Fufu or bust - a culinary visit to Ghana

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 a delicious dish that is definitely NOT for the diet conscious. If anyone bothered to calculate calories in Ghana, I'm sure this dish would be off the charts! It could easily take on a Super Size Big Mac meal!



This dish is called omo tuo - which literally translates as 'rice gun' - but no one can explain why... The white ball is rice that has been well cooked and then pounded into this shape, to be submerged in soup. It's Ghana's answer to dim sum or the north American brunch. On any given Sunday around the country, you can pop into the little designated canteens and feast on omo tuo. The ladies will have bowls of soups and different types of meat, fish etc., and you basically build your own.



Here is a feast of apem (unripe plantains, boiled) with palaver sauce (a stew made with crushed pumpkin seeds, kontomire which is in the spinach family, and of course hot pepper, tomato and onion). The amazing buttery avocados in Ghana make a great accompaniment. Hands only, the more the better to share... Yum!



Wachee is a staple food in Ghana. Sold at many roadside stalls, it is the fast food of the people. It is made of red beans cooked together with rice, giving it the characteristic brownish appearance. It's another build your own deal, where you can choose from macaroni, tomato stews, boiled eggs, fish, meat and gari (a powder made from dried cassava).



Ampesi and garden egg stew is basically boiled unripe plantains (which taste a bit like boiled potatoes) with a stew made from small local yellow eggplants/aubergines. Fish is usually the meat in this stew. I like to make it with canned tuna - no fish bones for me!!!



Abolo is another maize based food - much less dense than banku or kenkey. It is like a semi sweet fluffy pancake that's eaten with tiny tiny fishes - pictured here - which are called 'one man thousand'. The fishes are deep fried and taste like some sort of chips.



Here is a snack that is as moreish as you can get. Roadside sellers can be seen every evening, cooking up a batch. It's called kelewele and is basically chunks of sweet ripe plantain, rolled in a mixture of garlic, ginger and hot pepper, then deep fried to a dark crispy brown, while the inside stays soft and sweet. It can be eaten alone or with groundnuts (peanuts), or pictured here with the local ice cream, Fan Ice. Delicious.



Last but not least is the grill. Ghana is obsessed with kebabs. Most events serve or sell various grilled meats, and most famous is the kebab. Ghanaians have perfected a dusting powder for the meat, made of hot pepper powder, peanut powder and garlic and ginger, that coats and browns on the meat. It's great. The only problem for me is when the meat itself is cow skin or goat head... but that's another post! :)

To Catch a Thief - A follow up to the Guard and the Gardener

Over the past few days I’ve read two blog entries from fellow foreigners in Ghana. Both concern the serious betrayal and incredulousness they have felt as sentimental things have been stolen from under their noses by the Ghanaians they know and trust. My close friend was also over a couple days ago and told me the same thing. The most disturbing aspect of these stories is that each person had demonstrated time and time again that they were happy to share and if asked would give the shirt off their backs for the people they share their personal space with.

The first blog entry I’m referring to was by Barb – an American married to a Ghanaian, living in Ghana with her husband and kids. The second entry was by Wes, an American secondary school student who is spending a school year in a village in Ghana.

Both people are quite open-minded and trusting.

Both have the very best of intentions in Ghana, and neither have flaunted wealth nor treated their Ghanaian families with anything less than respect and love. Yet both are finding themselves reeling at the ability of the people around them to steal and lie, straight faced, with no remorse.

Both stories are so sadly familiar to me. They reminded me of the story I posted a year and a half ago, regarding the ongoing theft of diesel from our house by our trusted gardener Eric and the guard who represented a highly respected and trusted security company. During that whole fiasco our gardener defiantly protested the accusations and insisted he was innocent. He counter accused our cook, who has since been let go.

The whole thing was sad for me. He had been someone I had a soft spot for, and I commonly gave him cash advances which we both knew would never be paid back, as well as clothes, food etc etc etc. Once he was gone the letters started. First was a letter in his broken and pleading English, asking for his job and housing back. He insisted that God would redeem him and one day we’d regret accusing him. Next came a letter from a lawyer’s office in Accra, threatening us with legal action for dismissal without cause. That we laughed off, but I took the time to write to the lawyer to explain that we had witnesses etc. and they backed off.

A few months later Eric came back with a vengeance, waiting at our gate as we left for work in the mornings and leaving letters with the (new) guard. These letters continued with the theme that he saw us as his family, as his mother and father, and that he would never have betrayed us in the way we accused him. He wrote that he had been praying every day that we would one day see the truth of his innocence and let him return.

Now in our relationship, JW is the softie at heart. One of the letters got to him and he called for Eric to come and see him. The next week Eric was back. Smiling as ever, ready and willing to help with anything, assuring us it had all been an ugly misunderstanding with the evil, jealous woman who had been our cook. He assured us God would bless us for seeing the truth and giving him this new chance.

I was skeptical, given what I’ve seen happen in Ghana, but yet I went along with it, and to this day, he is back at the job and staying in a room at the back. I still give him little presents etc.

Yet a week after his return a friend of mine who has a gardener that had filled in at my house during our months without Eric, casually mentioned that Eric had admitted to the other gardener that he had indeed been stealing the diesel, with the guard, just as we’d suspected, for over 2 years. He however told the guy he was happy we’d taken him back and wouldn’t do that again…

So where is the deterrent to stealing again? How does a Christian who references God and the bible and uses his religion as a tool, then live with the lies? Is it simply a matter of poverty?

As both Wes and Barb's stories corroborate, this is not always the case... Is it a cultural acceptance of dishonesty? Why is it ok to betray people who trust you? Where is the remorse? How can we expect anything less than corruption at a national level when this is the behaviour you find inside homes? Who is brave enough to talk about it, to confront it? To change the culture that expects and condones it?

It’s a case of honesty in Ghana – or lack there of…