Our friends Erin and Terry are moving back to Ghana next month, and I've been thinking about them a lot lately.
Things really changed for me during my time in Africa. Before then, I was a fast and dirty cook--choosing the easiest, quickest option 90% of the time. I also still ate fish and poultry, and relied on them to make rapid but tasteless suppers for myself.
In Ghana, I couldn't find a job. (There were slim pickings, and I was on a tourist VISA rather than a working one.) Instead I spent hours and hours, wandering around Accra, going to the markets, and cooking elaborate meals. I just never had the time to dedicate to cooking before. I mean, honestly, who has five hours to shop for and prepare supper?
We felt fortunate because Accra, the capital, had several grocery stores that catered to the tourists and ex-pats. Therefore we could get such staples as cookies, crackers, candy, baking supplies (sometimes) and a few other goodies. We lucked out and found a local Chinese restaurant that sometimes made homemade soy milk and tofu. The Lebanese population ensured good olives, some cheeses and pita. And thanks to the bounty of Ghana, we filled up on tomatoes, chiles, avocadoes, pineapple, oranges and mangoes.
However, there were huge sections of our usual pantry and frig that did not exist during our stay in Ghana.
Due to the lack of some ingredients, I learned to make chocolate chip cookies using vegetable oil, chapati flour and either Cadbury or the local chocolate. We used up our fuel tanks baking brownies from scratch. I overworked my arms shelling individual chickpeas and then mashing them forever in a large morter and pestle for super garlicky hummus. I made my first version of veggie burgers with rice, mashed beans and spices. I even made homemade onion rings once. (Too time consuming and messy.)
In honor of Erin and Terry, and because they may feel inspired to use these recipes in a month or two, here are my two favorite recipes from our time in Ghana: key lime pie and tortillas.
Key Lime Pie
1 1/4 c tea cracker crumbs, or sugared graham crackers, or the closest you can find in Koala
4-5 T butter
1/4 c sugar
3-4 egg yolks
lime zest off 5-9 limes, depending if you can find the key limes or the giant green/yellow ones (make sure to wash them in soap or a bit of bleach first before you zest them)
1 397 can Bonnet Blue concentrated milk with sugar (about 9000 cedis at Koala), or you may have to use 2-3 of the tiny little cans
2/3 c lime juice (about 5 big limes or 10-15 key limes)
Mix the first three ingredients as crust. Bake 5-10 minutes at 3-3 1/2 (that's about 350 degrees), depending on your stove capabilities and amount of gas in the tank. (Basically you just want the beginning of brownness.)
Meanwhile, beat egg and zest (you will need a whisk of some kind) for 5-7 minutes or until it feels like your arm is going to fall off. You can stop when it's fluffy. Add sweetened condensed milk and beat 3-5 more minutes. Add lime juice just until mixed.
Pour into crust and bake 10-25 minutes at 3 1/2-4, depending on your stove and how hard you like your pie. I like a firmer pie, so I will bake it until the top starts to get slightly brown.
Koala sometimes has whipped cream in the refrigerated section, although you don't necessarily need a topping on the pie. (Vanilla FanIce will also work too.)
Tortillas
3 c flour (chapati, all-purpose or a mixture of the two)
1/2 t salt
1/4-1/3 c oil (you can use shortening--4-6 T, but good luck finding it)
about 1 c warmish water
Mix flour, salt and oil. Slowly add the water, a little at a time, until the dough is soft but not sticky (sort of like making a homemade pie crust). Knead the dough for a few minutes on a floured surface. Break the dough into 12 small balls. You can put these in the frig if you want to, or just let them set for about 10 minutes. Roll out each ball as thin as you can, and cook on a heated skillet or frying pan. Cook a few minutes on either side, or until slightly brown. Continue with all 12 tortillas, and keep in a bag in the frig. They will harden slightly by the next day, so you will need to reheat them for a few seconds before eating.
(Great with that kick ass mango salsa, fresh guacamole or pico de gallo.)
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2 comments:
WOOHOO! Thanks for the shout out. And now I have easy access to your recipes when we return to Accra (countdown rapidly approaching. GULP). Tortillas. now that is interesting. For something I take for granted in chicago (you want 100 corn tortillas for $2. no problem), they are really hard to find in ghana.
As often happens, Julie's memories differ just slightly from mine.
First, while her cooking did improve significantly while we were living in Ghana, it had also been steadily improving all the time I've known her. We've always cooked together, but I tended to do most of the cooking early on, especially with anything that took a while to produce. But with me researching, Julie was left to take on cooking projects during the day, and, as happens so often in Ghana, became much more patient while doing so. This has tranlated into a much greater willingness to embrace trying new recipes and project dinners in the post-Ghana Julie, the fruits of which you see here. Also, and this is more nitpicky, while there were ingredients that got finished while we were in Ghana, flour and butter were almost never one of them. The chapatti flour cookies Julie refers to primarily resulted from a desire to use what was in the house rather than walk to the store and Julie's trademarked "Just let me do things" attitude.
Corn tortillas we never tried making. I brought a bag of tortilla chips to a friend during her dis work and shared it with a Ghanaian friend of hers who speculated that, tasty as they were, they might have a hard time catching on in Ghana because they'd remind people too much of the corn meal cakes that they ate during the recession of the late-1970s early-1980s. Sigh.
Jeremy
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