5. After 2 or 3 days, you should have a dry, tightly pressed together clump of cassava. Place 1 cup of water (or more, if necessary) and the cassava in a blender, and blend to a smooth dough/paste. This dough may be used immediately or frozen. (See recipe using it: Akple, page 189).
* This process is awkward and cumbersome (which is why I don’t usually make my own), but the toxins in cassava, and the need to weight it down heavily and allow the liquid to drain out, mean it isn’t something I’d do in the kitchen. To avoid the mess, one should just buy frozen cassava dough, if available.
Tomato Tips
Tomatoes in all forms are indispensable in the Ghanaian kitchen. Many of the recipes call for tomatoes, and generally one can use fresh or canned tomatoes interchangeably. In Ghana one usually adds whole fresh tomatoes to the soup broth to soften them while cooking the soup, then they are removed, the skins slipped off, and then ground in an asanka or electric blender. Some people prefer to deseed the tomatoes, others do not. When slicing or chopping tomatoes into a stew, often the peelings are left on, but they may be omitted as well.
Certainly, sun-ripened tomatoes fresh off the vine are wonderful, but they are not always available. My second choice would generally be canned plum tomatoes, pureed in a blender. (I like to remove the seeds by straining pureed tomatoes through a strainer, but that is a personal preference.) Tomato sauce can be used in a pinch, but it will add other flavors besides the tomato, and is sometimes sweetened, something Ghanaians would never do. Note that canned already-pureed tomatoes tend to be thicker than when pureeing canned tomatoes oneself. I find them too sweet so prefer to puree them personally.
And finally a word about tomato paste—Ghanaians love tomato paste. In 2006 it was reported that Ghana was the world’s second largest importer of tomato paste after Germany. Tomato paste finds its way into many soups and sauces and stews. It is easy to buy small tins of it any season of the year, when fresh tomatoes may not be available. Also, it is highly concentrated, and only takes a fraction of the amount of fresh tomatoes. It can flavor and thicken soups and stews without making them watery. In a pinch, tomato paste may be thinned with water to replace fresh or canned tomatoes. In most of the recipes, it is a personal choice which to use.
On a health note, tomato paste is said to be a great source of lycopene, a cancer-fighting antioxidant optimally helpful when eaten during a meal that contains a little fat. According to the Heinz Institute of Nutritional Sciences one serving of raw tomato provides 3.7 mg of lycopene, whereas a serving of tomato paste provides 13.8 mg. Another reason to love it. Oh, and it also adds that umami flavor.
To peel/deseed/puree fresh tomatoes:
To peel: Bring enough water to cover the tomatoes to a boil in a small saucepan. Take it off the heat and put the tomatoes into the hot water and let sit until their skins begin to split, about 2 minutes. Remove them with a slotted spoon and plunge them into cold water to loosen the skins. Peel off the loose skin.
To deseed: Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters. Place a strainer over a bowl and hold the tomato pieces over the strainer while using your fingers to remove the seeds. The juice will be saved in the bowl.
To puree: After peeling and removing the seeds, puree the tomatoes using an electric blender, and add back in the juices lost in seeding.
APPROXIMATE YIELDS WHEN USING FRESH TOMATOES (not including plum tomatoes, which have more pulp). This is not an exact science and actual amounts may vary:
1 medium tomato (approximately 4 ounces) yields about:
cored, sliced or chopped: ¾ cup
blended (with peel and seeds): ⅔ cup
peeled/seeded/chopped: ½ cup + 2 to 3 teaspoons juice
peeled/seeded/blended: ⅓ cup
grated (peel and core discarded): ½ cup
1 large tomato (approximately 7 ounces) yields about:
cored, sliced or chopped: 1⅓ cups
blended (with peel and seeds): 1 cup
peeled/seeded/chopped: ⅔ cup + 2 tablespoons juice
peeled/seeded/blended: almost ⅔ cup
grated (peel and core discarded): ¾ cup
Cooking with Peppers
PEPPERCORNS
When reading recipes in Ghanaian or other African cookbooks, never assume that “add pepper” means adding “black pepper” in the Western sense. Ghanaian cooking is noted for its liberal use of a variety of chili peppers in cooking, both fresh and dried. However, long before Portuguese explorers arrived in Ghana in 1471, likely bringing chili peppers with them, Ghanaians were using other types of pepper in their cooking. They still use them today. Those listed below are similar in shape and color to the familiar black peppercorns (Piper nigrum) commonly used in Western cooking. However, they all have distinctive flavors and are worth adding to one’s repertoire. If unavailable, Piper nigrum can generally be used as a substitute.
Grains of Paradise (Aframomum melegueta): Called fom wisa in Twi, but also known as melegueta pepper, Guinea grains, or Guinea pepper, the name refers to the seeds of an indigenous spice from West Africa related to the cardamom family. (Melegueta pepper should not be confused with the Brazilian malagueta pepper, a Capsicum frutescens chili pepper.) In the 1700s, while Ghana was noted for its gold (Gold Coast) and Côte d’Ivoire or Ivory Coast for its ivory, much of present-day Liberia was known as the “Pepper Coast” or “Grain Coast” after this spice. Fom wisa seeds were highly sought by medieval spice traders as a substitute for black pepper in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ghanaians continue to value the seeds as a flavoring for food. Aframomum melegueta is used interchangeably with the closely related “alligator pepper,” which technically belongs to the family Aframomum danielli, A. citratum, or A. exscapum.
Ashanti pepper (Piper guineense): Another peppercorn from West Africa, it is known as masoro in Hausa, or soro wisa in Twi. Other names are West African pepper, Benin pepper, false cubeb, Guinea cubeb, or uziza pepper.
Hwentia (Xylopia aethiopica): Hwentia is the Twi name for the seeds and seedpod of an African tree/shrub. Hwentia is also known as Grains of Selim, kimba pepper, African pepper, Moor pepper, Negro pepper, Kani pepper, Kili pepper, Sénégal pepper, or Ethiopian pepper. When cooking with hwentia (see the recipe for Kelewele, page 52), both the seeds and the seedpod are crushed.
CHILI PEPPERS
Chilies vary in size, shape, length, aroma, and color, but it is primarily the variation in their heat from capsaicin oil that distinguishes them. They range in color from red and green to yellow and orange, and are used both fresh and dried. Though originally from the Americas, they have spread throughout the world.
There are five basic species of Capsicum peppers, though hundreds of varieties: C. annuum, C. baccautum, C. Chinense, C. frutescens, C. pubescens. The most common chili peppers in Ghana come from the C. Chinense family. Ghanaians (especially outside of Ghana) love Scotch bonnet or habanero peppers. My personal favorite from Ghana is the green kpakpo shito with its distinctive fruity aroma. I cherish the hope that this pepper will one day find its way across