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I’ve always liked food that is both exotic and fiery in the pepper
department. This is either in spite of, or due to the fact that I grew
up a middle class Anglo Canadian – typical supper fare was slightly
overdone pork chops, apple sauce, potatoes and a vegetable. Salt, pepper
and ketchup populated the world of spices I knew.
In highschool I met a whole new world in the form of Caribbean immigrants and the amazing foods they ate at home.
Oxtail stew, jerk chicken, goat roti – these quickly became my favourites. The hotter the better.
In
1997, years after my first introduction to the many flavours (and
peppers) of the world, I came to Ghana. I knew that one of the most
important aspects of acculturation for me would be the food. And I
wasn’t disappointed.
Ghanaian food is culinary world in and of
itself and it’s citizens hold it as dear as their flag and anthem. To be
Ghanaian is to eat fufu, banku, kenkey.
And there is no shortage
of pepper. The soups, the stews and even the sides of fresh pepper with
everything – just the thought of it gets my temples sweating and my
mouth watering.
Below, a sample of Ghana food at it’s best (next installment will be the stranger, more difficult to get used to dishes!):
Ghanaian dishes usually consist of a starch as the main component, with an accompaniment of soup or stew.
Banku
is my favourite. It's literally a ball of maize that has been processed
and fermented - giving it a vinegary taste like one of my other
favourites, Ethiopian injera.
Here is a pot of banku being made.
Banku
is eaten either with a okro soup (quite slimy and definitely not one of
my favs), or with fish and raw hot peppers, ground with tomato and
onion. CUTLERY IS NOT ALLOWED! This is a 'dig in with your hands'
affair!
Arguably
the best Ghanaian dish ever (in my mind) - is banku with tilapia fish.
You get the whole fish - no fillets in Ghana! Again, it's all about
sharing and eating with your hands. YUM!
Here's
a bowl of fufu. This is Ghana's national dish. The fufu itself is made
of boiled and pounded starches - either plantain and cassava or yam.
There are three main soups that it can be submersed in - groundnut (yes,
peanut soup!), light soup (a pepper and tomato broth) or palm nut soup
(made from the pulp of palm kernels). There is a real art to eating fufu
and most obrunis are hopeless at it. The object is to plunge your hand
into the hot soup, pull of a bit size piece of the fufu, manipulate it
to crate a little well where a bit of soup can sit, and plop the whole
thing in your mouth and swallow. No chewing! Personally i can't do it.
So in order not to gag at the table and cause concern and disgust in all
around me, I abstain... The soups are great though. Peppery and
flavourful...
Kenkey
is the food of the Ga tribe - those along the coast, in the main city
Accra. It is similar to banku, in that it's made of maize, but it has a
grainier texture and is made and stored in either corn husks, or in
banana leaves (fante kenkey). It's served with fish and pepper. Filling
and simple and transportable. A practical and filling food.
Then
there's red red. This dish is usually the favourite of the less
adventurous visitors. It is not as spicy as the others and the tastes
and textures are less 'foreign' to obrunis. Red red is named for the red
of the beans in the bean stew, and the red of the fried plantains that
accompany the stew. The sweetness of the plantain compliments the rich
bean stew perfectly. This is
