West African recipes

[Pepper Pig Profile]

This, from yesterday's OFM,is generating a bit of interest on Social Media.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/a ... lope-ariyo

I don't think I have ever had plantain.

[Earthmaiden Profile]

Lovely recipes, nothing there I wouldn't want to eat. I have had plantain. I'm surprised that cookery based on that from various parts of Africa hasn't become more mainstream yet (no doubt it has if you are in London etc). Maybe this will help.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

I used to work with a Nigerian girl; if I'd married her, which was never an option, I would be twice as heavy by now. Great cook, lovely food. There was a red rice dish with bits in. The bits could be anything, but might include tripe or snails. There's a lovely stew with okra and dried shrimps, onions and chillies.

The veg market in Edmonton Green was (and still is, of course) a great source of tropical produce, well worth trying for exotic goodies. I've got fewer reasons to go nowadays. I love plantains, and think that people who like roast parsnips would like them too and vice versa, both being starchy and sweet. I suspect there's not that much overlap between the two camps.

As has been mentioned here before, I'm also a fan of the unfortunately named Ghanaian pepper sauce.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Jollof rice?
.
There’s a lunch place in Dalston called Jollof Box that I intended to try but lockdown intervened

Just looked at their menu - the theme of the names had eluded me before

https://www.jollofbox.co.uk/menu

Given the number of West Africans I’ve encountered over the years I’m embarrassingly lacking in any knowledge of the cuisine

[Badger's Mate Profile]

I'm sure it was Jollof rice. One variant had dried fish in it . My friend used to use palm oil to cook it iirc. I thought that was the colourant rather than tomato, but I might have misunderstood.

[Pepper Pig Profile]

This is in today's Guardian. Looks great.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/s ... grace-dent

[Lusciouslush Profile]

I had a friend (Chico) from The Gold Coast, Ghana whose mother regularly sent him soup/stew through the post - it was a huge joke between us tho' I never did find out what exactly was in those parcels - dried ingredients he couldn't get here I expect - he never went into it - & no, it definitely wasn't illicit drugs......!
His Jollof rice was ace & very popular - he always made a vat-full of it for parties - - he never told anyone his recipe/method tho' very close to his chest & all that.

[Lusciouslush Profile]

I'm also a fan of the unfortunately named Ghanaian pepper sauce

Badgers - do you make your own shee-to sauce? if so, do you have a t&t recipe.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

No, only ever bought it ready made. The Tesco local to w*** used to sell one, I believe the brand was Ghana Best

[Amber Profile]

We had a Mindful Chef box recently, with a dry West African spice mix. Googling helps, but does anyone have a tried and tested spice recipe? Cumin? (I don’t have dried chipotle powder.)

The best I can find seems to be sweet paprika, ground white pepper, ground black pepper, ground fennel seeds, ground coriander seeds, and ground chipotle pepper.

https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/west- ... -lime-rice

https://app.mindfulchef.com/recipe/chic ... atay-sauce

[scullion Profile]

is it a suya spice mix? if that is the case this is one recipe, or this (a few more 'difficult' ingredients) but i haven't come across it before so not tried and tested - sounds good - i may have to try it.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I had a little Google myself - Seasoned Pioneers, Steenbergs and the Spice Shop all sell readymade suya which might be a cost effective way of trying it out as stocking up on cubebs and grains of paradise (melagueta) might be quite an overhead

I’ll have a look if I get a chance, my local “Asian” shop is at least 50% African and Caribbean they might have some variants

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Interesting spice mixes there.
I have to admit I have never never eaten West African food - probably because I´m on the other side of the Atlantic - but it all sounds wonderfully exotic.

[Amber Profile]

Interesting, thank you. There was an added peanut/satay sauce, so I don’t think peanuts were an ingredient, so, so far, sweet, smoky and chilli flavours. Possibly fennel and coriander? It wasn’t ‘hot’.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I’ve found the recipe which does not have ingredient details

https://app.mindfulchef.com/recipe/chic ... atay-sauce

Trouble is, once you get past the cultural mish-mash required to put Indonesian/Malaysian satay and Japanese tamari and non-tropical maple syrup together into a “West African” dish there could be anything at all in the spice blend. The details should have been somewhere in the packaging?

It may be delicious but while I’m not a stickler for rigid authenticity this doesn’t sound what I’d call Mindful

[Amber Profile]

Yes, it’s only the second box we’ve had, but lack of detailed ingredients does seem to be a bit of an issue. I feel an email coming on.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Amber: I´ve spent the past 20 years mixing spices for Indian food, Thai food, Indonesian, Mexican, Malaysian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tunisian, Jerk, Moroccan......even Southern USA dishes and BBQ rubs.
I can offer you a version of satay which seems to work very well on grilled meats, gado-gado, etc.
I´d be quite happy to investigate West African spice mixes and come up with a recipe, if you´re interested.

[Sakkarin Profile]

Is this the most disastrously underesearched and misleadingly titled cookery book ever? You'd think with that title there'd be at least one West African recipe, given that the population of those fifteen countries is 350 million.

No. Apart from only having only 35 or so full recipes (pastes and sambals don't count), the only countries he actually visited are the ones in colour on this map. It's a bit like visiting the UK and writing a book based on trips to Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and London. The area in grey is what constitutes West Africa, the closest he got to West Africa was over 2000 miles away.

And of course many of the recipes are his own concoctions anyway. Page 143, Stir Fried Squid, the only African link is that the squid were local, utterly unremarkable bog standard stirfry.

[Earthmaiden Profile]

Presumably the book was published some time ago? Sadly, that was probably what many people in Britain thought of as Africa not so long ago. We still don't see enough mainstream African cuisine from the remaining parts IMO. Possibly in London nowadays but not out here in the sticks.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I spent over 3 months in South Africa in 2007. When many white South Africans talk about “Africa” that plus Namibia is pretty much the area they are thinking of

Not all of course, but I bet Floyd’s team thought like that - it seems to have been published in 1998 according to Amazon