1 tablespoon salt in frying pan; cover until cooked, stirring occasionally.
Add hot pepper mixture to onion/garlic/ginger/oil mixture. Then add blended tomatoes and tomato paste to hot pepper mixture.
Remove beef from frying pan; pour drippings into stew, stirring stew occasionally. Then fry beef in ½ cup oil until brown; yes, the beef is cooked twice.
Add tuna, Onga, and Maggi to stew. Add green pepper, spring onion, green beans, cabbage, and meat with drippings to stew. Finally, add rice to stew, adding water and salt as needed, stirring occasionally until rice is soft and has absorbed most of the liquid.
Enjoy!
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